Trump leadership team accidentally invites Atlantic editor to highly classified Signal war-planning channel (1 Viewer)

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    This needs a thread of its own - we can pull the posts out of Misc Trump. This story is (1) absolutely mindblowing and (2) not mindblowing at all because Trump has never really understood the value of high-caliber professionals and has surrounded himself with dramatically unqualified dolts.

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    I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter.

    Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

    A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

    The message continued, “Pls provide the best staff POC from your team for us to coordinate with over the next couple days and over the weekend. Thx.”

    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. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.

    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.”

    That was the end of the Thursday text chain.
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    full story: https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/
     
    nolaspe said:
    I thought I read somewhere that messages in signal are automatically deleted after a certain period of time, so those traitorous clowns using it does not surprise me one bit...
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    If they knowingly let that happen, ughhhh. We probably will have to wait till ‘26 before a proper and legit investigation will happen.
     
    Because of what I do for a living, I've had a few friends reach out to me and ask for my opinion of the whole Signal Houthi Attack scandal. I've held off on giving out my opinion because I wanted to wait a couple of weeks for everything to shake out to make sure that I was giving an opinion based on accurate information.

    Let me give a little context so you can understand where I'm coming from. I am a full-time civilian employee of the Air Force Reserve. My "official" job is aircraft maintenance, but for the past decade or so, the majority of my work has been that of a Unit Security Assistant. The relevant portion of this assignment is that I am tasked with ensuring that everyone in our unit has the appropriate security clearance for their position prior to being given access to classified information, as well as ensuring that everyone is trained (along with regular refresher training) on the proper way to handle classified material, and in the principles of Operational Security (OPSEC).

    So, let's talk about the Signal thing.

    There has been a lot of talk on both sides about whether or not classified information was discussed on the chat, and there has been what appears to me to be a lot of playing word games and semantics. (I'm going to go a little deep here just so that, in the future, you might be more prepared to identify some of these semantics) A lot of people think of classified information as "anything that the government wants to keep secret." That's not quite accurate. "Classified" information is a pretty specific designation of information. There is very little information that is automatically classified (the one thing that is, that comes to mind, is information related to our nuclear energy. The Atomic Energy Act states that such information is classified by law). In order for information to be classified, it must be designated as such by someone known as an Original Classification Authority (OCA). These people are appointed as OCAs by the president, and when they designate information as classified, they will also designate the level of classification (Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, SCI, etc) as well as when the information is to be declassified. This is where the semantics come into play. We have seen numerous former military and government officials stating that the information that we have seen in the transcript was classified. The Secretary of Defense and others involved in the Signal chat have said that no classified information was discussed. This would be true if the Secretary of Defense (the most likely OCA involved) did not designate the information as classified.

    However, if the information was not designated as classified, that doesn't mean that it's ok to talk about in the presence of people who don't need to be hearing it. This is where OPSEC comes into play. Proper OPSEC requires individuals to ensure that they are not discussing information that could be used by an adversary in a negative way against us. It also means that those individuals need to ensure that they do not discuss information that could be put together with other bits of information and then be used by those adversaries. So, when the people involved say "we didn't discuss any actual targets, so it's a big nothing burger," that's not entirely true. While they are correct that saying something like "Target terrorist @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME" isn't really giving out much information on it's own. But, when you name your group chat "PC Houthi Small Group Chat" does change things. Now, someone can easily determine that you are talking about the Houthis, so any of that groups high ranking members would know that they need to get out of the area they are located in since an attack is coming, and they might be "target terrorist." So, this whole chat is a pretty significant breech of OPSEC.

    With all of that said, I'll say that, in my opinion, the majority of the focus right now is on the wrong thing here. Yes, there was a breech of OPSEC, but the mission was a success, so nothing actually DID happen in a negative manner. But, like most major scandals (especially those involving the government), what actually happened is nowhere near as bad as the response/cover-up. The government's response to this has been, in a word, disgusting. The moment the story broke, the government's response SHOULD have been a unified "OH MY GOD! This was an embarrassing mistake, and we need an immediate independent investigation to determine how this happened, what we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again, and what (if any) potential damage was done." That's not what happened, though. What happened was that the government blew it off as if it was nothing, and has been running with these ridiculous conspiracy theories (Trump actually implied that the head of NPR is involved in Signal and may have snuck the reporter into the chat) and demonizing the reporter. This administration is sending a message that potentially sharing sensitive information with reporters is no big deal, and gives the appearance of a very lax attitude towards protecting our country's secrets. Not that having a lax attitude towards protecting our nation's secrets is anything new for Trump.
     
    FullMonte said:
    Because of what I do for a living, I've had a few friends reach out to me and ask for my opinion of the whole Signal Houthi Attack scandal. I've held off on giving out my opinion because I wanted to wait a couple of weeks for everything to shake out to make sure that I was giving an opinion based on accurate information.

    Let me give a little context so you can understand where I'm coming from. I am a full-time civilian employee of the Air Force Reserve. My "official" job is aircraft maintenance, but for the past decade or so, the majority of my work has been that of a Unit Security Assistant. The relevant portion of this assignment is that I am tasked with ensuring that everyone in our unit has the appropriate security clearance for their position prior to being given access to classified information, as well as ensuring that everyone is trained (along with regular refresher training) on the proper way to handle classified material, and in the principles of Operational Security (OPSEC).

    So, let's talk about the Signal thing.

    There has been a lot of talk on both sides about whether or not classified information was discussed on the chat, and there has been what appears to me to be a lot of playing word games and semantics. (I'm going to go a little deep here just so that, in the future, you might be more prepared to identify some of these semantics) A lot of people think of classified information as "anything that the government wants to keep secret." That's not quite accurate. "Classified" information is a pretty specific designation of information. There is very little information that is automatically classified (the one thing that is, that comes to mind, is information related to our nuclear energy. The Atomic Energy Act states that such information is classified by law). In order for information to be classified, it must be designated as such by someone known as an Original Classification Authority (OCA). These people are appointed as OCAs by the president, and when they designate information as classified, they will also designate the level of classification (Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, SCI, etc) as well as when the information is to be declassified. This is where the semantics come into play. We have seen numerous former military and government officials stating that the information that we have seen in the transcript was classified. The Secretary of Defense and others involved in the Signal chat have said that no classified information was discussed. This would be true if the Secretary of Defense (the most likely OCA involved) did not designate the information as classified.

    However, if the information was not designated as classified, that doesn't mean that it's ok to talk about in the presence of people who don't need to be hearing it. This is where OPSEC comes into play. Proper OPSEC requires individuals to ensure that they are not discussing information that could be used by an adversary in a negative way against us. It also means that those individuals need to ensure that they do not discuss information that could be put together with other bits of information and then be used by those adversaries. So, when the people involved say "we didn't discuss any actual targets, so it's a big nothing burger," that's not entirely true. While they are correct that saying something like "Target terrorist @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME" isn't really giving out much information on it's own. But, when you name your group chat "PC Houthi Small Group Chat" does change things. Now, someone can easily determine that you are talking about the Houthis, so any of that groups high ranking members would know that they need to get out of the area they are located in since an attack is coming, and they might be "target terrorist." So, this whole chat is a pretty significant breech of OPSEC.

    With all of that said, I'll say that, in my opinion, the majority of the focus right now is on the wrong thing here. Yes, there was a breech of OPSEC, but the mission was a success, so nothing actually DID happen in a negative manner. But, like most major scandals (especially those involving the government), what actually happened is nowhere near as bad as the response/cover-up. The government's response to this has been, in a word, disgusting. The moment the story broke, the government's response SHOULD have been a unified "OH MY GOD! This was an embarrassing mistake, and we need an immediate independent investigation to determine how this happened, what we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again, and what (if any) potential damage was done." That's not what happened, though. What happened was that the government blew it off as if it was nothing, and has been running with these ridiculous conspiracy theories (Trump actually implied that the head of NPR is involved in Signal and may have snuck the reporter into the chat) and demonizing the reporter. This administration is sending a message that potentially sharing sensitive information with reporters is no big deal, and gives the appearance of a very lax attitude towards protecting our country's secrets. Not that having a lax attitude towards protecting our nation's secrets is anything new for Trump.
    Click to expand...
    Well said, and I 100% agree with a lot of what you're saying. Just gonna pose a question here. Although we can't know for sure, the Intel being shared in that chat was almost certainly sourced from classified intelligence reports, and almost certainly TS simply based off of the criteria OCAs typically use to classify Intel. Reading from those classified reports into what is both unsecured and not preserved settings should be considered spillage and absolutely a breach of OPSEC. There should be consequences for leaking Intel that could pose a grave threat to our national security.

    Am I missing something here?

    And I absolutely agree that the cover up part can potentially trip them up as bad as the original. Gross violations of this kind are pretty shocking though. People get sent to prison for stuff like this and certainly fired from their jobs.
     
    Donald Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz included a journalist in the Signal group chat about plans for US strikes in Yemen after he mistakenly saved his number months before under the contact of someone else he intended to add, according to three people briefed on the matter.

    The mistake was one of several missteps that came to light in the White House’s internal investigation, which showed a series of compounding slips that started during the 2024 campaign and went unnoticed until Waltz created the group chat last month.

    Trump briefly considered firing Waltz over the episode, more angered by the fact that Waltz had the number of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic – a magazine he despises – than the fact that the military operation discussion took place on an unclassified system like Signal.

    But Trump decided against firing him in large part because he did not want the Atlantic and the news media more broadly to have the satisfaction of forcing the ouster of a top cabinet official weeks into his second term. Trump was also mollified by the findings of the internal investigation.


    The disclosures nonetheless triggered a “forensic review” by the White House information technology office, which found that Waltz’s phone had saved Goldberg’s number as part of an unlikely series of events that started when Goldberg emailed the Trump campaign last October.

    According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.

    Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then-Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.

    Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.

    A day after that Goldberg story was published, on 22 October, Waltz appeared on CNN to defend Trump. “Don’t take it from me, take it from the 13 Abbey Gate Gold Star families, some of whom stood on a stage in front of a 30,000 person crowd and said how he helped them heal,” Waltz said.

    According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a “contact suggestion update” by Waltz’s iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.

    The mistake went unnoticed until last month when Waltz sought to add Hughes to the Signal group chat – but ended up adding Goldberg’s number to the 13 March message chain named “Houthi PC small group”, where several top US officials discussed plans for strikes against the Houthis.……

    www.theguardian.com

    Exclusive: how the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg got added to the White House Signal group chat

    Internal investigation cleared the national security adviser Mike Waltz, but the mistake was months in the making
    www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
     

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