00:00CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates, it also goes on to say,
00:04new intelligence from historically reliable and accurate sources and methods.
00:09Now, you can imagine, you can imagine the CIA director is going to be very careful about how he articulates things of that sensitivity.
00:17Classified, secret, top secret, compartmentalized.
00:20He's going to know things that you're not going to know, that the press isn't going to know.
00:23And he's reflecting that the sources he's seeing are highly credible.
00:28They've given credible intelligence.
00:31They or those processes have given credible intelligence in the past.
00:35And that's what he's basing it on.
00:36Don't you think we need to see that?
00:38Do you have a top secret clearance, sir?
00:40Eventually, the American public wants to see it.
00:43Yes.
00:45I wanted to ask briefly just...
00:47No, not you. Checkered shirt.
00:49Oh, so Mike Glenn with the Washington Times.
00:51Yes, sir.
00:51Thank you, sir.
00:53Anybody who's ever read a Battalion S2 report after a fight knows that it's usually,
00:57the initial report is usually wrong, sometimes grossly so.
01:01Has this, what happened in a sense, caused you all to sort of rethink the intelligence process or the dissemination?
01:11Or do you think it's just, I mean, if the process itself doesn't require any more adjustment?
01:16Well, I can tell you what the chairman told me in the Situation Room and reminded us all,
01:21which is alongside what you just said, sir, is that the first reports are almost always wrong.
01:26They're almost always incomplete, right?
01:28Anything, whether it's a squad-level operation or a strategic-level operation,
01:34the initial reflections you get are coming at you at a high rate of speed from a lot of different sources.
01:39So your job is to step back and assess them.
01:42And that's why we're urging caution about putting it, premising entire stories on biased leaks
01:50to biased publications trying to make something look bad.
01:53How about we take a beat, recognize first the success of our warriors, hold them up, tell their stories,
01:59celebrate that, wave an American flag, be proud of what we accomplished.
02:03And in the meantime, I can assure you, the chairman and his staff, the intelligence community,
02:08our staff and others are doing all the assessments necessary to make sure that mission was indeed successful.
02:13Yes, right there.
02:14Sir, thank you, Mr. Secretary.
02:17Iran has recognized that their nuclear program was indeed severely damaged,
02:22but they also said that the U.S. strikes only strengthened their ability and their determination
02:27to complete their nuclear program.
02:30How do you respond to that, sir?
02:31Is that a provocation from Iran?
02:33Well, I would say Iran's going to have to say a lot of things right now
02:37in order to bolster their image, especially internally.
02:41You know, in the media, there's a lot of things they'll say for domestic consumption.
02:46But we're watching very closely what they do.
02:49Again, that's the intel community.
02:50Our job as the chairman, I mean, the chairman laid it out so beautifully.
02:53Our job is to be prepared.
02:55And how proud are you?
02:56How proud am I?
02:57I didn't know the full story of those men and women 15 years ago
03:01who've been pointing at that target.
03:02That makes me proud to be an American.
03:03That's an awesome story.
03:04I hope we can tell more aspects of that in an unclassified way in the future.
03:09That's a great thing to know.
03:11Our job is to be prepared when the commander-in-chief calls based on those assessments.
03:15So, of course, our IC, the Intelligence Committee, will keep watching what Iran does
03:20and pay attention to that.
03:21But the president has created the contours, the opportunity for a deal, for peace,
03:27in something that the world said was intractable, that wasn't possible.
03:29And we got that peace, that ceasefire, that option, because of strength,
03:35because of his willingness to use American military might that no one else on the planet
03:39can do with the kind of planners and operators that the chairman just laid out.
03:58Thank you very much.
Comments