Trump's White House tried to meddle in Pentagon reporting on US military injuries after Iranian missile attack, former official says
Ryan Pickrell | Publié le
- Trump's White House tried to get the Pentagon to change how it reported casualties after the Iranian missile attack, a former official said.
- Alyssa Farah said on the "One Decision" podcast that there were concerns about bad press from Pentagon updates.
- Trump drew criticism for publicly downplaying the injuries suffered by 110 US service members.
- See more stories on Insider's business page .
The Trump White House asked the Pentagon to change the way it reported casualties after the Iranian missile attack that injured numerous American service members over concerns about getting bad press, a former Trump administration official said.
In January 2020, just a few days into the new year, the US military killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike, a move that Alyssa Farah, then the Pentagon press secretary, called "extreme" in a podcast interview that aired Thursday.
Farah told Michelle Kosinski, host of the podcast "One Decision," that in that moment it was "hard not to think about the gravity of what could unfold," saying "there was so much that could go wrong." There was a "lingering feeling" that the US and Iran might be "on the cusp of war," she said.
She said there was a degree of relief in the aftermath of the successful strike, which killed the leader that US officials said was behind arming and planning attacks on Americans via Iran-linked proxy forces.
Farah said that senior leaders, from the secretary of defense to the CIA director to the president, recognized that there were going to be immediate repercussions but accepted that in hopes that such a "decisive and bold" move would restore deterrence.
"Candidly, it was a gamble," she said.
On January 8, 2020, about a week after Soleimani's death, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a ballistic missile attack on positions in Iraq where US and coalition troops were stationed.
"That was a scary moment for everyone in [the Department of Defense]," Farah said, explaining that there was a fear it could be a massacre. "Thank God it wasn't," she said. While there were no deaths, there were injuries , and that's where the administration ran into trouble.
The thing that "we certainly got wrong on this" was President Donald Trump's "initial address," she said. "He gave an address and said there had been no casualties, and that was true at the time we gave those facts to the president."
The problem, Farah said, was that "there was not enough wait given to potential injuries that can develop over time."
"There was an effort from the White House to want to say, this was not successful - the Iranians were not successful in harming our targets in response. And I think that went too far," she said. "And I think that it ended up glossing over what ended up being very significant injuries on US troops after the fact."
In the days and weeks that followed the attack and Trump's address, news trickled out of the Pentagon revealing that more and more US service members were being diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries, of varying severity .
Trump repeatedly downplayed the injuries in public, characterizing them as "headaches" and not very serious. Behind the scenes, the Pentagon then began facing pressure to change the way the department reported on the injuries that a total of 110 US military personnel suffered in the attack, Farah told Kosinski .
"We did get pushback from the White House of, 'Can you guys report this differently?'" she said. "The White House would prefer if we did not give regular updates on it. It was this drip, drip of quote unquote bad news."
Farah said that on the White House side, "there seemed to be a lack of understanding why you have an obligation to report things, especially in theater when it comes to US service members."
Describing calls that came from across the Potomac, she characterized the thinking as, "This is another bad headline. Why do we keep getting bad news out of DoD? Can you get this under control?"
Farah said that the Pentagon did not give into that pressure though, explaining on the podcast that her view is that "transparency is always going to be your best friend."
Farah served in various roles during the Trump administration. She resigned in early December after Trump's election loss over concerns about election disinformation and where that might lead.
Via PakApNews