"The blatant carelessness and disregard of it all should be unbelievable"

 

The Signal chat consisted of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and, as you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, the Editor in Chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. There were others, but Goldberg declined to name at least one of them because of the sensitive nature of their identity given the position they hold in government.

Signal is not a secure, approved means of what is referred to in the government as “high side” communication for classified or sensitive information. Goldberg reported on the texts he received after he was invited to join the chat. While he was trying to decide if the group was an attempt to punk him or something legitimate, he received messages including information about timing, targeting, and targets of a possible U.S. attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. When the attack materialized on schedule over the weekend, he understood that he had somehow been added to a chat among principals.

Today, government officials, including White House spokesperson Caroline Leavitt, claimed none of the information was classified. At a previously scheduled hearing of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (On her MSNBC show Monday night, Rachel Maddow said it was happening because “God keeps a calendar”) Maine Senator Angus King questioned Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about how it was possible that the kind of sensitive information that circulated in the chat wasn’t classified. It included attack sequences, timing, weapons, and targets. Gabbard responded that she would “defer to the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council.”

King offered a stinging rebuke: “You’re the head of the intelligence community. You’re supposed to know about classifications. So your testimony here today is very clearly that nothing that was in that set of texts were classified. … If that’s the case, then please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.”

Just last week Gabbard announced she was pursuing “politically motivated leakers” from within the intelligence community and that they would be held accountable. In a string of tweets, she referred to “A leaker who has been sharing classified information with the Huffington Post,” “A leaker within the IC sharing information on Israel / Iran with the Washington Post,” “A leaker within the IC sharing information about the U.S. - Russia relationship with NBC,” and “A leaker sharing information on NCSC activities and actions with The Record.”

There was no mention of high-ranking officials sharing information with the editor in chief of The Atlantic, but Gabbard did conclude that “Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”

In an interview with ABC, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attacked Goldberg, calling him a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.” He denied that anyone was texting war plans on the chat.

However, they want to justify it, from a national security point of view, it’s essential that we back off of the rhetoric and acknowledge this for what it is, a horrible lapse in national security that could have resulted in dead Americans if information had fallen into the Houthis’ hands. There needs to be accountability, real accountability of the kind that comes from a fact-based investigation into how this lapse occurred.

It’s not, or at least it shouldn’t be, a matter of politics. Government officials need to understand and obey the rules for secure communications. This is what happens when you confirm people to jobs they are neither suited nor qualified for and their education about the importance of what they do and how they do it needs to happen fast. There should be accountability for any people who intentionally violate the rules.

There is, however, no outrage coming from the White House. Trump made his first comments in a brief interview with NBCs Garret Haake, saying, "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.” Even Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins didn’t fall back on “learned a lesson,” instead calling the incident “inconceivable and “an extremely troubling and serious matter.”

Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a book last year called On Heroism, and my Insider Podcast co-host Preet Bharara and I had the pleasure of interviewing him live about it while we were in Austin for the Texas Tribune festival. The book is great, a short collection of Goldberg’s essays, and if you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend it.

But it’s the title that sticks with me, especially now, along with the subtitle, “the cowardice of Donald Trump.” In the interview, Goldberg told a story about retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, who was one of Trump’s chiefs of staff during his first term in office. “John Kelly, like Donald Trump … Or unlike Donald Trump, I should say, actually had bone spurs. And John Kelly, when he went to the draft board, they told him, ‘Well, you have bone spurs. You can get out of this.’ John Kelly asked the doctor to lie and say that he didn’t have bone spurs, so he could join the Marines and go fight in Vietnam. So, to me, the symmetry there is so astonishing that one used fake bone spurs to get out of Vietnam, the other pleaded with the doctors in the Marine Corps, ‘Just ignore my bone spurs. It’s not that big a deal. I just want to go serve my country.’”

What could allow a commander in chief to dismiss the thought that the actions of his top officials could have put the lives of American soldiers at risk? Trump’s near contempt for people who serve is well known. He has questioned what’s in it for them, as he infamously asked General Kelly while they stood together at the grave of Kelly’s son in Arlington.

When General Mark Milley selected a seriously injured five-tour combat veteran, Louis Avila, to sing “God Bless America” at his welcoming ceremony head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump reportedly asked him afterwards, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” According to Milley, he forbade him from letting Avila appear in public again.

We have seen great cowardice and great heroism in American public life. But the people who lead our military and intelligence communities have an obligation to the people who put themselves at risk to keep our nation secure. That’s true no matter which party is in office. If the officials responsible for this debacle and the president they serve are inclined to just wave it off, it is up to Congress to protect the men and women who serve all of us, and who deserve better than this. The blatant carelessness and disregard of it all should be unbelievable. Sadly, it isn’t.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance