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Heather Cox Richardson
Foreign 2025 today, the Editor in chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, dropped the story that senior members of the Trump administration planned the March 15 US attack on the Houthis in Yemen over Signal, a widely available encrypted app that is most decidedly not part of the United States national security system. The decision to steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide conversations, since the app was set to erase some messages after a week and others after four weeks. By law, government communications must be archived. According to Goldberg, the use of Signal may also have violated the Espionage act, which establishes how officials must handle information about the national defense. The app is not approved for national security use, and officials are supposed either to discuss military activity in a sensitive compartmented information facility or scif, or to use approved government equipment. The use of Signal to plan a military attack on Yemen was itself an astonishingly dangerous breach. But what comes next is simply mind boggling. The reason Goldberg could report on the conversation is that the person setting it up included Goldberg, a reporter without security clearance. In it, Goldberg reports that on March 11th he received a connection request from someone named Michael Waltz, although he did not believe the actual Michael Waltz, who was Trump's national security adviser, would be writing to him. He thought it was likely someone trying to entrap him, although he thought perhaps it could be the real walls with some information. Two days later, he was included in the Houthi PC small group, along with a message that the chat would be for a principals group for coordination on Houthis. As Goldberg reports, a principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior most national security officials, including the Secretaries of Defense, State and the treasury, as well as the Director of the CIA. It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that I have never been invited to a White House Principals Committee meeting, and that in my many years of reporting on national security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app. The other names on the app were those of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Brian McCormick from the National Security Council Central Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, Trump's Middle east and Ukraine negotiator Steve Witkoff, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, perhaps White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Trump's nominee for head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent. Goldberg assumed the chat was fake, some sort of disinformation campaign, although he was concerned when Ratcliffe provided the full name of a CIA operative in this unsecure channel. But on March 14, as Vance, for example, took a strong stand against Europe. I just hate bailing Europe out again. And as Hegseth emphasized that their messaging must be that of Biden failed, Goldberg started to think the chat might be real. Those in the chat talked of finding a way to make Europe pay the costs for the US Attack and of minimizing risk to Saudi oil facilities. And then, on March 15, the messages told of the forthcoming attack. I will not quote from this update or from certain other subsequent texts, goldberg writes. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East Central Command's area of responsibility. What I will say in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this signal conversation is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US Would be deploying, and attack sequencing. On the chat, reactions to the military strikes were emojis of a fist, an American flag, fire, praying hands, a flexed bicep, and good job, Pete and your team. Kudos to all. Really great. God bless, and great work and effects. In the messages with a reporter on the line, Hegseth promised his colleagues he would do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC or operations security. In a message to the team outlining the forthcoming attack, Hegseth wrote, we are currently clean on opsec. Two hours after Goldberg wrote to the officials on the chat and alerted him to his presence on it by asking questions about it, National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes responded, the thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. When asked about the breach, Trump responded, I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of the Atlantic. To me, it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it's not much of a magazine, but I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what? There is nothing the administration could say to make the situation better, but this made it worse. As National Security Specialist Tom Nichols noted, if the President is telling the truth and no one's briefed him about this yet, that's another story in itself. In any other administration, the Chief of Staff would have been in the Oval Office within nanoseconds of learning about something like this. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is evidently going to try to bully his way out of this disaster. When asked about it, he began to yell at a reporter that Goldberg is a deceitful and highly discredited so called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again. Hegseth looked directly at the camera and said nobody was texting War plans but Goldberg has receipts. The chat had the specific time of a future attack, specific targets, including human targets, weapons systems, precise detail, a long section on sequencing. He can say that it wasn't a war plan, but it was a minute by minute accounting of what was about to happen. Zachary B. Wolf of CNN noted that Trump intentionally hired amateurs for top jobs. This is their most dramatic blunder, senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat of Georgia, told Brian Tyler Cohen. My first reaction was what absolute clowns. Total amateur hour. Reckless, Dangerous. This is what happens when you have basically Fox News personalities cosplaying as government officials, foreign policy scholar Timothy Snyder posted. These guys inherited one of the most functional state apparatus in the history of the world and they are inhabiting it like a crack house. Many observers have noted that all of these national security officials knew that using Signal in this way was against the law, and their comfort with jumping onto the commercial app to plan a military strike suggests they are using Signal more generally. How many Signal chats with sensitive information about military operations are ongoing within the Pentagon right now? Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, posted, Where else are war plans being shared with such abject disregard for our national security? We need answers right now. National security journalists and officials are aghast. Former commanding general of United States Army Europe and the 7th Army, Mark Hertling, called the story staggering. Former CIA officer Matt Castelli posted, this is more than loose lip sync ships. This is a criminally negligent breach of classified information and war planning involving VP SecDef, director of the CIA National Security Advisor, all putting troops at risk. America is not safe. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who spent seven years as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, posted, From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of UP imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe, rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said. If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen. The carelessness shown by President Trump's Cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the administration immediately. Armed Services Committee member Don Bacon, a Republican of Nebraska, a former Air Force brigadier general, told Axios that sending this info over non secure networks was unconscionable Russia and China are surely monitoring his unclassified phone. That the most senior members of Trump's administration were sharing national security secrets on unsecure channels is especially galling, since the people on the call have used alleged breaches of national security to hammer Democrats. Sarah Longwell and J.V. last of the Bulwark compiled a series of video clips of Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, and especially Pete Hegseth talking about the seriousness of handling secret information and the need for accountability for those who mishandle it. When they were accusing then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of such a breach, they called for firings, accountability and perhaps criminal charges. Indeed, Trump rose to power in 2016 with the charge that Clinton should be sent to prison for using a private email server. Lock her up became the chant at his rallies today. For her part, Clinton posted a link to the story along with an eyes emoji and wrote, you have got to be kidding me. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, MA. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss, RA.