WASHINGTON — The White House plans to limit intelligence sharing with members of Congress after an early assessment of damage caused by U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites leaked this week, a senior White House official confirmed to NBC News.
The administration specifically plans to post less information on CAPNET, the system used to share classified material with Congress, the official said.
The decision, which almost certainly won’t sit well with Democrats, comes as top Cabinet officials are set to provide a classified briefing to members of the Senate on Thursday afternoon about the strikes.
“The administration should immediately undo this decision,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told NBC News Thursday. “They seem not to want to see the facts to get out. Just Trump’s version of the facts, which we know is often false.”
Axios first reported the administration’s intention of limiting the information provided to Congress.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., echoed outrage from President Donald Trump and his allies Thursday over the reporting of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s early assessment of the U.S. strikes on Iran, which said that its nuclear program had been sent back by only three to six months.
“There was a leak, and we’re trying to get down to the bottom of that. It’s dangerous and ridiculous that happened. We’re going to solve that problem, and we’ll keep the coordination,” Johnson told NBC News. When asked if he thought the leak came from Congress, the speaker replied, “That’s my suspicion.”
Despite the administration’s crackdown and Johnson’s suspicions, it’s not known whether the leak came from a member of Congress.
Lawmakers had access to the initial assessment regarding the strikes from the Defense Intelligence Agency and were able to view it in a secure location in the Capitol, known as a SCIF, as NBC News previously reported. The assessment was transmitted to leadership through these official channels.
The Senate is expected to receive a classified briefing on Capitol Hill on Thursday afternoon, which was originally scheduled for Tuesday. Democrats have decried the administration’s delay as an effort to hide information about the strikes from Congress.
The White House is expected to send four senior administration officials to brief senators Thursday including, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two sources with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard won’t be present at the briefing. “CIA Director Ratcliffe will represent the intelligence community tomorrow while Tulsi Gabbard continues her critical work at DNI. The media is turning this into something it’s not,” a senior administration official said.
Trump administration officials have been engaged in a full-court press since the strikes — and the early assessment — defending the military’s targeting of three major nuclear facilities in Iran and claiming their total “obliteration.”
Hegseth and Caine held a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday morning in which the defense secretary scolded reporters for publishing information about the classified early assessment and Caine detailed what went into the operation and the impact the strikes were expected to have in Iran.
Hegseth emphasized that the assessment was preliminary and pointed to a statement Ratcliffe issued Wednesday saying that Iran’s nuclear program had been “severely damaged” by the strikes and that several key sites had been “destroyed.”
Ryan Nobles and Gordon Lubold contributed.
