A combative Pete Hegseth slammed the press Thursday morning for reporting on a leaked assessment of the United States’ strikes in Iran — all while defending President Donald Trump’s day-one assessment of the strikes.
“Time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad,” the secretary of defense said, attacking the press for “irresponsible” reporting on assessment information that he said was not conclusive and premature.
“Because you cheer against Trump so hard,” Hegseth said. “You want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.”
CNN and The New York Times reported this week on a leaked preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency report that showed Iran’s nuclear facilities were likely set back months, rather than “totally obliterated” — as the president has repeatedly said. The news reports included the caveats that these initial assessments would be updated with additional information as intelligence was collected.
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On Thursday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine would not use the word “obliterated,” a term outside the military’s technical assessment terminology, to describe the strike. Instead, he walked through a detailed and technical breakdown of the strikes themselves and reiterated that the Pentagon had only done an initial assessment and not a bomb damage assessment.
“The joint force does not do BDA by design,” Caine said. “We don’t grade our own homework. The intelligence community does.”
Asked if he would agree with the language Trump used just hours after the strike and has continued to use — that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “obliterated” — Caine did not answer.
“Sir, I think I explained,” Caine began to respond. Hegseth cut him off.
“He doesn’t do politics. That’s my lane to understand and translate and talk about those types of things. So I could use the word ‘obliterated,’” Hegseth said.
The administration is continuing to support an aggressive assessment of success, even though Hegseth quoted the report, saying, “It requires weeks to accumulate the necessary data to make such an assessment.”
Hegseth listed off numerous other assessments that were in line with Trump’s claim that the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow were destroyed, including from the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Iranian foreign affairs minister and the U.N. Atomic Energy Agency.
“This is a new one from the U.N., the United Nations,” Hegseth said. “No friend of the United States, or certainly Israel.”
Hegseth accused the Pentagon press of “searching for scandals” in reporting on the intelligence.
On Monday, NOTUS asked members of Congress with combat experience why the White House and military officials, like Caine, were describing the impact of the attacks differently.
“When it comes to battle damage assessments, accuracy is always important. I think you definitely want to be accurate, because if you’re not, you have credibility issues in the future,” Rep. Eli Crane said. “There clearly is a difference between those two statements, right? I would say one is more cautious and one is more aggressive.”
Sen. Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, said the Pentagon has several options to reach a more conclusive assessment: “daylight imagery, nighttime [imagery], infrared, ideally, hyperspectral.”
But he said, “The best BDA” would require having people on site.
“A sign between our adversaries, where they say we hear one bad guy call another bad guy, ‘Oh, my God, this is what happened,’ and we know for sure,” he said. “And of course, the best BDA of all is boots on the ground, looking at it in person.”
Rep. Derrick Van Orden said that the difference in language was part of being the president’s military adviser, that Trump was “publicly stating his goal.”
“If they’re trying to get a more granular look at something, that’s their job,” Van Orden said. “Raising Caine’s job to get the most granular and pessimistic view possible. That’s what the DOD does.”
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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