Two of the Trump Administration’s top intelligence officials defended the use of a group chat for high-level military planning during a contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday, as Democrats questioned the national security implications of discussing sensitive war plans on a commercial messaging app.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The hearing, which had been previously scheduled, came a day after a bombshell report by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, National Security Adviser, and other top officials had used the unsecured platform to coordinate U.S. military strikes in Yemen, and had mistakenly included a journalist in the conversation. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, both of whom appeared to have been participants in the Signal group chat according to The Atlantic’s report, were hammered by Senate Democrats, who decried the episode as reckless. While Gabbard declined to confirm her involvement in the chat, she and Ratcliffe ultimately insisted that no classified information was shared.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s ranking Democrat, pressed Gabbard and Ratcliffe on how the incident occurred and why senior officials felt comfortable using an unsecured platform to discuss U.S. military action in Yemen. “If this were a military officer or intelligence officer, they would be fired,” Warner said, condemning what he described as “sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior” by the Administration.
Gabbard, who repeatedly dodged questions on whether she was the user identified as “TG” in the chat, eventually asserted that the discussion was permissible under internal protocols. “There was no classified material that was shared,” she said, echoing a similar defense offered by the White House. In his article, Goldberg wrote that the chat contained information about weapons packages, strike timing, and target details for an active military operation—the March 15 U.S. air assault on Yemen’s Houthi militants.
Ratcliffe maintained that “Signal is a permissible work-use application” for the CIA and that it was loaded onto his computer shortly after he was confirmed as the agency’s director. “It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate for work purposes, provided, Senator, that any decisions that are made are also recorded through formal channels. So those were procedures that were implemented,” Ratcliffe said, claiming that any formal decisions were recorded through official government channels.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe agreed to comply with an audit of their communications in response to questioning from Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, who pressed them on their claim that they did not participate in classified discussions on Signal. “To be clear, I haven’t participated in any Signal group messaging that relates to any classified information at all,” Ratcliffe said. “Senator, I have the same answer,” Gabbard said. “I have not participated in any Signal group chat, or any other chat on another app that contained any classified information.”
The Signal group, convened by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and other senior officials, along with Goldberg, who was mistakenly included in the thread.
“This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for him is entirely unacceptable,” Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, said to Ratcliffe. “It’s an embarrassment. You need to do better.”
Republicans on the committee largely sidestepped the controversy during the hearing, which was intended to focus on “worldwide threats.” None of them asked about the chat scandal, instead focusing their questions on cartels, illegal immigration, and China.
The White House has sought to downplay the incident, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting on social media that “no war plans were shared.” In an NBC interview Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump dismissed concerns about Waltz or the larger scandal, calling it his Administration’s “only glitch in two months” and expressing continued confidence in his national security team. “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said.
Hegseth, for his part, pushed back on the original article, telling reporters Monday that “nobody was texting war plans.” In an interview with CNN, Goldberg refuted that claim. “That’s a lie,” he said. “He was texting war plans, he was texting attack plans.”
Goldberg chose to withhold operational details and the name of a CIA official he says was mentioned in the chat in order to protect the safety of intelligence officials and military personnel—but he could be motivated to release more from the messages now that Trump Administration officials are both insisting no classified information was shared, and refuting his reporting that the conversation did not involve war plans. Asked if Goldberg could be held legally liable if he decided to publish the messages, FBI Director Kash Patel, who was sitting beside Gabbard and Ratcliffe, refused to answer: “I’m not going to prejudge the situation, and that legal call is ultimately for the Department of Justice,” he said.
The controversy underscores broader concerns about security protocols in the Trump Administration. Former officials and intelligence experts have warned that using any unclassified messaging service to coordinate military operations represents a major breach of standard protocol, even if it’s a platform like Signal that is encrypted. Those concerns came to a head during the hearing when Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, pressed Ratcliffe on the severity of the mistake. “This was a huge mistake, no?” Ossoff asked. “No,” Ratcliffe replied. The exchange quickly grew heated as Ossoff and Ratcliffe talked over each other. Ratcliffe later conceded that adding a journalist to the chat was an “inadvertent mistake,” which did not appear to satisfy Ossoff. “There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error,” he said.
Some Democrats have called for resignations in the wake of the reporting. Warner, the intelligence committee’s vice chair, has said both Waltz and Hegseth should step down.
“Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system, it’s also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line, and nobody bothered to even check,” Warner said, referring to Goldberg having been included in the discussion. “Security hygiene 101: Who are all the names?”
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and a former Air Force Brigadier General, stopped short of calling for resignations, but made clear late Monday that he believed the officials on the group chat acted recklessly.
“I will guarantee you, 99.99% with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones,” he told CNN. “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.”
source https://time.com/7271504/signal-tulsi-gabbard-john-ratcliffe/
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