By Nia-Malika Henderson / Bloomberg Opinion
It was only a matter of time before President Trump’s national security appointees proved just how unserious and unprepared they are for their posts. Now, just two months into his second term, we’ve got “Signalgate,” a reckless conversation about war plans over a commercial messaging app with a journalist (inadvertently invited) reading along.
The administration wants to somehow blame that journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief. (Trump on Tuesday called the award-winning Goldberg “a total sleazebag.”) But even the attention-dominating Trump administration will have a hard time shifting the focus away from the extraordinary security failure of top officials, particularly National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who reportedly initiated the group chat and accidentally included Goldberg, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who provided sensitive details on an impending March 15 strike on the Houthis.
Nevertheless, they will try. Administration officials began by stonewalling Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. The contentious hearing included Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, both of whom were in the group chat. The two-hour session, where Democrats focused on the Signal chat and Republicans notably avoided asking about the security breach, only raised more questions.
There was dodging, obfuscating and a concerning failure to remember by people whose job it is to pay attention to and to recall the smallest of details, particularly when it comes to matters of war and peace.
“Director Ratcliffe, this was a huge mistake, correct?” asked Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., about the chat.
“No,” Ratcliffe said, incredulously.
Ratcliffe also claimed he couldn’t recall Vice President J.D. Vance suggesting in an extraordinary exchange that the strikes were at odds with Trump’s “message on Europe right now.”
Gabbard, oddly, declined initially to say whether she was the “TG” who was listed as part of the group, yet eventually relented as she was grilled by Democrats on the panel, who accurately called the lapse troubling, sloppy and unprofessional. She also declined to say whether she was using her personal or government device when she participated in the chat while she was traveling overseas in Asia.
Frankly, it was hard to believe much of what they said, as they refused to answer questions and repeatedly said that there was no classified information revealed on the text chain; or if there was, it was Hegseth’s decision to reveal it. (Hegseth has denied revealing classified information.)
What emerged was an image of a team of national security officials who couldn’t be bothered to care very much about national security, a lesson passed down from the top.
Trump, who started his first term by revealing highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador and ended it by taking hundreds of classified documents to his Florida estate, has, so far, stood by his team, describing the incident as a mere “glitch” and “not a serious one.”
“It’s just something that can happen,” Trump dismissively said at a meeting in the cabinet room. “Sometimes people are hooked in and you don’t know they are hooked in. They’re hooked into your line and they don’t even mean bad by it, but it’s not a perfect technology.”
But what if they do “mean bad by it”? Signal is not secure. Weeks before Waltz created this group chat, the National Security Agency had warned against using Signal for classified information. Google’s cybersecurity service, Google Threat Intelligence, wrote just last month that multiple Russia-aligned actors were “actively targeting Signal messenger.”
Hegseth’s clear lack of judgement and credibility has prompted calls for his resignation. As unlikely as that is, Congress should continue to press for answers on how this happened. Why did Hegseth think it was acceptable to reveal such detailed operational information on Signal? Was this the first time officials lazily took to Signal rather than a SCIF to discuss sensitive information?
Hegseth, during his Senate confirmation hearing, famously railed against what he deemed to be a military overrun by DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) standards, which he claimed eroded readiness and lethality. Yet, here we are, with a possible erosion of readiness, lethality and credibility, given this dangerous security lapse.
It’s a situation made even more dangerous by the pretense that there is nothing to see here and by attempts to make this just another partisan battle with the usual talking points. (By Tuedsay evening, Fox News was already looking for ways to blame former President Joe Biden.)
It is the practice of Trump and his acolytes to never apologize or take responsibility. Instead, they redirect and deflect, in this case choosing to smear Goldberg as a hack. But it’s Goldberg who has taken this much more seriously than Trump’s team.
There will be more to come. Sen. Ossoff promised that the Senate would get a full transcript of the chat and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said an investigation is planned. A government watchdog group has filed a legal complaint.
The true fallout of this incident, which is concerning for officials in capitals around the globe, is likely still in the offing. Perhaps Trump, as is his way, continues to stand by a team that is loyal to him and, like him, doesn’t always adhere to the rules of national security. This will only erode the standards and expectations that Hegseth claimed to be so worried about, and the stature and credibility of the US, at home and abroad.
Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and The Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.
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