The Trump administration kept Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard out of a critical classified briefing on the U.S. airstrikes in Iran — because she wouldn’t back up Donald Trump’s narrative.
That’s according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who said Gabbard’s absence from the high-level Capitol Hill meeting was no accident.
“I’ve never, ever been part of a major cabinet-level classified briefing where the Director of National Intelligence was banned from the room,” Murphy said Thursday on CNN’s The Source. “I think it stands to reason that they knew that she was not going to toe the line, that she was likely going to refuse to say what the administration wants, which is that the program was obliterated.”
Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, attended the closed-door briefing, which included CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine. But not Gabbard — the country’s top intelligence official.
Tensions between Gabbard and Trump had already flared earlier this year when she publicly testified that Iran did not appear to be developing a nuclear weapon. Trump rejected her assessment, saying, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”
That disagreement resurfaced last week after the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites — Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Trump and Israeli officials claimed the strikes “obliterated” the facilities and set Iran’s nuclear program back “years.”
But classified U.S. intelligence painted a very different picture, according to CNN and The New York Times. Early assessments reportedly showed the damage may only delay Iran’s nuclear capabilities by a few months.
The Trump administration has aggressively denied those reports. At a Pentagon briefing Thursday, Defense Secretary Hegseth pushed back against the leaks, and the White House has launched an investigation into how the intelligence got out. Access to future classified reports is now being restricted — even for members of Congress.
Trump’s legal team has gone further, threatening lawsuits against both CNN and The New York Times over their coverage of the intelligence leaks.
Meanwhile, Murphy warned the strikes could backfire badly.
“It’s true that Israel has targeted a lot of the scientists, but Iran still has the know-how to put back together a nuclear program,” he said, referencing Israel’s June 13 strike that killed several top Iranian officials and triggered a wave of retaliation.
“And the strikes potentially could have the impact of convincing this regime in Tehran or the next regime that they now have no choice but to rush to a nuclear weapon,” he added.
The exclusion of Gabbard, Murphy said, shows just how far the administration is willing to go to control the narrative — even if it means sidelining its own intelligence chief.
