Joe Scarborough Warns Media Should Be Wary of ‘Being Played’ on Iran Leak
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough warned media outlets to be wary of “being played by people inside the intel community” when pushing the leaked report downplaying the impact of U.S. airstrikes on Iran nuclear enrichment facilities.
A classified early assessment leaked Tuesday to CNN and The New York Times suggested Operation Midnight Hammer only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a matter of months.
According to a report based on briefings from three individuals familiar with the early analysis, the U.S. bunker buster strikes reportedly failed to destroy Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and left most of its centrifuges “intact.” A senior source cited by CNN said the operation may have set back Iran’s nuclear program by “maybe a few months, tops.”
Co-host Jonathan Lemire queried whether the Trump administration’s reaction to the story was a ploy to “intimidate” the intelligence community “to cook the books,” and present a “more rosy assessment.”
Scarborough, however, recalled a New York Times front page story from during the 2020 presidential election campaign, based on a similar “low-confidence” leak, claiming that Russia had set bounties on U.S. service personnel in Afghanistan.
Urging journalists to take a “deep breath,” the host said:
We also need to take a deep breath here ourselves. And I completely agree with what David [Ignatius] said and what everybody else has said – this is my [impression of] Harold Harold Ford at his best.
I agree with everybody here on the screen that said, we also have to be cautious about being played by people inside the intel community who want to get their message out. I’m not saying that’s happening here, but I remember in the last Trump term, the New York Times runs a story on the front page, somebody from the intel community said Vladimir Putin was paying for hits against U.S troops in Afghanistan. Everybody ran with it.
About six months later, said, ‘Well, actually, they just had a low degree of confidence in that that happened.’
That’s happened an awful lot, happened a lot in Iraq. It happened a lot in Afghanistan. So again, that’s why waiting to see what happens, actually, and not not drawing too many conclusions make sense. And that, of course, not only is the best practice for the White House and for the president, that’s the best practice for the media as well, just because they got a couple of leaks from the DIA.
Watch above via MSNBC.
