Senior White House officials are concerned that reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan may have gained access to audio recordings of Situation Room meetings for their forthcoming book, “Regime Change,” suggesting sensitive Situation Room deliberations were improperly accessed or disclosed.
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According to administration sources, officials have become alarmed by detailed accounts of Situation Room conversations that appear in excerpts released ahead of the book’s June 23 publication.
“We’re afraid some of our most sensitive conversations were being recorded,” an administration source said. “And we have no idea which ones.”
The concerns stem from verbatim dialogue included in excerpts covering discussions related to Iran and the Jeffrey Epstein case. Haberman and Swan reportedly conducted more than 1,000 interviews while researching the book, which focuses on President Donald Trump’s second term in office.
Among the exchanges cited in the excerpts was a remark attributed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scenarios involving regime change in Iran.
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“In other words, it’s bullshit,” Rubio said, according to the published account.
Notably, White House officials have not publicly challenged the accuracy of the quoted dialogue from the high-level meetings, fueling speculation within the administration about how such detailed accounts were obtained.
The Situation Room is among the most secure facilities in the federal government, and independent recording devices are prohibited within the complex. If recordings were made and leaked, officials believe it would represent a significant breach of security protocols.
President Trump is reportedly angered by the detailed descriptions of internal deliberations contained in the book excerpts.
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Haberman and Swan declined to comment on the administration’s concerns.
