The Atlantic just reported on this colossal Screw-Up Crew about 2 hours before I wrote this and I didn't see it reported here, so here we go: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans: This should give you a gift link:
According to Jeffrey Goldberg, journalist and editor in chief of The Atlantic:
On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me.
So of course he thinks (my paraphrase) “Maybe it’s them, maybe it’s not, but sure, I’ll listen in and see what they’re up to.”
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.”
The group apparently included Michael Waltz, Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Scott Bessent, Pete Hegseth, Brian McCormack, Steve Witkoff, Susie Wiles, Stephen Miller, and/or their representatives, as well as a CIA guy that Goldberg decided not to name because he's still an active officer. All are now in charge of US national security, have close ties to $Resident $Rump, or both.
Go to the linky and read the whole thing. Here is a linky to the story in the archive in case you can't get through via the gift link, archive.is/… But I encourage you to sign in to The Atlantic and give them the traffic. The degree of ineptitude is appalling. You will laugh or cry. Maybe both.
The group went on to discuss their plans for attacking Houthis in Yemen and revealed some very callous political calculations concerning these people’s LIVES. And some peripheral concerns such as their “loathing” for Europe. At one point “Hegseth” says “I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC [operations security]” and later “We are currently clean on OPSEC”.
LOL.
“I am totally unable to spy on you.”
Goldberg only accepted its probable reality after the bombs fell. Even then, he reached out to apparent members of the group and they confirmed it was real.
Goldberg’s colleague interviewed national security lawyers. They verified what your common sense probably already tells you — the whole thing is illegal, foolish, and potentially security-endangering: Bolding mine:
A... U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place.... The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose. If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF… or communicate only on approved government equipment…. as these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public. Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.
Waltz also scheduled the message strings to disappear after 1-4 weeks, likely violating federal records laws. I’m sure AG Bondi will get right on that (do I need the snark tag?).
The Screw-Up Crew. I feel safer, don’t you? (snark again)
But ya know, her emails.
UPDATE 630-640 PM: On ABC Evening News, Martha Raddatz reports (I am typing this as she says it): “A stunning security breach". Lots of quotes from the text messages as shown in The Atlantic, making many of the points I make here. “Hours afterward,” $Rump claims to know nothing about the breach. “Pentagon is dumbfounded”. Almost 10 minutes on the story, that’s a long story for their 30-minute show. For contrast, they spend 2 minutes on the immigration court battle a bit later in the show. Looks like TPTB might be a bit perturbed when national security is endangered!
