The latest release Wednesday of more texts from Trump administration officials offers details of a U.S. military strike on Yemen – including sensitive information that could have threatened the lives of the U.S. troops conducting the strike had it fallen into different hands.
The leaks, some former service members say, paint a picture of a dismissive – and potentially dangerous – attitude toward operational security among senior U.S. leaders.
These revelations could affect military morale, they add, given that these top officials are unlikely to be treated the way lower-ranking troops would be if they had done the same thing.
Why We Wrote This
The disclosure that senior Trump administration officials used a commercial messaging app to discuss secret military attacks has drawn bipartisan criticism – and risks a perception of two systems of accountability for higher- and lower-ranking officials.
Indeed, as President Donald Trump’s senior national security advisers testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, they seemed to have come up with a line of defense to protect themselves from the fallout of the leak – one that managed to unite many lawmakers in rare bipartisan agreement that it was stunning.
Specifically, Trump administration officials testified that a group text involving details of a U.S. military strike in Yemen was not secret, even though a journalist was accidentally added to the discussion.
In the chat on Signal, an encrypted commercial messaging app, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly shared normally classified information like the targets, timing, and weapons to be used in the U.S. attack on Houthi rebels, who have been trying to hit ships in the Middle East’s Red Sea.
When are war plans secret?
During the congressional hearing, senators took a moment to digest this suggested line of reasoning: If Mr. Hegseth says U.S. military war plans are not secret, then they’re not.
This is because the secretary of defense is the “classification authority” for the department, CIA Director John Ratcliffe explained to lawmakers – meaning Mr. Hegseth is the one who gets to decide what Department of Defense information is secret.
President Trump, for his part, confirmed the authenticity of the text chain, which included the editor of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg. National security adviser Mike Waltz took partial responsibility for the addition of Mr. Goldberg to the list in an interview on Fox News.
Mr. Waltz admitted to an “embarrassing” mistake and said he doesn’t know exactly how a journalist got “sucked into this group.” He seemed to suggest it could be part of a “conspiracy” and also called Mr. Goldberg “scum.”
Mr. Waltz will not be fired, President Trump said, adding that he’s “learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
A double standard on leaks?
But while the administration’s argument that there was no classified information on the Signal chat may hold up in court, among many of those who have served in the U.S. military, the feeling is that this represents two tiers of justice: a double standard, based on whether the leaker is a top official or a lower-ranking trooper.
And though there may not be accountability for those at the top, some analysts warn that there could be consequences in terms of morale and frustration that may make service members less inclined to follow strict classification protocols in the future.
“My first thought was, ‘We used to get in trouble for a lot less than that,’” says Victor Cora Nazario, who ran networks at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland as a young enlisted airman. “If we made those kinds of mistakes, they basically either cut your pay or take a rank from you. Or it could mean jail, depending on what it is.”
While the defense secretary may have the authority to declare information unclassified, that doesn’t mean it is, says Mr. Nazario, who continues to work in the private sector as an information technology specialist.
“It still has the same effect, meaning possibly putting people in physical danger,” he says. “I feel like people are going to look at this and go, ‘Wait a minute – I’m accountable, but he’s not?’”
An earlier Pentagon warning
A Pentagon-wide memo that went out days before the leak warned that “Recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications with principals within the Office of the Secretary of Defense demand immediate and thorough investigation.”
U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Madelyn Keech/Department of Defense/Reuters
The memo, signed by Mr. Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, and posted to the Pentagon’s public website, said that the search for leakers could involve polygraphs and “criminal prosecution.”
The stern tone directed at potential leakers within its workforce was in keeping with the sharp criticism leveled by Trump administration officials, past and present, against the leak of Hillary Clinton’s emails during her 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr. Hegseth has complained that Ms. Clinton escaped accountability for this, and that others would and should have gone to jail for similar offenses.
Lawmakers this week noted that this previous stance stood in stark contrast to the sanguine responses of Mr. Trump’s national security officials under Tuesday’s questioning.
On this front, one of the more striking moments, analysts said, came when Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia, asked whether this leak of U.S. military information was a “huge mistake.”
CIA Director Ratcliffe answered, simply, “No.”
Using Signal for group texts among senior government officials is normal, he said, noting that the Biden administration had done it, too, albeit with strict instructions to use it sparingly, according to The Associated Press.
This is indeed the case, says a former senior defense official for cyber affairs in the Biden administration who requested anonymity to discuss DOD policy.
Signal chats were frequently used for “tippers,” or timely notes telling recipients to check their classified systems for a message.
The problem is not that Mr. Waltz set up a group chat with top colleagues, the senior official says. The question is how seemingly sensitive U.S. military information made it from presumably classified Pentagon networks into the Signal discussion.
Typically, secret DOD discussions like details of airstrikes take place in what’s known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, where cellphones are not allowed. Top officials are supposed to have secure spots in their homes, too, to discuss classified matters.
“The systems are separate and not supposed to be able to talk to each other without a very deliberate process of migrating things from a classified to an unclassified system,” the senior official says. “It involves lots of other people, and it usually involves careful review.”
Mr. Hegseth shared a “war plan” with the group that included, hours in advance, the time it would commence, among other details, according to the Atlantic article.
Meanwhile, all DOD employees were warned in an advisory last week of the Signal app’s “vulnerability” to “Russian professional hacking groups” trying to “spy” on encrypted conversations, according to an NPR report this week. The Pentagon memo said Signal was “NOT approved to process or store nonpublic unclassified information,” according to NPR.
During the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, lawmakers questioned Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about her participation in the group text while overseas. Another participant, special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, took part in the Signal chat group while he was in Russia, presumably increasing the risk that the chat could have been hacked, lawmakers noted.
Keeping classified information safe
Mr. Nazario recalls that while he was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base maintaining unclassified computer systems, there were three times in roughly three years when secret data accidentally made its way into his team’s systems.
“We had to wipe all the servers the classified data touched – wipe every piece of equipment” – and then rebuild them, reinstalling operating systems and email, and then restoring data from backups.
It was time-consuming and labor-intensive, but important, says Mr. Nazario. “I was very proud of the work that we were doing.”
Hearing about the Signal leaks, “I feel like it’s so irresponsible; it kind of almost makes you give up” trying to secure data, if it weren’t for those working overseas at America’s behest, he adds, facing danger to carry out the U.S. military’s mission.
Indeed, the overarching concern in the administration’s response to the Signal leak is that it has the potential to make “people feel like their leadership doesn’t have their best interest at heart” and is being, at best, “sloppy with their information,” the senior defense official says.
“We send operators out there in the world to do dangerous things for us, and if they’re not confident that their information is kept secret, they won’t be able to do their job.”
Because it is within the executive branch’s purview to decide what is classified, “There may not be accountability” for the Signal leaks, the senior defense official adds. “But there will be consequences.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify the timing of the Department of Defense advisory on the Signal app. It was reportedly published last week.
