Several agencies were ready to release a joint intelligence statement last week to alert state and local authorities to a heightened threat due to the president’s strikes on Iran—until the White House stepped in.
A senior Homeland Security official told the Daily Mail that the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center were preparing to put out a joint statement on Friday detailing “elevated threats” from the Iranian government amid President Donald Trump’s unauthorized attacks on the Middle East.
The five-page bulletin, titled “A Public Safety Awareness Report: Elevated threat in the United States during US-Iran conflict,” warned that “radicalized individuals with a variety of ideological backgrounds also may see this conflict or other geopolitical events as a justification for violence.”
It provided details on how Iranian proxies could carry out attacks throughout the U.S.
Such notices are typically issued to law enforcement without input from the White House to avoid politicizing intelligence communications, but the Mail reported that DHS gave the Trump administration a heads-up hours before the bulletin was set to go out.
A Homeland Security spokesperson told the Daily Beast on Saturday that “it is normal procedure for DHS to share intelligence bulletins with the White House for review before they are sent out. This is done so we can ensure all information has been vetted and reviewed by the correct intelligence agencies.”
Top Trump officials ordered to place the notice on “hold,” according to the Mail. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson did not deny the move.
“The White House is coordinating closely with all government agencies to ensure information being disseminated is accurate, up to date, and has been properly vetted — even if that means taking additional time to review to ensure nothing is done in a vacuum," she said in a statement to the Daily Beast on Saturday.
The DHS source who spoke to the Mail said the White House “verbalized down to DHS that any unclassified ‘for official use only’ information going forward concerning Iran has to be reviewed by the White House before any dissemination.”
“White House is now inserting themselves,” the source continued. “This can have a chilling effect on keeping state and local law enforcement informed about ongoing terrorist threats to the homeland posed by Iran. They don’t want anything getting out that says what they’re doing in Iran is raising the threat level at home.”
The Mail reported that the DHS move to inform the White House about the notice was done against the wishes of FBI leadership. The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the National Counterterrorism Center, for comment on this story.
The 79-year-old American president’s war on Iran has so far claimed the lives of six service members, as well as about 150 students and staff at an Iranian girls’ school.
The overall death toll has topped 1,000, but Trump appears unsatisfied, writing in a Truth Social screed early Saturday morning that more destruction is to come.
“Iran is no longer the ‘Bully of the Middle East,’ they are, instead, ‘THE LOSER OF THE MIDDLE EAST,’ and will be for many decades until they surrender or, more likely, completely collapse!” he wrote.
“Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time,” he continued.
