Signal-gate and the Innocent Bystander

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In a rapidly developing national political scandal that is now in its third day, White House and Pentagon officials are working at warp(ed) speed to control damage to their public personas.  When news broke earlier this week that top government officials had met a few days earlier over a public group chat service called Signal to discuss military attacks on Yemen and Houthi rebels and pirates in the Red Sea, and that they had somehow inadvertently invited the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine into their conversation, a tsunami of bad press went surging across the world's media landscape.

Donald Trump, being a politician who is only responsible for good news, quickly denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, the public relations fiasco that was also a likely breach of national security and was definitely rocking his administration.   In fact, Trump seemed to be trying to lay the blame at the feet Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor who had been included in the high level discussion and briefing.  After the incident occurred and had been made public, Trump, a master of projection, referred to Goldberg as a "sleazebag."

"Sleazebag" or not, when Goldberg finally realized that the correspondence he was receiving was not some elaborate prank in which he was a victim being"punked" by persons unknown, he withdrew from the conversation, and subsequently notified officials that he had been accidentally included in the chat.    Most of the players, Donald Trump included, quickly made their way to news outlets to announce that no classified material had been discussed in the group chats.  

Some of those players included in the actual conversation included Vice President Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard,  National Security Adviser Mike Waltz - who set up the group chat, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, (presumed) White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff - each and every one of whom was handpicked for their critical and highly sensitive jobs by Donald John Trump.

Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg was identified in the messaging as "JG," and no one in the group questioned his presence or identity.  Goldberg observed the group interaction but did not participate.

After listening to the caterwauling of the players for a couple of days, as well as their insistent denials that classified material had been discussed, Goldberg and his magazine, The Atlantic, decided to release the transcripts of the group chat.  There could be no conceivable harm in that if the cyber-meeting was as innocent as the participants - and even Trump - said that it was.  Yesterday that transcript was published by The Atlantic, and chief among its contents were specifics of an attack on targets in Yemen that took place two hours after Defense Secretary Hegseth posted the information on the group chat.  Even some Republican politicians are struggling to explain why those plans would not have been classified.

Steve Witkoff was in Moscow meeting with Putin at the time of the attack.  It is unknown whether he had access to his messaging app while he was in the Kremlin or not, but the proximity of that information to the nerve center of Russian intelligence should be extremely troubling to American intelligence - to say the absolute very least!

The bombing plans seem to have been carried out effectively, which is amazing because the preparations were comical and slipshod from the get-go.  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth entered specifics about targets and the timing of airstrikes two hours in advance on an app that the Pentagon had instructed military personnel not to use for classified on sensitive material.

Signal is not an approved government platform for sharing classified information.

Part of the reason that Mike Waltz (or whoever made the actual decision) chose to use Signal is that it can be set to delete messages at a specific time, and it could be used to contravene the Presidential Records Act of 1978 which established public ownership of records created by Presidents and their staff in the course of discharging their official duties.  Over the years there seems to have developed a reticence on the part of presidential administrations and some of their members to  follow the law and dutifully preserve all records, particularly those that history might find to be incriminating.  

Some are arguing that Signal was used by that particular working group to circumvent the Presidential Records Act.   The government has servers which are encrypted and secure for sending and receiving classified information, but those would result in official records that would have to be kept in accordance with the Presidential Records Act of 1978.   Using apps like Signal and private email accounts is one way to circumvent that pesky law.   Signal and private email accounts also pose serious  threats to national security - and everyone involved in that particular group chat should have been well aware of the risks involved.

The scandal is building and politicians from both parties are demanding answers. Right now the only obvious fact of the matter is that Donald Trump was just an innocent bystander - as he always is.