The news that a U.S. journalist was inadvertently included in a top secret U.S. military chat group should have citizens anxious about how the Trump administration handles its affairs.
In mid-March, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, a venerable publication of 167 years, received a text message from Mike Waltz, White House national security adviser, inviting him to a chat group to discuss U.S. military actions. The message was sent via Signal, an open-source messaging program.
According to Goldberg’s account in The Atlantic, he initially thought the invitation was a hoax. It’s not unusual, he said, for journalists to receive requests from malcontents or untrustworthy operatives eager to lead them astray.
Others invited to discuss whether the United States should bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.
Though he was merely a bystander in the discussions, Goldberg’s presence was never questioned, leading us to suspect a glaring lack of oversight.
In his account of the group chats that ensued from March 11 to March 15, it was when the U.S. began bombing Yemen that Goldberg dropped out of the discussion, which also escaped notice.
Of note, Waltz had set all the communications on the Signal app to self-delete — some after one week, some after four weeks, a violation of federal records law.
If using messaging platforms such as Signal, all government employees are required to promptly forward or copy their communications to an official government account.
On Monday, the National Security Council confirmed Goldberg’s account of the security leak, which Goldberg did not go into detail because of its highly sensitive nature, including Hegseth’s sharing of how the military would carry out the attacks and the kinds of weapons they would use.
Mark Zaid, a lawyer who frequently represents national security officials, credited Goldberg’s discerning treatment of the highly sensitive information.
“It proved to be a good thing I guess that it was Jeff and the Atlantic,” Zaid told Politico. “If it had gone to someone else, it may very well have been reported on immediately and required the scuttling of the entire operation.”
On Tuesday, Hegseth pooh-poohed the security breach, saying “Nobody was texting war plans.”
That is, other than him.
The White House spinned the four days of chats over an unsecure network as a “demonstration of deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
We disagree.
Highly sensitive war plans and classified information took place outside of secure government channels specifically intended for such discussions.
The consequences of a potential military attack being leaked to an adversary, in this case the Houthi rebels, gives them an untold advantage, potentially jeopardizing the lives of our men and women in uniform.
Good leaders own up to their mistakes.
