The person who added a journalist to a Signal message thread that top national security officials used to discuss military strikes should resign if it was accidental and be fired and perhaps prosecuted if it was deliberate.
The air strikes on the Houthi terrorists in Yemen were, despite what appears to have been a communications blunder, a complete success, and no United States military personnel were injured.
Earlier this month, after Houthi forces had attacked 174 U.S. Navy vessels over the preceding year and a half, American F-18 fighter jets, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and aerial drones attacked dozens of targets, destroying facilities and killing key personnel responsible for terrorizing shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
By all accounts, the Houthis were surprised by the attack, but the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was not, for he revealed he was somehow added to a Signal group chat of Trump administration officials discussing the planning and execution of the military strikes.
The use of Signal, a commercially made end-to-end encryption application available on most mobile devices, to discuss sensitive national security matters certainly predates the Trump administration. CIA Director John Ratcliffe also testified under oath that Signal was loaded onto his work computer and that he was briefed on the application’s permissible use to discuss sensitive matters with administration colleagues.
National security adviser Mike Waltz has admitted that he “built the group” in question. Although he says he will take responsibility for the error, he also says Elon Musk’s “experts” are leading an investigation to determine how Goldberg was added to the group and that he is waiting for the results of that investigation. Waltz says he has never met Goldberg, and Goldberg says otherwise.
In addition to admitting he was responsible for who was in the chat, Waltz shared information about the outcome of the attacks, including that “the first target, their top missile guy, we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.” It is hard to imagine how this could not be classified information.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth does not emerge unscathed, either. He shared specific times of attacks, what aircraft would be involved and when they would be launched, what weapons were going to be used, and when bombs would first drop. If this is somehow not classified information because Hegseth declassified it, it is also such that if any uniformed personnel had shared it with a reporter, it would lead to firing or prosecution. It is absurd to believe otherwise.
If there is a silver lining to the release of the Signal chat, it is that the discussion portrays a thoughtful, collaborative, and candid group of advisers doing their best to provide counsel to Trump. This is not an echo chamber of “yes-men.” There is disagreement, it is expressed professionally, the disagreement is acknowledged and responded to, and the group moves on.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG SAYS HEGSETH LIED IN DISMISSING INTELLIGENCE LEAK
But no one outside the administration should have ever seen it. Trump was lucky that his team’s sloppiness did not get anyone killed. President Joe Biden was not so lucky with his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which ended with the deaths of 13 American service members.
Fate will not always smile on Trump’s national security team, and those at fault this time should be prepared to fall on their swords if it is revealed as appropriate once all the facts are known.