It plays like Saturday Night at the ‘Amateur Hour’ by the American National Security ‘Leadership’?
John Ganz: “These guys might look like idiots, and talk like idiots, but don’t let that fool you: they really are idiots.”
“I suppose there is a small possibility that this was some kind of ‘op’ — an intentional leak to Goldberg and The Atlantic — but to what end? It makes them look amateurish and bad at their jobs. To a president obsessed with image, this is even more important than the actual national security implications.”
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Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told CNN there’s “no doubt” that Russia and China were monitoring the U.S. officials’ devices used for a war plan group chat.
Said Bacon: “I will guarantee you, 99.99 percent with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones. So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the actual attacks on Yemen or the Houthis.”
He added: “They intentionally put highly classified information on an unclassified device. I would have lost my security clearance in the Air Force for this and for a lot less.”
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“Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
— Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, on X, the day after she took part in a group chat that leaked classified war plans to a journalist.
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President Donald Trump stood by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a private, high-level chat on the messaging app Signal where military plans were being discussed, NBC Newsreports.
Said Trump: “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
Bill Kristol: “If a scandal comes to light and no one does anything about it—is it a real scandal?”
Update….
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied he mishandled classified information and insisted “nobody was texting war plans,” a direct contradiction to the White House’s response to a Signal chat between top Trump administration officials made public Monday by a journalist who was mistakenly added to the discussion.
Hegseth sought to discredit Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, after his explosive story detailed how he was added to texts in a commercial app where Hegseth laid out the targets of airstrikes on Yemen-based Houthi fighters….
More…
Update…
Circular firing squad on this as tenedees point to Hegseth, Trump says he has Waltz’s back and they seem to try to sell no classified info was disclosed and someone says’Sure was’
Goldberg is teasing that if nothing classified?
Then he could go to print????