The President, the Pentagon and the leak
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Alex Dibble and Stuart Willey. There's been a war of words over dueling reports into just how much Iran's nuclear program has been set back by American and Israeli bombing.

One Pentagon assessment leaked to the media seemed to contradict Donald Trump's claim that the result had been virtual obliteration. The White House hit back at reports of that assessment, and now the FBI is investigating the leak. It appears, therefore, that there are disagreements between the White House, the US intelligence community and the Pentagon.

With us to dig into what's going on is Jim Townsend, who spent decades at the Pentagon, including eight years as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Jim, the White House spokeswoman says this leak is down to what she called an anonymous low-level loser in the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. What did you make of the leak?

you know, leaks are, and particularly with this administration, leaks happen all the time, it seems. And getting the FBI to track down the leaker is something that's a little unusual, at least in past administrations. This one seems very quick to turn to the FBI, which is a heavy-handed hammer to use, but to turn to the FBI to go after a leaker, which could be a low-level person. But in the past,

You know, leaks weren't necessarily dealt with that way. But I think under Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense, he seems very serious about that. He's been hurt by leaks in the past, as you know. So they really they really are reacting. But in terms of what was leaked, you know, that was an initial assessment by DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. And they, of course, are the kind of it's the Pentagon's own intel agency. They're not the CIA or anything. They're

And one thing that you do learn working in the Pentagon during conflict is that the initial assessments of bomb damage or battle damage assessments, BDA, the initial assessments are usually wrong.

You have to wait. So I think for DIA to do its assessment, that must have been one of these initial ones that whoever leaked it gave it to the press. And then, of course, the press would cherry pick various things from it. With Intel, you have to read the whole thing. You can't read just one sentence and get the whole thing because the way the Intel people write is,

They encompass the point, the assessment, with a lot of caveats and things around it. So you have to dig through that to see what they're really saying. But at the end of the day, someone should have told President Trump, you know, never go public with the initial assessment. And so we are today where we are. We've had the CIA director join in, supporting the White House. He says Iran's program was severely damaged based on new intelligence, he says.

Do the U.S. intelligence agencies often provide reports that seem to contradict each other? That does happen, but it happens in private and it happens between the intelligence agencies will get together with their assessments agents.

and they'll try to work out what a joint assessment is. Sometimes it's watered down a little bit to get everybody on board, but it's not unusual for some of the intel agencies to have a different view. And then they come together and try to work it out. But you don't go public with that. That's what, you know, you try to stay away from this idea that there are fissures. And that usually comes out later, you know, but...

In the early days, they try to work those things out and come out with a joint assessment. And they give a joint assessment to the president. But, you know, when they give that joint assessment, they will say, well, CIA has initially said this and DIA has said this. NSA has said this. INR, the State Department, has said this. But they've come together and here's a joint assessment. So the president knows a bit about what's happened behind the scenes. And I think the point here is that I...

The Trump administration has organized itself. It's a bit political now in the intelligence world, and that's not a good thing at all. Intel has got to be absolutely fact-based. It's got to be nonpartisan. It's got to be based on assessments by experts. But I think right now the politics around this issue is so hot that

And the intelligence agencies are right in the middle of it. And so you're going to have loyalists like the CIA director jump in and begin to support the White House. So for us on the outside, we're just going to have to wait for this to kind of clear its system and then see what we come up with. But it's an unfortunate politicization, I think, of the intel community.

Jim, in their pushback over the leak, the White House and the CIA director have been pointing at an Israeli initial assessment rather than the Pentagon one. Why would they be doing that?

Well, they're going to point to whatever assessment is out there that is a better one going more in their favor than that initial assessment from DIA. And so, of course, the Israeli intelligence community is very well regarded. The Mossad, you know, and all of that, they've got an R about them, although they're as vulnerable as anybody else, as we know, but they have a reputation. And so,

for Trump and others to get their assessment and to wave it around, they feel, as a vote on their side. But again, in terms of politicization, it could very well be that the Israeli is politicized as well to be supportive of Trump. So I think

Again, us on the outside, whether you're in the media or you're outside the government, this politics is going to cloud everything that we are seeing now. And we're going to have to wait for that to die down. And it could be a while before we begin to see get a good picture, which is what we should be doing anyway. Because like I said, battle damage assessment, it takes a long time and particularly for something like this that's underground.

So this is going to take a while to get a true picture of what the impact is going to be on the Iranian program. You touched on those wary relationships between the White House and the intelligence community. Is that a relationship that can be fixed or improved?

Well, it can be, but it depends on how much either party wants to, you know. With time, I have found with time, the Trump administration isn't the only one that has come in with a jaundiced eye towards intel. The George W. Bush administration did as well. You know, they felt that the intel community underestimated what was happening with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

And so that was a well-known fight between the intelligence community and Don Rumsfeld and people like that. So...

So this is not so unusual. And I don't think it ever fixes itself, even within the four years of an administration. But over time, I think they learn to work with each other. And maybe there's a bit of trust built up by the administration. And maybe the intel community assesses itself and says, how can we deal, how can we work with the American president better than we're doing now? Because the intelligence product is,

is as much money and time is put into an intelligence product, if the administration doesn't know how to use it or is very suspicious of it to begin with, you're throwing out a lot of capability. You're throwing out a lot of good hard work of very patriotic Americans who are in the intelligence community. You're throwing that out based on preconceived notions and that type of thing. So it takes time to fix something, but it's never fixed 100%.

Should it be fixed or not? It doesn't matter, Jim. After all, Trump has been attacking media, has been attacking other parts of government, and there's been this dysfunction between agencies for a long, long time.

Well, yes, you're right. And in that case, it does matter whether it's the intel agency or it's other parts of the federal government or it's the media. All of them play a role in government and all of them play a role in democracy, particularly with the press. Having a press that's trusted in a press where there's a trusted relationship between the people and the press is really critical. Having the president attack that, as I said, it attacks democracy, too.

With this administration, their approach and their politics and the way they see the world is very different than what we've seen in other administrations. Although we've seen elements of it in other administrations. But with this one, they're attacking these kind of fundamental foundational parts of the U.S. democracy and the U.S. governance issues.

that's going to have to sort itself out too over the next few years of this administration if they want to really get anything done. I think an administration that's constantly attacking itself is not going to get much done except to split the country and cause ill feelings across the country.

Jim, thank you. That's Jim Townsend, a long-time Pentagon official, speaking to us from Washington. We talked a bit more about the fraught atmosphere inside the Pentagon at the end of April. Scroll back to discover more in an episode entitled Fear, Loathing and Lie Detectors. Hegseth's Pentagon descends into chaos. But for now, that is it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. We'll see you tomorrow. ♪

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