Use of Signal in the White House Originated in the Biden Administration
It has been widely reported that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz made a significant error by inadvertently including Jeffrey Goldberg, the far-left, anti-Trump editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, in a Signal chat discussing the Trump administration’s imminent plans to bomb Houthi targets across Yemen. According to Goldberg, on March 11, he unexpectedly received a connection request from Waltz, which he accepted. This led to his inclusion in a group chat of 18 individuals, which included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Vice President J.D. Vance.
[Mary Chastain covered this story here.]
Goldberg recounted the story in a detailed article published on The Atlantic’s website on Monday. He said that at 11:44 a.m. on Saturday, March 15, he received a message from Hegseth containing “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
Just two hours later, bombs were falling across Yemen. Unsurprisingly, Goldberg condemned the “shocking recklessness” of discussing such sensitive information on Signal. He wrote:
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Signal is an open-source, encrypted messaging service, and frankly, I was surprised this group chose to conduct military planning on such a platform.
Clearly, I wasn’t alone in this reaction. The legacy media had a field day expressing their indignation over the entire affair. And, of course, the calls for Waltz’s immediate dismissal grew louder by the minute.
Hillary Clinton, whose use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state and subsequent destruction of equipment and emails, may have cost her the 2016 election should really have sat this one out.
In the end, President Donald Trump recognized that while Waltz had made a serious mistake, it was just that—a mistake—and he stood by him. It had not impacted the operation, and the entire team took away a valuable lesson.
Meanwhile, the exact “specifics” Hegseth included in his pre-strike message remain unclear. Although Goldberg did not directly quote Hegseth in his article, he strongly implied access to “secret” information.
In the X post below, The Daily Signal’s Tony Kinnett questions Goldberg’s characterization of Hegseth’s message. Did Goldberg exaggerate?
What Goldberg & the Atlantic are calling TOP SECRET “war plans” is a massive embellishment—any butterbar fresh out of ROTC could tell you that. These aren’t war plans. These aren’t even school board notes. They’re “Ok, we’re ready to do that thing everyone knew we were going to do? Yep? Neat. Also Europe sucks.” Watergate this is not. It’s a final, informal check-in after things are already planned/assigned.
As for the team’s use of Signal, according to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, this was something that carried over from the Biden administration.
During the Tuesday morning edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Lawrence Jones noted, “many people in the intelligence community use Signal all the time.” He asked Cotton if that was correct.
“Lawrence, that is correct,” Cotton replied. “In fact, I bet a bunch of those senators that you see at the hearing today are using Signal as well to speak to each other or to speak to their aides.
“It is my understanding that the Biden administration authorized Signal as a means of communication that was consistent with presidential record keeping requirements for its administration — and that continued into the Trump administration,” he said.
“It’s simply another messaging app like the iMessage app on your iPhone or email servers that every administration has set up in which senior administration officials can communicate with each other.”
On Monday night, CNN’s Scott Jennings said, “I did learn a few things in some of my conversations, if you’re interested. One is that the Signal program was preloaded on a number of devices and agency computers in this circuit when they got there. So, in their view, it was already in use.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said essentially the same thing during his sworn testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
So that we’re clear, one of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at, uh, the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers.Um, one of the things that I was briefed on very early, Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about—about the use of Signal as a permissible work use. It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration.
And Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers, “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal chat.”
A lot of calls for Waltz’s head to roll. Ever notice that nobody was ever fired from the Biden administration?
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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