The security experts see the breach as a ‘heads are exploding’ situation

White House Communications with the President’s Security Advisor: Detecting a Large Security Breakdown in the United States, Revealed by Goldberg

Goldberg says he saw the plans days after being added to a Signal chat called “Houthi PC small group” by a user named Michael Waltz, the name of President Trump’s national security adviser. Goldberg told All Thing Considered that he discovered a large security breach in the United States.

“Any one of us that served in the military or serve in the military would be in Leavenworth if we did this,” former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, said via X.

“Heads are exploding,” Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who was deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in the Biden administration, told NPR’s Morning Edition as he described conversations with former colleagues about high-ranking Trump officials’ Signal chat.

Under normal circumstances, national security officials go to great lengths to maintain secrecy when discussing sensitive military operations. The Congressional Research Service says that the Principals Committee is a body of heads of departments or agencies.

The most secure venue in the U.S. government is where the meetings of the Principals Committee are held.

Greg Myre reported that the secure rooms were built to discuss classified information. “You can’t take a phone into these rooms. You can’t take documents out, and all of these top-ranking national security officials have SCIFs at their offices and at their homes.”

“This is a top secret network that beams them into the White House Situation Room,” Price says, adding that if a member is traveling, a national security team accompanies them to set up a secure tent and other equipment to protect their communications.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, says that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information about targets and weapons on the eve of the U.S. attack.

Goldberg did not share what he said could be damaging elements of the communications sent to him, including what he called “operational details of forthcoming strikes.”

National security experts were alarmed by the fact that they had used a public messaging app. The messaging app Signal was specifically cited in a memo as an example of an unmanaged messaging app that isn’t authorized to send DOD information.

Experts don’t believe that using open source software to conduct government communications is a good idea, because it doesn’t use the proper security measures.

The Pentagon doesn’t need a war: Pentagon leaders admit no war in the Signal chat group, and a top Trump official admits no war

Last week, a Pentagon-wide email went out warning staff about a vulnerability in the messaging app, according to NPR’s Tom Bowman. The notice stated that professional hacking groups from Russia could be at risk of working to spy on communications. The notice was apparently sent days after Goldberg told Waltz that he had somehow been added to the PC group, and left the chat.

The speaker of the house said on Tuesday that no plans for a war were shared in the group chat.

The Democratic senators of the Senate Intelligence Committee were not comfortable with the claims by the Director of National Intelligence and CIA Director.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor- in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed that a top Trump administration official accidentally added him to a group chat on an app about bomb targets in Yemen.

“My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information,” Ratcliffe testified.

Gabbard refused to say whether she was on the Signal chat group, but added that she has not shared any classified information outside of proper channels.

Goldberg wrote that Gabbard and Ratcliffe were among the 18 individuals who participated in the text chain, a group that Goldberg said also included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“If there was 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.”

Source: Intelligence leaders: We didn’t share classified information in Signal chat group

The News of the Black Hole Message Thread in Signal War Planes Congress (article by Galois Goldberg, Sen. Mike Rounds, P.C., NPR)

Goldberg initially believed that it might be a hoax, but he soon realized that it was real and read it for several days. He said that he was inadvertently included in the group. He believed that the aide handling his account was about to include someone with the same initials as Goldberg.

The National Security Council confirmed the authenticity of the message thread on Monday, stating it was looking into how an accidental number was added to the chain.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the security breach, saying the incident raises questions about the Trump administration’s handling of sensitive information.

The Democrats in Congress criticized many of the picks for lack of experience during their nomination process, and now want to further investigate them.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have publicly called for an investigation into what they respectively called “this unacceptable and irresponsible national security breach” and the “damage it created.”

“We’re very concerned,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters on Monday, adding that his panel would look into the matter directly.

Maine’s Susan Collins is a Republican who serves on the Intelligence Committee. Collins said the incident was “inconceivable to me.”

The intel panel will have a deeper discussion on the breach behind closed doors, according to Sen. Mike Rounds.

“I don’t think it was a good thing, but I want to hear an explanation of it from the individuals involved in it in a classified setting so I get the full story before I make a judgement on it,” Rounds told NPR.

Source: Intelligence leaders: We didn’t share classified information in Signal chat group

Rep. J.C. Johnson (D-Nev.) on the ‘Measurement of Integrality, Integrity, and Freedom”

In the House, Republicans have largely been more muted. The issue did not come up during the House GOP weekly meeting on Tuesday, signaling hopes to downplay the matter.

“Obviously that was a mistake, and a serious one,” he said. Johnson described the chat participants as patriotic and said it was a success.

The congressman made it clear that the information should not be transmitted to those without security clearances.