Ahead of Saturday’s U.S. airstrikes against targets in Iran, the White House was supposed to notify key congressional leaders. According to several accounts, that did not happen. Congress’ top two Republicans — House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune — were reportedly notified, but other lawmakers who were supposed to be briefed were not.
Now, that problem is apparently poised to get worse, not better. NBC News reported:
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.
Axios was first to report on the White House’s plans.
There’s no great mystery as to the motivation for the change: Earlier this week, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency completed a preliminary intelligence assessment and found Saturday’s U.S. airstrikes in Iran were less effective than Donald Trump claimed and that the mission set Iran’s nuclear program back by only months, not decades. That assessment was posted to the CAPNET system late Monday, which some members of Congress have access to, and the news leaked soon after.
That does not, however, mean that the leak was necessarily the fault of a congressional office, and the disclosure of the intelligence report might have come from the Defense Department or the intelligence community.
Nevertheless, the White House has decided it’s time to keep Congress in the dark — or more to the point, even more in the dark.
Pressed for some kind of explanation, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the “administration wants to ensure that classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands.” Of course, if that’s true, officials might also want to curtail Trump’s access to classified information given the frequency with which he has shared and mishandled sensitive information.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the White House to “immediately undo” its decision. “The administration has no right to stonewall Congress on matters of national security,” the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor. “Senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad.”
Trump and his team apparently disagree, preferring less transparency, less oversight and less accountability. What could possibly go wrong?
