The White House is urging ABC News to retract a report that raised alarms about a potential Iranian drone attack on California. This report stemmed from an FBI alert that circulated among members of a Joint Terrorism Task Force last month. According to ABC News, Iran allegedly planned to launch unmanned aerial vehicles from an unknown vessel off the U.S. coast, specifically targeting California, should the U.S. conduct military strikes against Iran. This story quickly sparked a flurry of alarming headlines, suggesting that California was under an imminent threat, despite a lack of immediate commentary from either the White House or the FBI at the time.

In response to the growing concern, the administration chose to break its silence. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized ABC News, demanding a retraction of the report. She asserted that the story was misleading and omitted crucial information, which led to unnecessary fear among the American public. Leavitt took to social media, arguing that ABC News based its report on a single, unverified email sent to local law enforcement in California. “This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people,” Leavitt declared. She emphasized that the intelligence cited in the report was marked as “unverified,” a detail she claims was deliberately left out.

The controversy centers around the omission of the term “unverified” from the FBI bulletin quoted by ABC News. According to the bulletin, the threat was based on information that was far from confirmed. The bulletin read, “We recently acquired unverified information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland.” FBI Spokesman Ben Williamson highlighted this omission, pointing out the critical detail that was excluded from the report. “You will notice the word left out —‘Unverified’,” Williamson commented in response to the narrative presented by ABC News.

The original notice also says in bright red letters that the content of the FBI bulletin is ‘raw’ information that is subject to revision and that the revelations are not meant for the public or the press. California officials were quick to downplay the urgency of the report on Wednesday. ‘It’s all-around intelligence collecting, and it’s all about a posture of preparedness for the worst-case scenario,’ Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom told reporters on Wednesday. ‘Again, it’s not a surprise, and it’s sort of a large part of the larger spectrum of considerations that we have as it relates to doing what we can to support our federal partners and local partners at the state level, in terms of what could happen next,’ the governor said.

The alert surfaced as the Trump administration continued its sustained offensive against Iran. This move follows a pattern of escalation in the Middle East, where the regime in Tehran has used drone warfare as a primary tool for retaliation. The Iranian-made Shahed-136 has been one of the most capable and battle-tested one-way kamikaze drones. It has been used by Iran to attack Israel and the Gulf nations, and by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Shaheds cost roughly $20,000 – $50,000, depending on the variant, making them cheap to produce when compared to the multi-million-dollar interceptor missiles the US uses to shoot the Iranian drones down.