Following the highly anticipated Pentagon press conference from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force General Dan Caine, where the former called out the lies of the liberal media, on Thursday, CNN News Central hosts Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner rushed to falsely claim that Hegseth had “confirmed” their reporting about the untrue battle damage assessment illegally leaked to CNN and other outlets.
Both hosts insisted that the initial reporting on the false assessment by national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand admitted that it was “low confidence” and only “preliminary.” But a NewsBusters investigation found that not to be true at all.
Immediately following the Q&A portion of the press conference, Bolduan sprinted to deride Hegseth as “emotional” and suggest that what he said wasn’t reported was indeed covered by CNN:
But at the same time, we do need to make clear that despite the emotional speech and outrage from the Defense Secretary, what he said about the DIA assessment is what CNN reported on. His issue, that he took about it being preliminary, about it being low confidence. CNN reported on all of on all of this.
While Bolduan was reading the most up-to-date version of the report (remember that for later) where it said the report was “low confidence” and “preliminary,” Sidner chimed in to proclaim: “It’s in there … It is literally what he said we did not report.”
WATCH CNN LIE
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 26, 2025
CNN "journalists" parrot each other as they falsely claim Natasha Bertrand's initial reporting the Iran strike leak included the facts that it was a "low confidence" and "preliminary" report.
Kate Bolduan proclaims: "...about it being low confidence. CNN reported on… pic.twitter.com/aKDMF4CXs1
But that’s not true.
Via the Wayback Machine, NewsBusters discovered CNN’s initial Tuesday posting of Bertrand’s controversial report. Nowhere in it does Bertrand use the words “low confidence” or “preliminary.” In fact, the only time the word “low” was even used was when she quoted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt describing the leaker as “an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.”
Expanding “low” to other forms of the word, Bertrand’s other use was to suggest the strikes weren’t effective at all:
Notably, the US struck Isfahan with Tomahawk missiles launched from a submarine instead of a bunker-buster bomb. That is because there was an understanding that the bomb would likely not successfully penetrate Isfahan’s lower levels, which are buried even deeper than Fordow, one of the sources said.
Using the Wayback Machine again, NewsBusters found that the first time those words were used was following a Wednesday afternoon update the next day. But, she did not quote those words as having come from her source or the report itself. Instead, she was quoting Hegseth’s comments about it:
Hegseth, who is also at the NATO summit, said Wednesday the assessment was “a top secret report; it was preliminary; it was low confidence;” adding that there were political motives behind leaking it and that an FBI investigation was underway to identify the leaker.
With the help of SnapStream, NewsBusters went back to examine Bertrand’s initial on-air reporting about her story from Tuesday afternoon’s CNN News Central (the transcript for which is below). Again, nowhere did she use the words “low-confidence” or “preliminary.”
Here's Bertrand's initial appearance on CNN to push her story.
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 26, 2025
Again, nowhere does she use the words "low confidence" or "preliminary."
In fact, she implies just the opposite, proclaiming with confidence:
"And so it appears that while these bombs did in fact inflict significant… pic.twitter.com/7bUIYxdMAt
Instead, she spoke with great confidence that what was leaked to her was the truth:
And so it appears that while these bombs did in fact inflict significant damage on the aboveground structures at these nuclear facilities, the most sensitive and core parts of the nuclear program, which include the centrifuges, which include the highly enriched uranium, those do not appear to have been severely impacted, if impacted at all, with one of our sources who has seen the assessment describing all of those core components as largely intact.
She also quoted Hegseth, but nothing about the assessment being “low confidence” or “preliminary.”
It’s worth noting that Bertrand had a long history of pushing fake news. She was one of the “journalists” who claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian misinformation.” One of the contributors to her controversial report on the strike assessment was Katie Bo Lillis, who was one of the reporters responsible for CNN being found liable for malicious defamation of Navy veteran Zachary Young earlier this year.
The transcripts are below. Click "expand" to read:
CNN News Central
June 24, 2025
3:24:22 p.m. Eastern(…)
BORIS SANCHEZ: SANCHEZ: Well, let's get back to CNN national security correspondent, Natasha Bertrand, for the exclusive reporting. Natasha, what more are you learning?
NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris, so this is an early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the Pentagon's intelligence arm. And we do want to emphasize that the intelligence, of course, is ongoing. The collection is ongoing and the assessments as a result of that intelligence could change. But as of right now, the DIA has produced this intelligence assessment that we are told was based on the battle damage assessment that U.S. Central Command has done following those massive bombings and strikes that the U.S. carried out inside Iran last weekend.
And what we are told is that based on the assessments of the damage that these bombs implemented on these nuclear sites, that as of right now, it does not appear that they ended or obliterated Iran's nuclear program. Instead, they only set it back by months, according to people who were briefed on the assessment.
Now, these findings are obviously at odds with President Donald Trump's repeated assertions that the strikes, quote, ‘completely and totally obliterated Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities,’ something that has been echoed as well by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But we did ask the White House for comments on this, and they appeared to acknowledge the existence of the assessment, but they said that they disagreed with it.
According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, she said, quote, "This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong. She said it was classified as top secret, but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration."
Now, it's worth noting that there has been some disagreement within the intelligence community and the defense community about just what kind of impact these massive bunker-busting 30,000-pound bombs would actually have on Iranian nuclear facilities, because they have never been used in combat before. They have been tested extensively, but when it comes to actually dropping them on Iranian nuclear facilities, many of which are very deeply buried underground, the impact of those bombs has been unclear.
And so, it appears that while these bombs did, in fact, inflict significant damage on the above-ground structures at these nuclear facilities, the most sensitive and core parts of the nuclear program, which include the centrifuges, which include the highly enriched uranium, those do not appear to have been severely impacted, if impacted at all, with one of our sources who has seen the assessment describing all of those core components as largely intact.
And so, this is obviously going to raise new questions about, you know, why President Trump and the administration have been saying repeatedly that Iran's nuclear program has essentially been ended, that it has been completely obliterated.
But we should also note that Secretary of Defense Hegseth did give us a statement as well, and he said that, “Based on everything we have seen, and I've seen it all, our bombing campaign obliterated Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons. Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly. The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran, so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”
Now, it is worth emphasizing again that while the damage, we are told, according to this DIA assessment, was largely limited to the above ground structures, those above ground structures are not insignificant. They include site's power infrastructure, they include some of those facilities that are used to actually turn uranium into metal for bomb making.
But again, this very early assessment suggests that the military strikes that were carried out on Saturday may not have gone as far as President Trump has suggested they have. Boris, Brianna.
SANCHEZ: Natasha, please stand by.
(…)
CNN News Central
June 26, 2025
8:46:33 a.m. Eastern(…)
KATE BOLDUAN: But at the same time, we do need to make clear that despite the emotional speech and outrage from the Defense Secretary, what he said about the DIA assessment is what CNN reported on. His issue, that he took about it being preliminary, about it being low confidence. CNN reported on all of on all of this.
I was looking back just to make sure that we had it all throughout the reporting process, CNN had reported that it is preliminary and of course, can be updated, including these two parts. “It is still early,” we reported in our initial report, “for the U.S. to have a comprehensive picture of the impact of the strikes. None of the sources described how the DIA assessment compares to the views of other agencies in the intelligence community. The U.S. is continuing to pick up intelligence, including from within Iran, as they assess the damage.”
Also in CNN reporting where he, the Secretary, took real issue and seemed very upset about it not being stated that this was – there was low confidence stated in this assessment.
SARA SIDNER: It’s in there.
BOLDUAN: It's also in CNN reporting, including this, “the final U.S. military battle damage assessment by the DIA could take days or even weeks to complete. Multiple sources familiar with the Pentagon's process told CNN. The initial DIA analysis was produced just 24 hours after the attack, according to one of the sources, because it was only a preliminary analysis, its judgments were ‘low-confidence,’ the sources said. It was not coordinated with the wider intelligence community, according to a U.S. Official, and the document itself acknowledged that it could take weeks to produce a finalized assessment.”
So just to put so -
SIDNER: It is literally what he said we did not report.
BOLDUAN: It is, a preliminary report. It is a preliminary report. The reporting was done. And now to a lot of the questions that still remain honest, questions that everyone in that room should be asked, that he had been berating the honest questions about any U.S. military operation. Those do continue.
SIDNER: And we should also point out that on Wednesday, we quoted Hegseth himself saying that this was a preliminary low confidence report. So the reporting has been out there.
(…)