Ex-CIA Director Accused Trump of ‘Deliberate’ Cover-Up

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta is accusing the Trump administration of hiding the true toll of its war with Iran, blasting the Pentagon’s secrecy as “shameful” while lawmakers demand answers about dead and wounded U.S. troops.

Panetta, who also served as defense secretary under President Barack Obama and oversaw the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, said the Trump administration appears to be deliberately withholding critical information from the public about casualties, injuries, and damage to American military assets.

“There’s a deliberate effort here to basically withhold information from the American people, and I think it represents in many ways a shameful approach to sharing the responsibility that we all have when it comes to fighting a war,” Panetta told The Guardian.

The criticism comes as the administration faces mounting scrutiny over how much it is telling Americans about the widening conflict with Iran. While officials have acknowledged that 18 U.S. service members have been killed, the Pentagon has released far less detail about the number of troops injured, the severity of those injuries, or the damage Iran has inflicted on U.S. bases and equipment overseas.

According to the report, roughly 430 U.S. troops have been injured since President Donald Trump first launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. The Pentagon said this week that 100 service members have been injured since July 7, though officials insisted that 96 percent of them have already returned to duty.

For critics, that explanation has done little to calm concerns that the administration is trying to control the narrative while keeping the public in the dark about the real human and financial cost of the war.

Lawmakers have pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the White House for more transparency, demanding details not only about casualties but also about the price tag of the campaign and the extent of damage suffered by American facilities in the region.

Hegseth, however, has appeared reluctant to fully disclose the cost of the conflict, even when pushed by Congress. His handling of the war has also drawn criticism from those who say the Pentagon is becoming increasingly hostile toward independent scrutiny.

The defense secretary has fired senior Pentagon staffers who reportedly undercut his sweeping claims about the war, while the department has feuded openly with mainstream media outlets. In some cases, reporters have allegedly had credentials stripped and been replaced by more favorable outlets.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this Pentagon has been more hostile to the news media than any other Pentagon in recent memory,” Clayton Weimers, the Washington director for Reporters Without Borders, told The Guardian.

The Department of Defense and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Panetta’s rebuke adds to a growing chorus of alarm from former officials, lawmakers, and press freedom advocates who say the administration is treating information about the Iran war less like a public responsibility and more like a political liability.

For Democrats and other critics of Trump’s foreign policy, the issue is not just whether the war is succeeding. It is whether Americans are being told the truth about what it is costing them.