National Review Online
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Damage control is not supposed to cause more damage, but
that is what President Trump’s team has created with its reaction to the Signal
leak story.
As we all know, in the days before U.S. military forces
conducted strikes against Houthi terrorists in Yemen, Jeffrey Goldberg, the
editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited to a Signal
text chat that included National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and other top officials.
The conversation was ostensibly intended to coordinate
further high-level discussions of Trump’s policy toward the Houthis, but the
chat descended — in full view of Goldberg — into a debate about the merits of
striking the Houthis and disclosed operational details about the impending plan
of attack. According to Goldberg’s initial report, Hegseth shared “information
about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
Signal is a commercial-grade, encrypted-messaging app
that is commonly used to gain a degree of confidentiality. But it’s not an
appropriate venue for senior government officials to discuss U.S. foreign
policy or a surprise military action. Such a conversation outside of a secure
government communications channel is at minimum very foolish; it would very
plausibly be against the law.
Hegseth and various administration officials have
repeatedly denied that any “classified information” or “war plans” whatsoever
were ever disclosed on Signal. Even after Goldberg and The Atlantic released
screenshots of the full Signal chat on Wednesday morning, the administration
denied that any such information was inappropriately released. Hegseth, in
particular, poured contempt on the notion that the Signal chain included war
plans, insisting that it was impossible since the messages contained: “No
names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods.
And no classified information.”
But his assertion that no classified information was
disclosed is very hard to square with the fact that he texted his colleagues
materials that were almost certainly developed by and taken from the very
CENTCOM planners coordinating the strike operation, including the timeline,
sequence, and delivery assets of the coming strikes.
Whatever Hegseth and the White House may claim, the
information he put out over this unclassified — and at that very moment,
compromised — network was extremely sensitive. Indeed, it was classified prima
facie; it was born classified by its very nature. If someone who meant us harm
had received this information, it would have put American pilots at further
risk.
As a matter of crisis communications, it would have been
better if Trump officials had simply admitted that they had made a grievous
error and promised to tighten up their communications methods and procedures to
ensure that all highly sensitive conversations were conducted in the
appropriate venue. The strikes on the Houthi terrorists were, after all,
successful, and no American lives were lost in the operation.
But the Trump habit of always hitting back at perceived
enemies and never admitting mistakes under any circumstances set administration
officials up for what was easily predictable: Goldberg’s subsequent revelations
proved that administration officials’ answers to the controversy were
self-serving, Clintonian, and dishonest.
Obviously, Waltz, Hegseth, and every other administration
official should now ensure that future sensitive conversations that touch on
foreign policy and military planning are conducted in the appropriate, lawful
venues, no matter the seeming inconvenience in the moment. Just because Signal
can be a useful tool in some contexts, it does not follow that it is more
secure than the official classified communications channels.
Hegseth, appropriately, wants to focus the military on
warfighting. But this episode shows that some fights aren’t worth having.
Sometimes it’s better to admit a mistake and take the L.
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