← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:02]
Unknown Speaker
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- [00:30]
Tim
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Bulwark. I'm Tim and I'm here with the Vice Chairman of the U.S. senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. He was the Democratic point man yesterday on the hearing with Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe and Cash Patel that ended up focusing a lot on the signal text chain heard round to the world. How you doing, Sender?
- [00:52]
Senator Mark Warner
Well, Tim, it's been a wild 24 hours. And again, just at the outset, I thought these guys couldn't shock me anymore. But this last incident, it's like, oh, my gosh, if an intel got. My head's exploding.
- [01:05]
Tim
Well, what shocked you the most from the hearings yesterday? And obviously we've learned a lot since then. The actual texts have been released by the Atlantic when you guys were questioning them yesterday. It still is not public, but. Yeah, what struck you?
- [01:17]
Senator Mark Warner
I think what shocked me was one, the arrogance of the crowd that there was that these folks didn't apologize to the fact that they had to suspect that this information would come out. And I think particularly Ms. Gabbard was downright lying. You know, acting like she didn't know what was in the materials, wouldn't acknowledge whether she was on the chat, wouldn't acknowledge what her was her phone or a government phone. And then I guess today, when anybody who's been around the intel world at all would say, of course, if you have specific indication about a strike that's about to take place where American pilots are flying into harm's way, where if that information got to the enemy, American lives could get lost, no one, no one would say that isn't classified information or shouldn't be released. And the fact that the administration is trying to semantic argue whether this was a war plan or a battle plan. I don't get it. I don't get it.
- [02:26]
Tim
Crazy. So what's next. I mean, should there be investigations, resignations.
- [02:31]
Senator Mark Warner
We gotta find out how deep this went. You know, here are the questions that we gotta get right away. I'm writing Director Patel today. He said yesterday he didn't know much about it. I'll grant him the benefit of the doubt. So he's going to open an investigation. Remember, this is a group that, you know, Tulsi Gabbard said:12 days ago, you know, they're going to, you know, pursue every leaker to the end of the world. I mean, you know, Patel has said the same thing. So, you know, we'll see if they will hold to those standards. But some of the things we obviously need is we need to know if the phones have been secured and checked for malware. You know, the craziness is you can drop in malware without the bad guys physically holding your device. So we got to check and make sure the devices are not compromised. Secondly, we got to figure out, since I don't think Secretary Hegstaff typed all this stuff out, did he cut and paste this from what document is that floating around on another signal chat that we're not aware of? And third, if they try to make, and I'm unclear whether they're actually claiming that somehow this is not classified because Hegseth declassified it, which again, doesn't pass a smell test. But if there is even that argument, who decided it was hegsetheff? I mean, Gabbard again is national executive in charge of classifications. Those are some of the next steps, you know, and we also need to make sure, again, how are we going to improve, you know, security, hygiene? And I guess the last point I want to make, and this is, I think is really important for folks who are not kind of in the middle of this day in and day out the way I am, if this was a one off, one time mistake, it would still be egregious. People would still get fired if you are a military officer or a intelligence officer. But this is a freaking pattern. Remember the first two weeks of the administration, the administration let out the identities of 200 CIA agents. Yes, those people are burned in terms of being able to work abroad. This is a group where the Musk boys, the Doge Bros, you know, almost on a daily basis are revealing private information, classified information. It doesn't rise to this level, but there is just this carelessness, sloppiness around keeping secrets that I think at the end of the day, both robs the intelligence community of their trust and their leadership, but also scares the Damn. Hell. Out of all of our allies are gonna say, do I really wanna share my best secrets and sources and methods with this team?
- [05:13]
Tim
Well, this is where I was gonna go next because I thought the DNI Gabbard looked pretty rattled yesterday at the hearing. She would not answer a direct question from your colleague Senator Reid about which phone she was on, whether it was her personal phone or a government phone. She was overseas when these exchanges were happening. So I talked about the potential OPSEC threats there with the head of the DNI being overseas and having these exchange and expand on that question with our allies. I'm sure you've talked to allied countries. There's gotta be resignation at this point or deep concern about sharing information with somebody like that at the top of that intelligence operation.
- [05:55]
Senator Mark Warner
Well, huge concern, but let me, let me take those in order. You know, there was actually a piece of good news that Witkoff, Steve Witkoff, who was President Trump's friend, he had the common sense to not take any device when he was in Russia. So he was on the chain. But I think he acted, appears to be responsible because he didn't take the device with him, though we don't know.
- [06:20]
Tim
Where the device was. And it was still, and it was still getting war plans sent to it. But yeah, it's better than having it in the car.
- [06:25]
Senator Mark Warner
But it was not sitting in a hotel room or even a Faraday bag in Moscow someplace. Gabbard, not so much. We don't know was it an official phone or was it her own phone? And if she's in the middle of Southeast Asia where bad guys have more ability to penetrate. And just the arrogance of. I'm not going to tell you whether it was an official phone or not. And the, and that you, you, you know, Tim, you've been around this stuff. If you're traveling and she's the Director of National Intelligence and she's on an American plane or visiting American intel stations in Southeast Asia, you got plenty of secure communications. It's not rocket science. Don't do this stuff on a, on an unclassified network. I've called for Hegseth's resignation because again, I think putting this stuff out is so far beyond the pale on signal.
- [07:19]
Tim
Yeah, let's just talk about that really quick, then we'll get back to the allies because to me, this is outside of my wheels. I've never been in high level military conversations about airstrikes. But just reading it, the nature of Pete Hegsthe, the Secretary of Defense, sharing those specific details with such a broad Group. You know, there's nobody from Central Command on the, on the chain. You have the Secretary of Treasury on the chain. You have all these staffers. It seems out of protocol, even if it was on a secure network. Right. I don't, I don't know. It certainly did not. It seems like some bad judgment from the Secretary of Defense.
- [07:56]
Senator Mark Warner
Yes. I mean, and what you're, you're hitting on is, is we've got this pattern of irresponsibility and then we've got this pattern of judgment calls that show that, you know, I'm not sure these folks are up for the job. These are really serious jobs. And the irony again here is, is a little bit that, you know, I had a lot of differences with President Trump in his first administration, but for the most part, his national security team was top notch. I mean, you know, they did a great job on protecting the 2020 elections and things. This is night and day.
- [08:32]
Tim
Jim Mattis is not sending a text. Professionalism of the new team with the emojis. No emoji text from Jim Mattis. I don't think.
- [08:39]
Senator Mark Warner
Yeah, like, listen, the reason why, one of the reasons why we knew it wasn't on a classified channel. You know what, you don't get to do emojis on classified channels. So, like, okay, let's put our country, our servicemen at risk because I want to do a high five or a smiley face. That's wacky.
- [09:01]
Tim
Back to the allies. What are you hearing? And how serious is this is a concern that we're going to lose the trust of the Five Eyes, other intelligence allies?
- [09:11]
Senator Mark Warner
First of all, we're the best in the world on intel, no question. But if you look in aggregate about how much intelligence we get, not just from Five Eyes, but all of our other partners, it's mind blowing and they are scared. You know, a very human example, because it got declassified was, you know, when Austria helped us identify a potential bombing at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. I mean, if they had sources and methods and they don't want to share that, we're screwed. Or if you think back to, like the beginning of the. And this is the absurdity of their argument, that doesn't make any sense of nothing to look at here. No problem. We, along with the Brits, declassified a bunch of intelligence before Putin invaded Ukraine. And declassifying that information and getting it out really helped Ukrainians push back the Russians. The idea that that same kind of information was what was being discussed on this signal chat. And anyone that says that wouldn't Be valuable to the enemy or put our guys and gals in harm's way is either ignorant or not telling the truth.
- [10:27]
Tim
Yeah, one other thing on that signature as it relates to Europe, again, it's just judgment. You have the Secretary of Defense saying that he loathes Europe. All camps, pathetic. Talking about Europe. It's just kind of a reckless way to talk about allies who are. We have the situation right now, apparently, where four service members, I think, reportedly, at least by Bloomberg, are dead. You know, but they're NATO service members, as announced by NATO. I mean, like, still right now, our service members are in harm's way. They're working side by side with the Europeans. And here he is on this text chain just like, flippantly talking about how much he loathes them and how pathetic they are.
- [11:07]
Senator Mark Warner
And what would you feel like if you're in one of these mixed brigades, right. You know, with our NATO, our NATO allies, it's just, it's. None of this makes America safer. That's the part that. And I gotta hope, you know, that my. I work with a lot of Republicans in the Senate. I get grief for that at times for being too bipartisan. I know there's a lot of Republicans on the Intelligence Committee who think they're aghast at this, but they gotta find their voice. I mean, this is not Democrat, Republican. This is like, do we want to protect our country? Do we. You know, we can have America's priorities first, but America first should not be America alone. And that's where we're headed.
- [11:51]
Tim
I mean, have you spoken, Said anything to you in private? Like, just.
- [11:55]
Senator Mark Warner
Yeah, I'm not going to tell private. But there are. There are. I don't know what the breaking point will be, but I just hope sooner than later. But it is very safe to say that a lot of my colleagues are aghast. I mean, they just. And they just, you know, they gotta. They gotta be willing to say this. This is not, you know, about. Again, it is about whether we protect our troops. It's about whether we preserve our alliances, and we'll see if nobody's held accountable here. If nobody gets fired, then the signal is this kind of behavior is frankly, okay. And that would be one of the most chilling things possible.
- [12:38]
Tim
All right, last thing for you. Unrelated, but since I have you, I've got to ask you about it. There's been credible court filings and media reports indicating we sent legal refugees from Venezuela who are not gang members, who are not criminals, to this San Salvador prison camp with no due Process. The reports are extremely alarming to me. I'm wondering what you and your colleagues in the Senate, Democrats in the Senate are doing or could do about, about this.
- [13:08]
Senator Mark Warner
Well, I think what you got to do is, you know, we can litigate and that is happening, but some of.
- [13:14]
Tim
These folks don't have a litigation option if they're in San Salvador and they're not.
- [13:18]
Senator Mark Warner
But in terms of this is, the point I make is, you know, you can litigate, you can protest, or we can try to encourage, you know, for my Senate Republican friends, at least on an issue like this about due process, to vote with us three in the House. It's not, you don't have to move the whole Republican caucus. You just need to say to some folks, hey, guys, you know, criminals that are here illegally, absolutely, you know, they should be taken out of the country. But people that, where they're not even scanning their legal status or people are ending up that are, you know, green card holders. And I even heard there was one that was, I think there was somebody we found in Virginia that was, ended up being a citizen who was being stopped and almost arrested. And the irony was he had a Trump sticker on his car. He voted for Trump, too.
- [14:10]
Tim
Unbelievable. Yeah. No, and the report from Houston yesterday is a refugee. Somebody came the right way, did what everybody's supposed to say, waited in a third country for two years, came to the country and they checked the tattoos. I'm a little bit worried that because of the election loss and because Trump's run so much in immigration, the Democrats are cautious to take on this issue. They're worried that it's gonn. It's going to backfire politically. And so I'm just, I'm just wondering what you make of that, because to me, this is a cut and dry case.
- [14:39]
Senator Mark Warner
I think strong enforcement on the border makes sense. I do think we had a border that was way too open under Biden. But that doesn't mean you're going to throw out the Constitution or legal protections. There still needs to be due process. And, and that's whether you are, you know, a person here is an immigrant or for that matter, it means, it also in my mind means, you know, if you're a law firm, you shouldn't be penalized for who your clients are. That goes against the very foundations. Remember, John Adams actually defended the British soldiers in the, in the First Boston massacre. You know, pull a little historical fact out there. We just, those are the things that makes America special. And I again, gotta believe people are responding to this. That's why you see the level of protest around the country. I think there will be again, my Republican friends will find their voice, I hope. If not, we're just going to, you know, we're going to keep protesting, keep litigating, and the price will be paid at the election booth in 26.
- [15:45]
Tim
All right. I hope so. Can't, cannot abandon these folks and San Salvador. All right. Thank you, Senator. Come back anytime. All right.