The incident is a “disaster, as it shows a high level of amateurism,” Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, told Xinhua. “It is naive to have such important conversations over a non-secure channel. It sends a bad signal to friends and adversaries.”
WASHINGTON, March 26 (Xinhua) — Top U.S. officials are facing a tsunami of criticism after a journalist was accidentally invited to their online discussion over war plans on Houthi forces in Yemen.
Lawmakers, media outlets and political analysts have lambasted top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration for what they describe as jaw-dropping amateurism for inadvertently adding a journalist to an unsecured group chat on Signal, a commercial messaging app.
Members of the chat group included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who discussed plans to strike Yemen.
According to the inadvertently invited journalist, The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, Defense Secretary Hegseth posted in the Signal thread operational details about upcoming strikes against Houthis, “including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
The incident is a “disaster, as it shows a high level of amateurism,” Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, told Xinhua. “It is naive to have such important conversations over a non-secure channel. It sends a bad signal to friends and adversaries.”
Roger Wicker, a Republican senator and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday, “We’re very concerned about it and we’ll be looking into it on a bipartisan basis.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, labeled the incident “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time.”
In a previously scheduled Senate hearing Tuesday, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee blasted the Trump administration for its actions, while chat participants maintained that they had not discussed anything classified.
“Did this conversation at some point include information on weapons, packages, targets or timing?” asked Martin Heinrich, a Democratic senator from New Mexico.
“Not that I’m aware of,” CIA Director Ratcliffe replied.
Jon Ossoff, a Democratic senator from Georgia, asked whether the discussion included Vice President Vance’s private opinion on the wisdom of proposed U.S. strikes in Yemen.
“I don’t recall,” Ratcliffe said.
According to Goldberg, Vance challenged the wisdom of U.S. strikes on Yemen, arguing that the U.S. move was bailing Europe out as Europe is more reliant on the Red Sea transport route. Both Vance and Hegseth showed disdain for Europe.
Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that the unwillingness of the individuals involved in the chat to “even apologize or acknowledge what a colossal screw-up this is speaks volumes.”
“This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly toward classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error,” said Warner. “It’s a pattern.”
While Democratic senators relentlessly questioned the issue, Republican senators in the hearing almost completely refrained from asking about it. The senators from both parties took their respective sides, highlighting strong partisan divisions.
When Gabbard and Ratcliffe were repeatedly interrogated about whether the group chat contained “classified information,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, a Republican, stepped in to offer support, emphasizing that Defense Secretary Hegseth is the “original classification authority.”
Christopher Galdieri, a political science professor at Saint Anselm College, said the fact that this conversation was conducted on a consumer-grade messaging app alone says nothing good about this administration’s level of professionalism.
“Cabinet members and national security officials have secure devices and locations for these conversations to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. It’s just appalling,” Galdieri told Xinhua.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who reportedly invited Goldberg to the chat group, on Tuesday assumed “full responsibility” for the leaked Signal group chat. “I take full responsibility. I built the group,” Waltz told Fox News. “It’s embarrassing. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
Trump defended Waltz on Tuesday, saying that the national security advisor will not be fired over the incident despite some Democrats calling for Waltz’s and Hegseth’s resignation.
“He’s not getting fired,” Trump told Fox News. The president said the incident was a “mistake,” though there was “nothing important” in the Signal text thread.
Political science professor Galdieri said that certainly someone should resign or be fired for this incident, but “this administration likely sees that sort of thing as capitulation, not accountability.”
The breach also sends the wrong message to U.S. adversaries, critics said.
“It does tell the world that many of the folks in crucial roles are sloppy and indifferent to basic information security,” Galdieri said.
“If I’m a hostile or unfriendly power, that’s useful information to have,” Galdieri said. “It also indicates a looseness with information and disregard for basic precautions that could endanger American troops or assets around the world.”
“That sort of thing can lead to tensions between the military and civilian leadership in ways that can get unpredictable,” said Galdieri.
Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, said, “The defense secretary, the secretary of state, the vice president, the national security advisor, and the rest are completely disinterested in what their staff people tell them.”
“Each of them doubtless had a subordinate who told them the security procedures more than once, and then gave up,” Ramsay told Xinhua. ■
