Intelligence officials within President Donald Trump’s administration said Tuesday there was no classified information in the Signal discussion between administration officials, which was inadvertently shared with The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
The White House confirmed on Monday that Goldberg had accidentally been added to a Signal chat where cabinet officials discussed the military’s plans to bomb the Houthis in Yemen. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Ratcliffe both adamantly said the conversations contained no classified information during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I was on a Signal messaging group,” Ratcliffe told Democrat Virginia Sen. Mark Warner. “Can I add some context to that? I think it’s important because at the outset you made a couple of comments about Signal messaging using encrypted apps. So that we’re clear, one of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as the CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA as it is for most CIA officers. One of the things that I was briefed on very early, senator by the CIA records management folks 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 … So, my communications, to be clear, in a Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
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Warner continued to press the witnesses on whether there was classified information in the chat, and challenged them to share the information with the committee. (RELATED: ‘Learned A Lesson’: Trump Doubles Down On His Support For Mike Waltz After Accidental Signal Leak)
“There was no classified material that was shared in the Signal chat group,” Gabbard said.
“If there’s no classified material, share it with the committee,” Warner said. “You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs, this is our national security.”
Gabbard further said there is a stark difference between an “inadvertent release” versus “malicious leaks” of classified information, and continued to state there was no classified information leaked to Goldberg.
Later on in the hearing, Independent Maine Sen. Angus King challenged the officials on whether the information was classified given that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave detailed information on the planned airstrikes.
“Secretary Hegseth put into this group text a detailed operations plan including targets, the weapons we were gonna be using, the timing and yet you testified that nothing in that chain was classified. Wouldn’t that be classified? What if it had been made public that morning before the attack took place?” King asked.
“Senator, I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time … I defer to the defense secretary and the National Security Council on that question,” Gabbard said.
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Gabbard, Ratcliffe and Hegseth were in the chat with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Vice President JD Vance.
Prior to Hegseth sending the strike plans, the cabinet officials weighed in on whether this attack should be carried out, Goldberg wrote in his Monday piece for The Atlantic. An account identified as Vance reportedly pushed back on the action, arguing that the action may contradict President Donald Trump’s recent toughness on Europe.
The vice president’s office later told the Daily Caller that Trump and Vance are in “complete agreement” about foreign policy matters.
Goldberg said he decided to leave the chat on March 15 after the Houthi attacks were carried out.
Trump said he was unaware of Goldberg’s story or the leak of the conversation, and he later said that Waltz had “learned a lesson” and is a “good man.”
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