I know that this story has been mentioned in the comment section already, but it seems to be worth further highlighting.
There is a reason that many of us had concerns about the Hegseth nomination (amongst others). And there are reasons why we do not trust the bull-in-a-China-shop approach that this administration is taking via DOGE. And in case those reasons are not clear, it is because these are all a combination of unqualified (or, at best, underqualified) buffoons who don’t take governing seriously.
This also seems like a great time to lament, “but, her emails.”
Writes Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic.
On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me. It is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that could be used against them.
I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter.
Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”
A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”
[…]
The term 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.
He lists all of the persons in the chain, but it included the Vance, Rubio, Gabbard, Hegseth, and a number of other very prominent members of the administration.
Since this is outside my expertise I cannot definitively answer the following question: but surely the federal government has a better way of communicating than with a commercial app? Goldberg does suggest as much above.* He further notes.
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.
Seems like something people in the government ought to know.
In terms of the actual encounter with Signal, Golberg recounts.
It was the next morning, Saturday, March 15, when this story became truly bizarre.
At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. 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 U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
Well, at least Goldberg is more responsible than the SecDef.
The carelessness of all of this is stunning. I am sure everyone has been on a text chain wherein there were numbers you didn’t recognize. And anyone with any sense knows that that is a mind field. A wayward remark on a familty text chain without knowing for sure who 555-867-5309 is and you may create a decades-long feud. I used get included in text chains from the Chancellor to huge groups of people, and I would frequently not know who all the people on the chain were. Best to keep quiet unless you know for sure.
Hegseth is the idiot who texted out about the surprise party for Grandma without making sure Grandma wasn’t on that text chain.
The irresponsibility here is staggering.
Again, back to Goldberg.
Earlier today, I emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his Signal account. I also wrote to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, and other officials. In an email, I outlined some of my questions: Is the “Houthi PC small group” a genuine Signal thread? Did they know that I was included in this group? Was I (on the off chance) included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was added, or when I removed myself from the group? Do senior Trump-administration officials use Signal regularly for sensitive discussions? Do the officials believe that the use of such a channel could endanger American personnel?
Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Hughes wrote. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
I commend the whole thing (gift link above). Goldberg texts in which Vance seems to not be on the same page as Trump. And he also details some legal implications of the interactions.
Again: these are the people who supposedly want to “fix” the federal government, and rearrange the global order.
See, also:
- Axios: “Heads should roll”: Congress erupts over stunning Trump admin leak.
- Politico: ‘Amateur hour’: Washington aghast at Trump administration’s war plan group chat.
*It is almost comedic that there have been suggestions of using Signal by the OTB community, a blog for crying out loud, only to learn that high-level national security business was being conducted on it.
