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We speak to the journalist behind Signalgate
00:24:13
Jeffrey Goldberg on dealing with Trump, and how the group chat happened
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- [00:00]
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- [01:11]
Sarah Smith
Music radio podcasts hi there AmeriCasters. It's about 10 to 9 in the evening here in Washington, DC. That means it's really late, like 10 to 1 in the morning in the UK. But we're back now because we have got a new take on the biggest story that's happening in America at the moment. This huge scoop of about national security officials sharing sensitive military plans on a group chat on a messaging app. We've done a whole episode about all of the ins and outs of this that we recorded a little earlier today and that's on BBC Sounds. But we're back now because I've just done an interview with the man who is at the center of all of this, Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic, the journalist who was mistakenly added to this group chat and saw all of these messages coming in in real time. Since he published his story, he's been called a loser and a sleazebag by Donald Trump. He's been attacked by most people in the Trump administration. Now he's going to tell us his side of the story about how this all unfolded. Welcome to AmericasT. AmericasT AmericasT from BBC News, you're gambling.
- [02:16]
Jeffrey Goldberg
With the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War Three.
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Anthony Zurcher
President Trump's message is very simple. We are done being taken advantage of.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Mr. President, in the name of our.
- [02:26]
Anthony Zurcher
God, have mercy upon the people who are scared.
- [02:29]
Sarah Smith
Now, are you supportive of these onesies?
- [02:32]
Anthony Zurcher
I'm supportive of vaccines. What is happening like this is not America.
- [02:36]
Jeffrey Goldberg
This is a terrible nightmare.
- [02:38]
Sarah Smith
This is what victory feels like. Yeah, hi, it's Sarah here. I'm in the BBC's Washington bureau and it's Anthony.
- [02:56]
Anthony Zurcher
I'm in Arlington, Virginia.
- [02:57]
Sarah Smith
Reasonable to have gone home at this time of night. Anthony, have you ever been called either a loser or a sleazebag by any US President?
- [03:06]
Anthony Zurcher
Not yet, but hope springs eternal. We'll see. There's plenty of time left.
- [03:10]
Sarah Smith
I mean, those are just a couple of the names that have been slung at Jeffrey Goldberg because since he published his story on Monday that this group chat existed and that war plans were being discussed on Monday on it, he's been really attacked by pretty much everybody in the administration, hasn't he? Because they're just furious about his huge scoop and the fact that he then published again today more of the details about precisely what was said in those chats.
- [03:34]
Anthony Zurcher
And essentially this was a story that landed in Jeffrey Goldberg's lap and he has run with it ever since. And he's been under incredible pressure from this administration and yet he seems to be sticking to his guns and seemed very happy to talk with you about some of the details of it, Sarah.
- [03:51]
Sarah Smith
Yeah, and there's lots to ask him because he has become such a central player in all of this, being attacked by the administration who say, no, look, there weren't any war plans being shared in this chat. There wasn't any classified information. They said he was just sensationalizing the story to big himself up, essentially. And that's why he then made the decision to publish the more precise details of the military plans that they were discussing. And of course, that's just had even more pushback from the administration. So it was a really good opportunity to ask him about how he made some of these decisions and how he found himself right in the middle of this in the first place.
- [04:24]
Anthony Zurcher
Yeah. And by sharing that information, I think it made it clear how serious this was. The timings of military strikes, the type of military hardware used when the bombs were going to fall, and then after, it was all over an after action report, essentially saying what they saw as the successful culmination of their strike and the damage that that these weapons did. All of these things, if they fell into the wrong hands at an inopportune time, could have put American soldiers at risk.
- [04:55]
Sarah Smith
Well, exactly. And so that was what I asked him to start off the conversation. I said, look, there's been such a forceful response from the Trump administration saying that these were not war plans that were being shared, no classified Information was put on the group. I asked him what he made of that.
- [05:08]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, I mean, I guess that's what people who are backed into a corner would say. But clearly if Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, is texting me, telling me that an attack is about to be launched on Yemen and telling me what kind of aircraft are going to be used and what kind of weapons are going to be used and when the bombs are going to fall. Two hours after the email, two hours after the text that's received, that seems sensitive information, sensitive war planning information to me. Look, this is why we put all the information onto our website@theatlantic.com just so people can read it for themselves and make up their own minds. But the administration is, it's interesting. The administration is more interested in calling me bad names, which is fine. They've done that for years. And other reporters as well. Obviously I'm not special. They're more interested in doing that than actually acknowledging that they have a massive national security breach and that they should just go fix it. I mean, that's the point. That's the point about leadership. Leadership. You deal with your mistakes, you try to make things better and you move on. But that's not the playbook here.
- [06:21]
Sarah Smith
The Defense Secretary has said again directly today there were no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources and no classified information. Do you need all of that to describe them properly as war plans or attack plans?
- [06:35]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Of course not. Of course not. I mean, Hexith literally said planes are launching at 12:15 Eastern Time and will be over their target at 1:30 or 1:45. It's in the texts. Obviously. It's in the, it's in the text. They'll be over their targets. Obviously the Houthis understand what their prime targets are. At the very least, that kind of information, if falling into the wrong hands, would give the American adversary you're trying to attack time to escape. At the most, it would give the Houthis and their Iranian allies. Remember, the Houthis have pretty good anti aircraft capabilities. Give them time to figure out a way to start shooting down American airplanes. If I were the Secretary of Defense of the United States, I wouldn't be writing about that stuff in texts. Doesn't seem prudent, you know, it just doesn't seem prudent.
- [07:26]
Sarah Smith
And for all those reasons, you initially decided not to publish the precise details about the attack plan, and then today you did publish them in the magazine. How big a decision was that for you to actually make them public?
- [07:40]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Yeah, well, we spent all day yesterday once Donald Trump said there was nothing to see here, essentially, and once Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, and John Radcliffe, the head of the CIA, all said there is no sensitive information there, no classified information, et cetera. Well, we felt like, well, we disagree. And they're saying that. And we're the ones who have the email, the text, so maybe people should see them. But what we did was we spent the entire day trying to talk to leaders of the different agencies, the CIA, DNI, the DoD, the Department of Defense, the White House, the National Security Council, et cetera, and asking them very specifically, are there details in these texts that you presumably have. I mean, I hope they had them that you think for safety reasons, should not be repeated. And indeed, the CIA came back to us and said, please don't publish the following piece of information. And we agreed because we take this sort of thing seriously and we don't want anybody hurt or compromised. So the CIA did do that, but, you know, they didn't come back with anything substantive. Some of them didn't even answer our, our queries. And at a certain point, the public interest comes into play, and we felt like the people of the United States should read these texts from their leaders themselves and then make the decision if this was a wise thing to do, to do this on signal, do this on a commercial, non government messaging app.
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Sarah Smith
And so White House Press secretary did come to you and say this was intended to be a private and internal deliberation between senior staff and that they would prefer you didn't publish it. But that wasn't enough to.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, compared to the way the Trump administration usually talks, that's kind of like, that's like a. What we would call in America a nothing burger. And of course, they prefer, I mean, all government officials would prefer journalists not to write about their deliberations, but in a democracy, we get to do that because it's in the best interest of the people. So, like, that's, that's. Okay, fine. You don't want us to publish anything. You want to write. You want to. You want us to write press releases for you. I understand that that's not unique to the Trump administration, but it's not our job to write press releases for them.
- [09:55]
Sarah Smith
The personal attacks on you have been pretty vitriolic since you published this, from the President himself down calling you a loser, a sleazebag, deceitful, highly discredited. How do you feel about the way this has been personalized against you? Because you Published this story.
- [10:11]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, if I'm all those things, why did they invite me to the chat? You know, I mean, like, what's going on here? Why'd you even invite me to the chat? Look, like I said, they say all these things. They've been saying these things about me for years. They've said these things about good friends of mine, colleagues, some of the best reporters in the business. This is their move. You know, you never defend, you just attack. So I'm sitting there minding my own business. They invite me into this Signal chat and now they're attacking me as a sleazebag. I don't, I don't even get it. Like maybe, maybe they should spend a little time thinking about why I was invited into the chat in the first place.
- [10:55]
Sarah Smith
Well, why you were invited into the chat in the first place is a fascinating question that we haven't learned that much about. But the national Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, was asked about it and he said he took responsibility and said it was an accident and that maybe your contact details were stored under a different name in his phone or something like that. But he also says he's never met you, never spoken to you, never contacted you. Do you have any idea how your telephone number could have been in his phone and accidentally added to this group chat?
- [11:21]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, I mean, I've met Mike Waltz on several occasions. There's actually a photograph of us together floating around social media right now. In fact, I'm not going to comment on my relationship with Mike Waltz. He can say obviously whatever he wants to say. But I'm not commenting on my relationship or non relationship as a reporter. I'm just not comfortable talking publicly about relationships that I may or may not have with people who are, who are newsmakers. But look, just on a technical level, in order to connect with somebody on Signal, your phone number has to be in their phone. And so the long and short of it is on March 11, I received a message request from Michael Waltz and then I accepted the request, period. I mean, I wish there was a kind of sorry to be so boring about it. I wish there was a Le Carre kind of quality here, you know, but he asked me to talk and so I said yes. And then the next thing I know, I'm in this very strange chat group with the national security leadership of the United States.
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Sarah Smith
And you did, after you had seen the attack plans for the mission in Yemen, choose to leave the group. There are a lot of reporters would have loved to have stayed in there and see what else they were saying, of course.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
And part of me obviously, would love to see what, what else would be happening in there. But there's a lot of different issues here related to law and ethics and all kinds of other issues that I really can't go into. But believe me when I say that I made that decision with good advice from various parties. I made that decision not lightly.
- [13:04]
Sarah Smith
Are you worried about any kind of retribution against you or against your magazine from the Trump administration? They've been very personal in their attacks against you. This is possibly the biggest scandal that has rocked the new administration yet. They will be very angry about this. Are you worried they might attempt to prosecute you or anything?
- [13:21]
Jeffrey Goldberg
I never worry about anything like that. I just go and do my job.
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Sarah Smith
That doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
- [13:28]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, you know, the thing about the future is it hasn't happened yet, so we'll see. I just, I mean, you know, all we can do in this climate is go to work, do our, do our journalism, and, you know, the truth will set us free. Right. I just don't. I don't, I don't care. I don't care about that sort of stuff.
- [13:51]
Sarah Smith
We're all witnessing the public response from the administration to this and their forceful pushback. As a reporter who's right at the heart of this story, are you hearing from people inside the administration as to what the private response is, how much panic there is or is not going on within the White House?
- [14:06]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Yeah, I mean, obviously, and I'll put this in the vernacular, I'm not the first person to report this, but, you know, there's a widespread feeling, and I'll use the words that people are using in other journalistic outlets, that a widespread feeling in the White House that Mike Waltz is an idiot, that's the word that's been used, and that there are a lot of people in the system, in the national security system, who can't believe that he had, I don't know, let's call it, such poor telephone hygiene as to do this. And I mean, obviously, there's two levels of telephone hygiene. One is, should you, as a national security official, be doing this on signal on your phone? And then the second part is, obviously the sort of ridiculous part is like, if you're going to do it, try not to invite national security journalists into the conversation. So there's a lot of resentment directed at him. There's a lot of, and this is very interesting to me, there's a lot of people at lower levels in the government who believe that There's a double standard here. In other words, if you're a, you're like an Air Force captain or you work in the CIA, or you work for the State Department and you mishandled sensitive information the way that they've obviously mishandled sensitive information, you'd be fired, you'd be prosecuted. And there is a lot of buzz around that. It's like, what are the standards here for our leaders? And why can't they just say we made a bad mistake, these are the punishments, these are the fixes where we're moving on. But that, that, that's, that that's particularly interesting to me because I think that a lot of people feel that there's a level of hypocrisy here.
- [15:50]
Sarah Smith
And should Mike Waltz lose his job over this, should he no longer be the National Security advisor?
- [15:54]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Not my, not my call and really not my concern. I would say I want to be careful here because I'm not talking about Mike Waltz in particular. I would say that I don't know if it's entirely healthy for a government or for any organization to fire people for making a bad mistake if the people show genuine capacity to learn and grow and understand how to be better at their jobs. There's nothing like failure, and this is a huge failure on Mike Waltz's part. There's nothing like failure to teach you as long as you're open to learning. That's just like, that's just my personal management view. But on the other hand, some people just need to get fired, obviously. But I'm not going to weigh in on that particular conversation. I know that there are many people and many people on Capitol Hill, in Congress who think that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, should be fired and that Mike Walsh should be fired. But that's. You could see that in all of the news coverage.
- [17:03]
Sarah Smith
Yeah. And there are Democrats calling for a full investigation into this.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Even Republicans now, by the way, even some Republicans, which is noteworthy in this climate.
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Sarah Smith
What would we learn beyond now that you've published the details of all the messages? What would we learn from a deeper investigation?
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Jeffrey Goldberg
We would learn how often non approved apps, messaging apps are used for sensitive conversations. Right. I'm not going to go into, I'm not going into this story, this conversation, thinking this is the only time any of these people have used signal. Right. If you do it once and it's convenient, you tend to just do it. So that would be one thing that you would want to know. The second thing you would want to know is how These groups are put together. Why were there no representatives of the uniform military in this group? I don't think the investigate, quote, unquote, investigation of how I got added to the chat would last very long. Mike Waltz typed something into his phone and this is what happened. But I mean, I suppose, you know, I suppose that has to be, be, quote, unquote, investigated, regardless if people are trying to figure out how this happened.
- [18:06]
Sarah Smith
Well, you've got Elon Musk looking into how this happened. The best technical minds in the country apparently are investigating that.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
I mean, I could save everybody, I really could save everybody a lot of time by, by simply saying that, you know, he sent me a message request and I accepted it. I don't know what else to do. I mean, it's just. That's the funniest part of all. It's like you're really gonna put Elon Musk on a question of how somebody's phone number shows up in a phone. I mean, you know, most 8 year olds can explain it to you.
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Sarah Smith
Jeffrey Goldberg, thank you very much for talking to us today.
- [18:38]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Thank you for having me.
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Anthony Zurcher
So figuring out how this phone number ended up on a phone is something that even an 8 year old could figure out. I tend to believe that. But something an 8 year old couldn't figure out is why exactly the phone number was on there in the first place. Why was Jeffrey Goldberg's contact information on Mike Waltz's phone? And we didn't really get a clear answer from Jeffrey Goldberg about that. He said he wasn't going to talk about relationships he may or may not have with people who are newsmakers. It makes it kind of sound like maybe there's a little more to it than that. And the two of those two men actually do have some sort of relationship.
- [19:15]
Sarah Smith
Yeah. It's not unusual, is it, for reporters who want to be a little bit opaque about exactly how close a relationship they have with sources, people that they've maybe talked to on background before. If you're too open about who your contacts are, then people can sometimes work out where you might have got a story from. So, of course, I think that's why he's being a little obscure about that. It's Mike Waltz who says, look, you know, I wouldn't know this guy if I bumped into him. I wouldn't recognize him in a police lineup sort of trying to say I don't know him without quite ever saying I've never met him. So, yeah, there are some questions around exactly what relationship those guys had, but I think what's pretty clear is that, yeah, Jeffrey Goldberg's number was on Mike Waltz's phone. For whatever reason, that's how he ended up accidentally putting him in the chat. No matter how much the National Security Advisor wants to try and persuade us otherwise, it's pretty clear that's what happened.
- [20:07]
Anthony Zurcher
Right. And I think it underscores how toxic it would be for Mike Waltz if this was a bigger relationship than he's letting on. There's questions, as you pointed out in our previous podcast, about Mike Waltz's loyalty to the America First Trump faithful. And if he had a relationship with essentially establishment national security reporter, then that would perhaps give all the ammunition that Waltz's adversaries within the White House would need to get him pushed overboard. It's funny because it's the hawks, the people who in Congress are the ones who advocate a kind of robust foreign policy and interventionist foreign policy. They're the ones who are most concerned about the security lapses, but they're also the ones who are probably most likely to defend Waltz because he comes from.
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Sarah Smith
A similar policy point of view.
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Anthony Zurcher
Exactly. Exactly.
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Sarah Smith
Why do they hate Jeffrey Goldberg so much, though? Why is he being called such vicious names by the administration? There's clearly some kind of history there.
- [21:05]
Anthony Zurcher
There is a bit of a backstory. And he wrote an article, I believe it was in 2019, about Donald Trump being at a military cemetery in Europe. And he remarked to the people around him that the folks who gave their lives for their country were suckers and losers. And Goldberg stood by that, even though he was sharply criticized by Donald Trump, who was denied saying anything like that. But they view him as being a Trump hater. Actually, Caroline Livett, the White House press secretary, and one of the first things she said about Goldberg was that he was a Trump hater and a sensationalist reporter. So there's that background. She also pointed out that he has supported the Iraq war back in the early 2000s, which anyone who moves in Trump circles now views that as an egregious mistake, even though it all happened under a Republican president. And also they see him as part of the foreign policy intelligence community, that that is part of the swamp that Donald Trump is trying to take out.
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Sarah Smith
Of this town, trying to drain the swamp. Of course, as the famous chant goes now, of course, it's probably not surprising that Democrats are calling for an investigation into all of this and saying that Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth should resign for their part in this group chat. But today, some Republicans started putting the name to that as well. Does that make it more serious for the administration?
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Anthony Zurcher
I think it definitely makes it something that might have more legs. I haven't seen any Republicans on the record explicitly calling for Hegseth or waltz to resign, but several in the US Senate, several key positions in the US Senate have been open to conducting some sort of a hearing investigating more. Now Republicans running this. It probably means that the subpoenas aren't going to be quite as sharply worded, that they're not going to dig quite as deep as they might. But any digging and any opportunity for Democrats on one of these investigatory committees to have more time at the microphone to criticize the White House is not going to be welcome. I don't think we're going to see something in the House of Representatives. We've already heard from speaker of the House Mike Johnson that kind of downplaying the seriousness of this. So the true believers who are legion in the House of Representatives, the Trump supporters, I don't think we're going to see them push too hard for any kind of investigation.
- [23:25]
Sarah Smith
There was one line in Jeffrey Goldberg's interview, Anthony, that really made me think of you, and I struggled not to chuckle.
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Anthony Zurcher
I bet he said nothing.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Burger.
- [23:34]
Anthony Zurcher
I heard that and I started to laugh out loud. He must be a fan of the podcast, right?
- [23:39]
Sarah Smith
He's clearly an ameracaster, otherwise why would he be saying it?
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Anthony Zurcher
Did you feel compelled to mention an everything salad and see if he took the debate?
- [23:48]
Sarah Smith
I so nearly did, but I wasn't sure it was entirely appropriate in the middle of this very serious national security interview. I kind of wish I had, though.
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Anthony Zurcher
Me too.
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Sarah Smith
And that's it for this episode. I mean, we'll probably be talking about this in future ones, I would imagine. But. But for now, Anthony, we should probably go and get to bed soon.
- [24:09]
Anthony Zurcher
Why not? Well, I'll say goodnight to Jeffrey Goldberg if he's listening, and to all of our loyal AmericasT listeners and promise that we will be back very soon. See you later.
- [24:19]
Sarah Smith
Bye bye.
- [24:21]
Anthony Zurcher
Bye.
- [24:24]
Sarah Smith
AmeriCast AmeriCast from BBC News. Well done for getting all the way to the end of another AMERICAST episode that makes you officially an americaster. It's not easy navigating your way through the news in America, particularly at the moment, but you did it and we're delighted to have you with us. So if you do have a comment or a question about any of the stories we've talked about or anything you'd like us to talk about, do please get in touch. You can email us americastbc.co.uk, you can WhatsApp us a message on 033-01-2390, and we do answer your questions every single week on the podcast. You can always join the discussion in our online community on Discord. The link is in our podcast description in your app, and we'll be back with another episode very soon. Till then, see you later. Bye bye.