The Atlantic recently revealed one of the more unbelievable examples of the rabid and revealing incompetence of the current high-ups in the US administration.
It turns out at least some of the VIPs use somewhat-but-should-be-more popular messaging app Signal to plot their military strikes. As well as chat about how much they hate Europe and share impossibly cringe-inducing streams of emojis.
How do we know this? Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidently invited one of the world’s more famous journalists, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, into a Signal chat group called “Houthi PC small group.”
PC probably means Principals Committee:
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
…
in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.
Soon afterwards, a bunch of the ne’er-do-wells that are busy diminishing the stature of America overnight joined:
One minute later, a person identified only as “MAR”—the secretary of state is Marco Antonio Rubio—wrote, “Mike Needham for State,” apparently designating the current counselor of the State Department as his representative. At that same moment, a Signal user identified as “JD Vance” wrote, “Andy baker for VP.” One minute after that, “TG” (presumably Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, or someone masquerading as her) wrote, “Joe Kent for DNI.” Nine minutes later, “Scott B”—apparently Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, or someone spoofing his identity, wrote, “Dan Katz for Treasury.” At 4:53 p.m., a user called “Pete Hegseth” wrote, “Dan Caldwell for DoD.” And at 6:34 p.m., “Brian” wrote “Brian McCormack for NSC.” One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24 p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.
The principals had apparently assembled. In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.”
They then went on to discuss their top secret plans to attack the Houthis alongside their strong loathing of Europe. Oh, and the fact that JD Vance probably doesn’t agree with Trump quite as much as he pretends to.
Goldberg understandably started off rather sceptical that the group was real rather than some weird AI prank or whatever. I mean, it does feel way too good to be true. But when he saw the military plans that were discussed actually taking place in the real world, there was no more doubting it.
The participants subsequently of course denied everything, except (somewhat to my surprise) that the message chain was real. Denying things that there is incontrovertible evidence for is of course no obstacle to the current administration.
Here we go:
Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.
says Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS
says Waltz.
At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”
The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues: “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)” “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
Goldberg somewhat reluctantly reprints, proving the lie - whilst remaining very conscious of the potential national security issues inherent if he was to reveal some even more damaging content. But as they say even about the released bits and pieces:
If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds.
Anyway, let’s get back to the ludicrous response to this potentially catastrophic breech from Trump’s people.
There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group
says Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.
It wasn’t classified information.
says Donald Trump.
My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.
says John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA.
OK then, so I suppose they’d be OK with the Atlantic publishing the full exchange? Maybe Goldberg was playing it a bit over-cautious and this was nothing more than a public discussion they meant to humiliate themselves by typing into Twitter but accidentally hit the wrong app’s icon.
Per the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt:
yes, we object to the release.
In the original reporting of the incident Goldberg deliberately held back a lot of information he felt would be too classified to be responsibly reported on. Including:
One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24 p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.
Goldberg wrote.
The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified
agreed Republican Senator Wicker.
The in-chat hilarity / horror continued.
We are currently clean on OPSEC.
writes Hegseth. Au contraire:
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
headlines famed reporter of one of the most famous publications in America.
This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff
said the White House Press Secretary. Deliberation hey? Well, it must have been Very Serious and Important I’m sure.
👊🇺🇸🔥
wrote Waltz, in said “deliberation”- a triptych of emojis that is surely now destined for the annals of memeolgy / my email signature.
Witkoff continued the thoughtful foreign policy discussion:
🙏🙏💪🇺🇸🇺🇸
Oh, and the usual suspects got all hot and bothered by Europe again.
I just hate bailing Europe out again
sighed JD Vance, supposedly confidentially.
Hegseth continued the bantz.
VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.
Ugh.
So why was Goldberg invited to this top secret chat? It turns out that it was probably neither a deliberate act of government transparency or particularly incompetent example of double-agenting by one of the MAGA faithful.
Rather it seems like Waltz saved Goldberg’s contact details to the wrong contact in his iPhone. He overwrote Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes' number with Goldberg’s. So when he tried to invite Hughes he accidentally invited Goldberg.
Waltz still isn’t taking much responsibility of course:
He also suggested on Fox News that Goldberg’s number had been “sucked” into his phone, seemingly in reference to how his iPhone had saved Goldberg’s number.
Yep, magically “sucked” I’m sure. That said, it might be one example where - if the claim that it was prompted by an iPhone autosuggestion is vaguely true - Apple’s AI mishaps ended up being a force for good. Well, a certain type of good.
Trump of course randomly generated some of his standard phrases when in reaction to this. We started off with “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic”, followed up by a chaser of “The interest in the massive breach of national security is nothing more than a “witch hunt”. And the Signal app itself “could be defective”.
Signal is of course not defective. It’s constantly recommended by the folk that know these things as being a super secure way of communicating. It is a great option for messaging privately and securely; in fact my favourite. But no technology can be all that secure when you explicitly invite internationally famous journalists who have not joined the cult of adoring you, and hence you regard as your mortal enemies, to your chat.
Other interesting bits and pieces include:
At least some of these folk would seem to be using their personal phones rather than any secured government equipment, or at least that’s what Special Envoy Witkoff’s comment reads like to me:
“I only had with me a secure phone provided by the government” but then explained that the reason he did not make any comments in the chat until after returning to the US was “because I had no access to my personal devices until I returned from my trip”.
But her emails, etc. etc.
And also the nature of this chat group might not be meeting the legal obligations regarding retention:
The messages in the Signal chat were set to be automatically deleted in under four weeks. The Federal Records Act typically mandates that government communication records are kept for two years.