WASHINGTON, June 25. /TASS/. The United States administration plans to restrict classified information issued to Congress after a leak that said that the country’s attack on Iran's nuclear facilities was not as successful as President Donald Trump claimed, the Axios portal reported.
Axios quoted sources as saying that the Trump administration plans to limit the placement of information in the CAPNET system, used to send classified data to Congress. The assessment of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the operation was posted on CAPNET late Monday. The next day, CNN and later The New York Times published snippets of the assessment. According to its information, Iran's nuclear program was set back only a few months, and not ‘obliterated.’ The publication of the DIA data enraged Trump. "Go figure: Almost as soon as we put the information on CAPNET, it leaks," an administration source said. "There's no reason to do this again."
As the portal notes, the FBI has launched an investigation into the circumstances of the leaks. "We are declaring a war on leakers," a senior White House official said. Besides, the intelligence community is figuring out how to tighten the information control processes to prevent the leakage of analytical materials to the media.
Congressional Democrats are unhappy that the administration refused to inform some lawmakers about the operation in advance, and the White House's plans for further restrictions are likely to provoke a new round of criticism. Also, Axios emphasizes, Trump has been deeply suspicious of the intelligence community since his first presidential term, and the incident has only intensified these feelings. "Trump knows the IC [intelligence community] has spooks who hate his guts," one adviser said.
Intelligence leak
At a press conference in the Hague after a NATO summit, the American leader said that the conclusions of the DIA, which were "leaked" to the press, apparently for political reasons by someone from Trump's ideological opponents in the US intelligence services, were preliminary.
Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth, who was present at Trump's press conference along with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accused the American media of hyping only part of the results of the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. From the point of view of the Pentagon chief, such media outlets are only trying to damage Trump's reputation, starting from a data leak that does not give the full picture. According to Hegseth, the leaked DIA’s preliminary report contained a note that even its authors had a low degree of confidence in their own conclusions.
According to the Axios sources, the report was compiled within a day of the attack and based on an analysis of satellite photographs, rather than on eyewitness accounts of the destruction on the spot. It contained preliminary data from only one of the 18 US intelligence agencies.