Reply to Comment on ‘What happened to the American Bombing Campaign in Yemen” by M. Gabbard and A.J. Warner

In a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill, the nation’s top intelligence officials testified that they did not share classified information in a messaging group chat that discussed the U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen.

Warner: I think we will. Listen, I think we’re going to see this, the full text. I think the journalist is thinking about releasing it. Gabbard said today, there’s nothing classified. If there’s nothing classified, it’s not a reason to keep it from being released.

Chang: If none of your Republican colleagues are willing to speak against what happened without their support in seeking accountability, are we going to see any accountability?

Mark Warner. I believe they do. I am pretty sure it was telling that none of my Republican colleagues came to these people’s defense. If anybody hasn’t heard, let’s just review very quickly there was a Signal — a good encrypted application, but it is not a classified means of transmitting information. Matter of fact, we have evidence that Russia and China try to break into Signal-based systems. There is a senior level of people on this non-classified channel who are communicating and plain sloppiness put a journalist on and nobody bothered to check who is on the line.

The House Intelligence Committee heard testimony from top U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday following a discussion about an extraordinary security violation.

Sensitive Senator Mark Warner: The National Security Officers are the Real Champions, the U.S. Security Officials Are the Real Enemies

NPR recently learned that a Pentagon-wide advisory went out last week warning against using the app, even for unclassified information, saying “a vulnerability has been identified.”

National security officials always try to keep a low profile when talking about military operations. But the Signal snafu exposed conversations among the Principals Committee — a body that “generally includes the heads of departments or agencies,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

He told All Things Considered he found a huge security breach in the national security of the United States.

The hearing, which was previously scheduled, took place just a day after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed that a top Trump administration official mistakenly added him to a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal about highly sensitive plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.

Warner explained that senior level individuals communicating on this non-classified channel and plain sloppiness put a journalist on and nobody bothered to check who’s this other person on the line.

The senators reprimanded the members of the administration, and one of them was Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia.

The Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee grilled the nation’s security officials about their involvement in a Signal group chat and accidentally discussing war plans with a journalist.

“If there wasn’t classified material, give it to the committee,” Warner said. “You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee has a tendency of being bipartisan, and that is something I like about it. Warner was the chair of the last administration and the vice chair now. I absolutely believe if the administration tries to stonewall this, we will have bipartisan support for us as the Intelligence Committee, the oversight committee that’s supposed to be making sure things are appropriate. We will see this at the transcript.

The people at the center of Signalgate, the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, Pete Hegseth, and the director of national intelligence, are all aware of this. They served in the military. They were exposed to many different ways that an adversary can make off with sensitive data. But this is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It says that those with it are the real enemy, the deep state, and that its own refusal to listen to them is proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. If the people at the top of the security establishment do not have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better. In this administration, Fox News hosts the leader of the world’s largest military, there is a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I., and a reality star turned president. Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence.

Pentagon Protected Communications: What Signal Says about High-Ranking Congressman Ned Price and the Security of the Signal App for Military Personnel Interaction

If we did this, every one of us that served in the military would be in the same place, according to a former congressman.

“Heads are exploding,” Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who was deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in the Biden administration, told NPR’s Morning Edition as he described conversations with former colleagues about high-ranking Trump officials’ Signal chat.

“The meetings of the Principals Committee are held in the White House Situation Room, perhaps the most secure venue within the U.S. government,” Price said.

TheSCIF is a secure room where top-ranking officials have in their homes and offices.

“This network is a top secret one that beams them into the White House Situation Room, and if a member is travelling, they need a national security team to safeguard their communications,” Price says.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic told him about the Defense Secretary’s sharing of targets and weapons via the Signal app earlier this month.

Goldberg didn’t say what he said could be damaging elements of the communications that were sent to him.

Jun Harada, a vice president of Signal, said that the Pentagon warning wasn’t related to any of the company’s core technology. “Once we learned that Signal users were being targeted, and how they were being targeted, we introduced additional safeguards and in-app warnings to help protect people from falling victim to phishing attacks,” Harada said.

But experts say sensitive government communications normally occur via official devices and through elaborate security measures, not by using open-source software offered by a nonprofit.

A Special Investigation into the Security Breach at the Trump White House and Sessions with the Principals Committee. A Congressional Hearing on “S M” and “Vance’s”

The Principals Committee chat’s 18 members included Vice President Vance; White House chief of staff Susie Wiles; and “S M,” an apparent reference to Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Also in the group: CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom were questioned about the breach during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday.

Greg Myre of NPR states that the CIA and the DNI are very focused on secure communications. “Yet based on Goldberg’s account, no senior national security official raised concerns about sharing war plans on Signal.”

Last week an email was sent to all Pentagon staff warning of a vulnerability in the messaging app. The notice cited risks from “Russian professional hacking groups” working to spy on encrypted communications. The notice was apparently sent days after Goldberg told Waltz that he had somehow been added to the PC group, and left the chat.

The claims by the CIA director and the National Intelligence director were forcefully responded to by the Senate intelligence committee.

Ratcliffe testified that his communications in a Signal message group were lawful and did not include classified information.

Gabbard refused to say whether she was on the Signal chat group, but added that she has not shared any classified information outside of proper channels.

Goldberg wrote that several individuals, including the Vice President and the defense secretary, were in a text chain.

Goldberg said he initially thought it might be a hoax, but came to believe it was real as he read the texts over the course of several days. He said his inclusion in the group must have been inadvertent. He speculated that an aide may have planned to include someone else with the same initials as Goldberg.

The White House’s National Security Council confirmed the authenticity of the message thread on Monday, saying it was looking into how an accidental number was added to the chain.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the security breach, saying the incident raises questions about the Trump administration’s handling of sensitive information.

Democrats in Congress want further investigation into many of Trump’s security and intelligence picks, who they criticized for their lack of experience during the nomination process.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have publicly called for an investigation into what they respectively called “this unacceptable and irresponsible national security breach” and the “damage it created.”

“We’re very concerned,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters on Monday, adding that his panel would look into the matter directly.

Maine’s Susan Collins is a Republican who serves on the Intelligence Committee. Collins said that the incident was easy for him to comprehend.

Another member of the intel panel, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., suggested ahead of Tuesday’s hearing that the committee would have a deeper conversation on the breach behind closed doors.

“I don’t think it was a good thing, but I want to hear an explanation of it from the individuals involved in it in a classified setting so I get the full story before I make a judgement on it,” Rounds told NPR.

Unhacking phones, spying, and spying: Why you shouldn’t be technicolor when you can’t talk about it

In the House, Republicans have largely been more muted. The issue did not come up during the House GOP weekly meeting on Tuesday, signaling hopes to downplay the matter.

“Obviously that was a mistake, and a serious one,” he said. But Johnson described the people in the chat aspatriot and that was a success.

There’s no way to make a phone completely unhackable. phones are not allowed in the secure rooms where Washington officials conduct their most sensitive conversations.

Zero-click software is sold to regimes and corporations around the globe. Apple has notified users in 150 countries that they’ve been targeted. A program from a single Israeli spyware maker, the NSO Group, has been deployed in Saudi Arabia, Spain, Hungary, India, Mexico and Rwanda. The junior-volley countries can come in and succeed now, says Frank Figliuzzi, the former assistant director for counterintelligence. “You don’t need to be very sophisticated.”

Congressman Kamal Jahangir: U.S. Intel Leaders are Grilled Again About the Leaked Signal Chat as More Details Emerge

The story states, “The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions.”

The leaders told senators that they had not shared any classified information in an improper or unlawful way — prompting a challenge from the ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

It’s the second trip to Capitol Hill in two days for Gabbard and Ratcliffe, who were grilled about the gaffe on Tuesday by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The counselor to the president told reporters at the White House that it is what it is. This is something that they’re making a big to-do about nothing, that’s what I think. A reporter is trying to have a bigger say in politics.

Krishnamoorthi said that it was classified information. “It’s a weapons system as well as sequence of strikes, as well as details about the operations.”

Producing a large placard bearing an enlarged screenshot of the “Houthi PC small group” Signal chat, Krishnamoorthi noted that Hegseth sent two messages announcing the launch of F-18 fighters and MQ-9 drones as the attack began. Krishnamoorthi then asked Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse if those are weapons systems.

Another Democrat, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, cited an executive order and a Defense Department manual that deem information “classified” if its unauthorized disclosure could harm national security, specifying details such as military plans and weapons systems.

Castro said he had seen things that were less sensitive presented to him with a high classification. To say it is not a lie to the country is a lie.

Source: U.S. intel leaders are grilled again about the leaked Signal chat as more details emerge

Discussion of the Plans for a U.S. Bombing Campaign in Yemen during a Q2 Chat on Signal on the Open-Source Message App Signal

A group of officials discussed plans for a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen during a chat on the open-source messaging app Signal.