General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was supposed to stop the US president. During an interview on the Judging Freedom podcast, a former CIA officer said an emergency briefing at the White House turned into “quite a fight.”
Johnson reported that Caine used his position to prevent the order to use nuclear weapons. — Caine stood up and said, “No.” He exercised his privilege as a military commander, Johnson said on the podcast.
According to media reports, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other high-ranking officials also attended the April 18 meeting.
Doubts about the version of the former head of the CIA
There are discrepancies in the accounts of this event. On the one hand, according to Johnson, General Caine was to firmly oppose the president, but the official chain of command does not provide for the possibility of a military officer blocking the order of the head of state. According to experts, such a situation could lead to a serious constitutional crisis.
Additionally, in February, the American president suggested on the Internet that General Caine considered the military intervention in Iran to be an “easy victory.” Meanwhile, according to the Washington Post, this was not the general's actual recommendation at that time. Differences in accounts fuel speculation about the actual course of events.
The former CIA analyst's reports have not been confirmed by any official source. A White House spokesman told Newsweek that Johnson's story is false.
