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Pentagon Defends Operation; Senate to Receive Briefing; Marc Caputo is Interviewed about Congressional Briefings; Supreme Court Could Issue Opinions. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 26, 2025 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And listening to what was billed as a highly consequential press conference coming out of the Pentagon. It was with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, taking to the lectern and doing to give -- offering two different presentations.

What we learned were very new, interesting details about the mission, the U.S. strike on the three facilities -- nuclear facilities in Iran, how the weapons were -- how the operation --

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Who the pilots were. Yes.

BOLDUAN: Who the pilots were. Who the crews were. How the -- how the weapons performed. What parts of just speaking specifically about Fordow going down a specific shaft. Interesting detail that we'll continue to discuss.

And also, as Daniel Dale was just talking about, despite the tone, the defense secretary confirmed a lot of the reporting that has been out there about a preliminary assessment coming from the Defense Department's intelligence agency about the full -- about the impact and the effectiveness or how far the -- the -- how far back the Iran's nuclear program is now set because of these strikes. Only that preliminary assessment.

With that, let's get to the -- I want to go to the White House now. Alayna Treene has been standing by because part of the next like meeting today, Alayna, that will be important is there will be this classified, long awaited classified briefing of defense secretary -- the two men we just heard from and others on -- in the Senate for the full Senate. What is the White House doing today? What are you hearing from your sources? And what is going to happen on Capitol Hill?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. So, that meeting -- those briefings were originally scheduled, actually, Kate and Sara, for earlier this week on Tuesday, of course, to give them more of a classified sense of what happened during those U.S. strikes on these Iranian nuclear facilities. You know, having intelligence officials in the room to really brief them on the details of this. That -- those two separate briefings were ultimately delayed to later this week. Today, as we know now. One will be tomorrow as well for the House. And what we were told by our sources here at the White House, and

elsewhere in the administration, that is because they really wanted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to be the ones in the room leading that briefing, which I think says a lot because we know that really they have been the ones who have been flanking President Donald Trump. We saw it yesterday at that NATO press conference in The Hague. We saw it on Saturday when the president first came out and addressed the nation. He's really made them both kind of the -- the messengers on this entire operation. And they wanted them to be the ones in the room.

But in other reporting we have as well on some of those briefings is that the administration is actually looking to withhold some of the classified information that reaches different members of Congress, something, of course, we've already now heard from many different lawmakers that they are taking issue with. It's still unclear exactly how that will actually work. You know, practically how they are going to do that, but that is something they are looking at following what they're citing is the leak of that Defense Intelligence Agency report that CNN and, of course, others have now reported.

But I do want to get back a bit to that Pentagon press conference and highlight some of the things that I found to be the most interesting. I know a lot of us have shared some of what we had heard from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, some of the most important things I think that he said. One was that the operation against Iran's nuclear facilities went as planned. He said the 30,000- pound bombs dropped, quote, "functioned as designed, meaning they exploded." He said the weapons did exactly what they wanted to do. But again, he was very hesitant to say, you know, we don't have the intelligence. He essentially said, you know, we don't grade our own homework. We have the intelligence community do that. And we are still waiting to see exactly what the intelligence says about many of the different assessments of what actual damage was sustained in these strikes.

We also heard from Hegseth, who, as you mentioned, you know, really used the opportunity of this -- that public podium to go after the media, despite confirming a lot of what CNN had reported. And he highlighted two other reports that I think are very notable to mention here. One is that we heard from CIA Director John Ratcliffe yesterday say that the strikes had, quote, "severely damaged Iran's nuclear program." We heard Hegseth reiterate that today.

We also had heard -- and he, Hegseth reiterated this as well, from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who had said that on the basis of satellite images and given the power of the bombs and technical characteristics of the centrifuges, that they -- we know that they are no longer operational. So, those are the facts that they were trying to present, and they kept emphasizing specifically Hegseth, that there's so much more intelligence that still needs to be gathered. Of course, though, still raising questions on what exactly they mean then when they say that they were obliterated while we're still trying to learn exactly what happened at these different sites.

SIDNER: Yes, Alayna, we saw some of that incredible video of training mission showing exactly what those bunker buster bombs can do.

[09:05:02]

But should mention that this is the first time, and this is the video here, it really gives you a view from each point, from outside and then what happens inside. But this is the first time that they have been deployed on a battlefield. And what we heard from the general, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is that they did exactly what they were intended to do and hit all of these spots that they were intended to hit.

Let's go now to Zach Cohen, because he was inside the room as this press conference was ongoing. What did you learn? Bring us up to speed.

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, guys, this press conference really did center around one topic, and it was the nuclear facility of Fordow. And it was almost like listening to two different press conferences, though, right? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth really spending a lot of time going after the media, while also sort of confirming reporting that has been done by CNN and others in the last few days at the same time. Also reiterating that the assessment, as far as he and President Donald Trump are concerned, they believe that these -- that Iran's nuclear program was completely obliterated. He used synonyms like destroyed. But that is his view that, and he read off of a series of statements from top officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe, that he claimed backed up that assessment.

But chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, who just three days ago said it was far too early to tell what is still there and what is not as far as these sites that were targeted, again, really not willing to commit to going as far as the secretary of defense and proclaiming that Iran's nuclear program was obliterated. What he did do is walk us through his confidence in the weapon, these massive ordnance penetrators that were dropped on Fordow and one other site that was targeted. He -- he presented a video, a training video, that he said is really the basis of what this damage -- early damage assessment is. It's based on modeling. He said that it's really, as of now, the damage to these sites is -- centers around what they know about these weapons and their capabilities, as well as what they're seeing from the outside.

But at the same time, there's really no way to confirm what the damage on the inside and underground these facilities are until somebody has boots on the ground and is able to inspect them.

Also, too, I want to point out that again while Fordow was discussed extensively today, the other two sites that were targeted during this operation did not get mentioned, and that is Natanz and Isfahan. Both of them are believed to have key nuclear components that were stored in them. Both of them believed to have underground facilities. Isfahan, though, wasn't even targeted with the massive ordnance penetrator. So, still a lot of questions about how Donald Trump came to the conclusion so early that this nuclear program was obliterated when, at the same time, his administration is now saying significant more assessment needs to be done to really know the answer to the question of how much damage and how effective these strikes were.

BOLDUAN: And that's the -- to use a term of art for us, that's the standby to standby. There's more -- there's more intelligence and information that's going to be gathered, of course, Zach, on top of your great reporting of what has been gathered already. But -- so there is the -- and they were careful with that. We're not -- we're not -- we're going to release what we can. We're going to -- we're going to keep what we can. There's -- that's a question of how much will be released.

One of the -- what we did learn that was new was the details of the weapons and this operation, especially at Fordow, as Zach was getting at. And it had me thinking of you, Brett, because you were -- you've been kind of in this position and working in the Middle East and working with the Iranian -- working on plans with regard to Iran, plans with regard to Israel, for a very long time.

When you heard the detail coming from General Caine, that said what to you about, as he described, an operation like this has been in the works for many years.

BRETT MCGURK, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. Kate, I think if we can step back from the kind of Washington and the partisan framing of it, which is a -- always something about these things, unfortunately. But I thought Dan's briefing, General Caine's briefing, was really important and just worth studying because he went through a lot of information that until now would have been classified, and that this operation, this strike plan into Iran was developed -- it was really conceived and resourced and developed in the Obama administration. It was refined in the Trump administration. It was refined quite a bit in the Biden administration for what we handed over to President Trump.

And what we now know from that briefing, the first time we know it, is that as it was designed, as these massive ordnance penetrators with significant computer software engineering went directly down to those three ventilator shafts specifically as designed. And until you actually do it, you never know if it's going to work. It worked. It seems to have worked flawlessly. That is very important information.

He also pointed out some things we take for granted. You know, a patriot interceptor is traveling a 3,000-miles an hour, about Mach four, to hit a ballistic missile traveling at about 6,000 miles an hour, Mach eight.

[09:10:01]

This is really difficult. We take for granted how this stuff all works. I thought that was very important to lay out.

So, as I -- as I come out of this briefing, I now know BDA level two, as I mentioned, level one, first 24 hours, you're looking at imagery. Level two, did the ordnance work, did everything go as we had wanted? The answer now is, yes. And we're now in the phase of level three, collecting all sources of information and then putting that together with nuclear experts to determine if they have these pieces and parts here, could they reconstitute them with some political analysts, say, would the Iranians do that? What would be the restraints? To then have a comprehensive assessment of where we are with the objective being Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and its enrichment program has to be completely destroyed.

I think, from what I've seen, the 20,000 centrifuges, you had about 17,000 in Natanz, about 3,000 in Fordow, they are all completely destroyed. I am very confident those centrifuges are gone. The Israelis destroyed the centrifuge manufacturing production facilities that we know of. Isfahan, which is the conversion facility, key part of the fuel cycle, also appears to have been destroyed.

So, if you add it up, from what we're seeing, massive catastrophic setback for Iran's program. The term of art, obliterated, destroyed, I kind of step out of that. This is an analytical process. I -- it's important for the professionals now in the intelligence community to be able to do their work without political pressure and come out with their assessments. And we'll know soon enough. There's a lot of work going on here from U.S. intelligence agencies, from Mossad and the Israelis, from other partners.

But I thought that briefing was important. We now know that operation that was developed over multiple -- multiple administrations worked exactly as it was designed. So, we didn't -- I didn't know that -- I couldn't have confirmed that 24 hours ago. I now know it was three ventilator shafts. They went down there, and it worked. That's new. And that means probably Fordow is rendered inoperable for the foreseeable future, probably forever.

But the overall assessment, Kate and Sara, it is going to take time. And I'll say you're right, the CNN reporting, I think I was on air when it came out, we said preliminary. I really made the point, this is really early to draw any conclusions.

If you're on the government side, you don't like leaks. Nobody should be leaking, period. But also, the attacks on the press and the coverage of that, I think that is totally unfair because it was very clear that this was early, preliminary, and we're going to learn more as we go. And that -- that's where we are. We learned a lot more today, but over the coming weeks we'll know even more.

BOLDUAN: And how you break it down is so fascinating. Brett, I always appreciate that perspective.

SIDNER: You know your stuff. And we should -- we should also mention that the American people want to hear these details too. And that's why it's important for these press conferences to go forward and that Pete Hegseth basically, well, very much confirmed exactly the intelligence that CNN got on the air just a day ago.

I want to thank you to our panel. Thank you to you, Brett McGurk. Thank you to General Wesley Clark, to Daniel Dale, to Alyssa Farah Griffin, Kim Dozier, and Alayna Treene. Great panel as we watched this incredible moment where we heard very, very, very fine details on exactly how this went down.

All right, Lauren Hill -- Lauren Fox is with us. She is on Capitol Hill.

This is where some of the wrangling is coming. Politics coming right back into the fray because lawmakers are raising concerns ahead of this meeting after they have been told they may not get the kind of intelligence that they may be used to getting. What are you learning?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, exactly, Sara. And, you know, we should just set the scene here on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have been waiting more than five days at this point for this briefing. Many of these Democrats, especially those on the Gang of Eight, have been requesting earlier briefings to understand what happened that led to these strikes on these Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as what the aftermath was. Obviously, it does take time to collect that intelligence. And certainly we saw that sort of highlighted as part of that press conference.

But that is the room and that is the mood that these briefers are going to walk into today when they briefed senators later at 2:00 p.m. There's a lot of frustration on Capitol Hill. And just to give you a sense of some of that, this was Chris Murphy yesterday talking about his expectations for this briefing today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): The president said over the weekend that the sites were obliterated. They were 100 percent not obliterated. What we know is that we really have no sense of how much was damaged. And the early estimates are that we made relatively minor impact, that we probably only set back the program a handful of months. That's not worth the hundreds of millions of dollars that we spent taxpayer money on this strike. That's not worth the risk that we put our troops in, in the region. That's not worth the number of Israelis that were killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:15:02]

FOX: Now, this briefing was supposed to take place on Tuesday because Senator Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were not available on Tuesday because they were at the NATO summit. That, obviously, led to the fact that they wanted to delay it. The question becomes, are lawmakers going to get satisfied with the answers they get today? Obviously, there's a lot that is still being understood about the impact of these strikes. So, it's going to be a really tough line to walk for these briefers given the fact that lawmakers, especially Democrats, are already very, very frustrated with the administration.

SIDNER: All right, Lauren Fox, thank you so much for your reporting there.

We are joined now by "Axios" senior politics reporter Marc Caputo.

Thank you so much for being here. You were the person that was first to report that lawmakers may not

get the amount of intelligence that they might normally get because of this leak. What are you learning on that front?

MARC CAPUTO, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, "AXIOS": Well, shortly after the Defense Intelligence Agency's battle damage assessment was posted on this internal message board, that is a place where the administration shares classified information with Congress called Cap Net (ph), it was then leaked to other media. CNN, obviously, and then "The New York Times."

And in the view of the administration, these two things aren't just coincidental, they're correlated. And they believe that this stuff leaked out. It went to Democrats. And then Democrats went to the media and gave the selected portions of it thereof to try to embarrass the administration, embarrass Donald Trump. And, as a result, they've decided to look at limiting the dissemination of this information to prevent that from happening again.

SIDNER: I am curious. I know that you listened to that press conference, and as our Zach Cohen reported, it really was sort of two separate press conferences. One, you had the defense secretary berating reporters and spent most of his time doing that. And then you had the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know, General Caine, really giving these really intricate details of exactly how this mission went down, and saying that all the targets that needed to be hit were hit, and that the bunker buster bombs, which have not been deployed on the battlefield until now, did exactly what they were supposed to do. What were your takeaways as you -- as you listened to this press conference and how it was done?

CAPUTO: I think it's a good way to describe it, saying that there's sort of two press conferences in one. Understand, there's two wars in one that the administration is sort of prosecuting. One was or is the war a conflict against Iran and its nuclear program, and the other one is against the mainstream media and Hegseth is in part, or at least it shows, that he's rather bitter about the coverage of his nomination, his confirmation process, all the reporting about his drinking. He certainly doesn't like the news media. I think someone had theorized before that he's performing for President Trump. I think that might be true.

But in addition to that, Hegseth just seems very angry, including at his old colleague, Jennifer Griffin, who, from Fox News, asked a pretty basic question at this press conference, and he attacked her for being inaccurate. And then she accurately pointed out that some of her reporting has been the most accurate and the most immediate on what happened at Fordow on Saturday night.

So, it helps to understand --

SIDNER: And to be clear, he -- he did -- he did capitulate. He did capitulate when she said back to him, actually, I was the one that reported this, this and this, and he did capitulate. So, it was an interesting moment. CAPUTO: Yes, well, he didn't quite answer the question of where is the

uranium? And the reality is, this is fog of war. We don't know all the intelligence estimates aren't in. But as they say with war, the first casualty is the truth. And because there's this sort of information war that's going on and a battle with the mainstream media, you're going to see probably more of this out of the defense secretary and not less.

SIDNER: Marc Caputo, thank you. Thank you for your great reporting. Thank you for coming on this morning and walking us through what you're seeing happening as we saw that remarkable press conference.

There is much more on our breaking news ahead.

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[09:23:55]

BOLDUAN: Moments from now, the Supreme Court could hand down more opinions in several high profile -- high profile and high stakes cases having to do with, including birthright citizenship, LGBTQ books in schools. And as the high court nears the end of its term right now, the justices really have just days to issue some of the more consequential decisions of the term.

CNN's Paula Reid is standing by. She'll be bringing us that reporting as it comes in.

And what are you watching for this morning, Paula?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So, there are still ten cases outstanding from the high court. We expect to get these opinions over the next few days, starting with today. And while all of these cases are significant, because, of course, they've reached the Supreme Court, there are three that we're really watching because of their national significance.

Now, the most significant case we're watching for is the one you just referenced related to birthright citizenship. This is focused on President Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship, which is a law that is recognized, that if you were born in this country, you are a citizen of the United States. This is something that President Trump is trying to limit through executive order.

[09:25:00]

But what the case is really focused on is whether a single judge anywhere in this country can block an executive order or an administrative policy for the entire country. These are called nationwide injunctions. They have plagued every modern president. But because of the way President Trump likes to govern through executive action, he has faced the largest number of these injunctions.

So, this has been a pet peeve for him and his Republican allies in Congress. So, we're watching very closely to see what the court says about these nationwide injunctions, and if they weigh in on this larger question about birthright citizenship or just weigh in on whether one judge could block this while it's litigated.

There's also a couple other big cases. One related to whether parents can opt out for religious reasons of certain curriculum or instruction or books related to LGBTQ issues. We're watching this really closely because if the court agrees that parents can opt out for religious reasons, that will be yet another example of the Supreme Court sort of expanding protections for religious objections and religious rights.

Now, another case we're watching comes out of Texas, and has to do with keeping minors from accessing pornography on the internet. And in order to do that, they have age verification requirements for those over 18. You have to -- to provide identifying information. And the question here is whether that is a violation of the First Amendment.

Now, both sides seem to agree that keeping pornography out of the hands of minors, that is important. That is noble. But then there's this larger constitutional question. And it appears that the judge -- the justices may be willing to side with the state of Texas, given the larger objective here. But that's one we really -- we possibly could get today. So, we're watching all of these cases very closely.

BOLDUAN: All right, Paula, thank you so much. Much more to come from Paula and the high court this morning in just a few minutes really.

So, back to some of our breaking news this morning. The Pentagon sharing new details just now about what -- some of what they know happened before and during the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. We've got much more on that, next.

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