Top officials at the Pentagon office that played a key role in designing the bombs used in the strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities more than two weeks ago cannot say whether the weapons were successful in reaching the deeply buried bunkers.

At a press briefing days after the strike, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that "for more than 15 years" a pair of officers at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency "lived and breathed this single target -- Fordo -- a critical element of Iran's covert nuclear weapons program" and hailed the agency as "the world's leading expert on deeply buried underground targets."

However, in a press briefing Thursday, a senior defense official at the agency told reporters that they didn't know whether the bombs they designed specifically for this strike reached the depths for which they were engineered. They also defined the effects of the strike in incredibly narrow terms that boiled down to the bombs falling where they were intended.

Read Next: Tim Kennedy, Green Beret and Army Hype Man, Under Investigation for Lying About Combat Valor^[1]

The officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, argued that the historic U.S. strikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities^[2] were successful and their 30,000-pound bombs, 14 of which were dropped on two sites, accomplished their goals.

Top political appointees in the Trump administration, along with President Donald Trump himself^[3], have asserted that the strike left Iran's nuclear program "obliterated." However, since then, reporting has indicated that that may not have been the case.

Reports emerged days after the strike that initial assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the airstrikes on Iran had likely not eliminated its nuclear program and only set it back months.

Days later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent a large portion of a press conference^[4] berating the media over what he felt was bad coverage of the report and the strikes as a whole -- even as lawmakers, following a classified briefing, told reporters that it was too early to know the damage.

When a reporter pushed the DTRA officials Thursday on their claims of success, the senior defense official deferred to Caine's remarks and said that "we achieved the objective that we had set. ... They achieved the effects intended."

"That's the success I was claiming."

When asked whether those effects included the destruction of the facilities, the senior defense official said that the agency was still "awaiting full battle damage assessment."

Under further questioning, the senior official said that the achieved effects that they were referring to were simply that "we were able to strike the facilities as planned and strike where intended."

While such fine parsing of language would be typical for officials of any highly specialized and technical office, it comes at a time when both the White House and Pentagon leaders, eager to convince the American public of the resounding success of the Iranian strikes, have spoken in sweeping and dramatic terms.

Last Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters^[5] the bombing led to "the total obliteration of Iran's nuclear ambitions."

Yet later in the same briefing, Parnell also said that the nuclear program was degraded -- not obliterated -- "by one to two years I think. ... We're thinking probably closer to two years."

Furthermore, in the weeks after the strike, experts were quick to note that the type of argument the Pentagon was employing -- that the mission was successful because it matched the models and plans -- was flawed.

"A strike can go 'precisely as planned' and still fail, if the model of the facility is wrong," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said on social media two weeks ago^[6].

Meanwhile, on Thursday, The New York Times, citing an Israeli official, reported^[7] that at least some of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium -- a key component of a nuclear weapon -- survived the U.S. and Israeli attacks last month.

Related: Pentagon Presses Iran Strike Claims as Briefed Senators Point to Unknown Effects^[8]

An Air Force^[1] colonel retaliated against an Army^[2] major for speaking out to Congress and a Department of Defense watchdog about the contamination fallout from the 2021 Red Hill fuel leak that tainted drinking water in Hawaii, a new report details.

The 25-page report said that investigators substantiated an allegation that an Air Force colonel had retaliated against Army Maj. Amanda Feindt after she had meetings with members of Congress about the Red Hill contamination and pressured her not to continue communication.

The colonel described his dissatisfaction with Feindt during a February 2022 conversation, she said. At that point, some water pipes had been flushed in on-base housing, but Feindt continued living in a hotel because many homes were still not deemed safe to live in. Feindt filed a complaint to DoD watchdogs days later.

Read Next: Army Dramatically Expands Combat Patch Eligibility^[3]

"We found that the colonel's rank and position of authority coupled with the colonel's display of a dismissive attitude and demeanor toward the complainant's concerns contributed to the likelihood that the colonel's conduct would restrict a reasonable service member from continuing to lawful communicate with a member of Congress or an inspector general," a summary of the report read.

The report was dated June 10 but was only recently shared with Feindt.

Roughly 93,000 residents on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam^[4] in Hawaii were exposed to jet fuel after a pipe burst at Red Hill's fuel tank farm around Thanksgiving 2021 and sent thousands of gallons of contaminants into a nearby well used for drinking water at the installation.

Feindt told Military.com in an interview that she felt vindicated, as the report said that her claims of retaliation were substantiated "by a preponderance of the evidence" and determined her story was "plausible and credible." While she's satisfied with the outcome, she's also frustrated that the Air Force colonel in question is now retired, she said.

"It's been a really heavy, hard, long road, and it's been a really lonely one," Feindt told Military.com.

Correspondence reviewed by Military.com identified the colonel as now-retired Col. Kenneth McAdams with U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific.

McAdams did not respond to multiple phone calls to numbers listed for him in public records or an email also identified as belonging to him by publication time. He also did not speak to investigators for the probe into his comments, the report detailed. A spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command did not return a request for comment by publication time either.

Weeks after the spill, and after she evacuated her family as they were experiencing medical symptoms, Feindt began contacting members and staffers on Capitol Hill to raise awareness of the ongoing issue.

In February, while on leave, she began meeting with multiple members of Congress. When she returned five days early from leave, she wasn't allowed to sign back in to work from leave and was told "[he] wasn't going to take me off leave." During their meeting, she said the impression she got was that she was being retaliated against for speaking out.

"During the meeting, the colonel told the complainant that they had 'brought it on [themselves]' by talking to Congress, was acting like a 'self-professed superhero,' and should just drop their kids off at day care and return to work," the summary detailed.

While the report "found no evidence" that the colonel's comments stopped Feindt from contacting a member of Congress, it still was likely a violation of Title 10 Section 1034 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits "retaliatory personnel actions" for protected whistleblowing, investigators concluded.

Notably, the inspector general report made "no recommendations" of remedial action for Feindt, but said that the secretary of the Air Force should consider action against the colonel.

Feindt's husband and two children were part of a successful lawsuit^[5] that blamed a number of health problems experienced by local residents on the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Facility spill. Two other similar legal cases are still pending in Hawaiian federal court, according to Just Well Law, the firm that represented Feindt's family.

"My will to fight wasn't ever about me," Feindt told Military.com. "It really wasn't even about my own family; it was about 93,000 people who were poisoned by an American military asset on American soil, and then they were treated like collateral damage, betrayed and left behind."

Related: Military Families Win in Case over Fuel-Tainted Water from Red Hill Spill in Hawaii^[6]