In this episode of “The Opinions,” the New York Times Opinion columnist David French breaks down the security concerns behind the Trump administration’s military discussions on the Signal app and the consequences such a security breach could have on American safety and military strategy.
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David French: I’m a columnist at The New York Times, and I’m a former JAG officer, an Army lawyer. Earlier this week, we found out that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, received an invitation from the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, to join a Signal group chat.
Audio clip of broadcast news: He was put on a group chat with several high ranking White House officials, and he received several messages discussing plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.
Audio clip of Jeffrey Goldberg: He was texting attack plans, when targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targets, when the next sequence of attacks were happening.
This is an absolutely stunning breach of security. I’ve helped investigate numerous allegations of classified information spillages, and I’ve never heard of anything this egregious. This is extraordinary.
There are so many ways in which sharing war plans is among the most egregious forms of security breach. It’s hard to think of a form of security breach that is worse than this. But aside from that, there is now public insight into conversations that were meant to be private.
You have the vice president questioning the judgment of the president. You have the vice president laying into our allies. I know that’s something that they do publicly, as well, but there’s a difference between public communication and private communication. The private communication was never intended for the allies. So all of these things are damaging diplomatically. They’re damaging politically. They’re damaging militarily, and in the worst scenario, they could be catastrophically dangerous for American lives.
It should be obvious to people that sharing plans for an attack hours before the attack could create problems, but let’s get a little bit more specific: The Houthis could move some of their weapons away from targeted locations. They could move senior officials away from targeted locations so that the strikes are less effective. They could choose to, for example, launch missiles themselves to attack before they are attacked, an action that could be incredibly costly in lives and in ships. They could move their senior leaders.
The administration is saying now that there was nothing classified in the chat and they weren’t really war plans, in many ways, casting aspersions on Goldberg’s integrity. In fact, when Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, was confronted with these facts, he attacked Goldberg and did not acknowledge his own wrongdoing. But there is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like this.
From the very first weeks that you’re a member of the military, you start learning about operational security. This is drilled into officers. And those consequences would be instant relief from command.
I have seen this with my own eyes. I have been a part of this process. You would have a relief from command followed by a comprehensive investigation, and potentially criminal charges. In the military, you would be advising an officer to seek counsel, to get a lawyer instantly, because the criminal investigation would be equally instant.
In the civilian context, and Pete Hegseth is a civilian, there should be an immediate Department of Justice investigation into how this happened. There are so many questions that arise that the Department of Justice should be answering. Why were they using the Signal app, which the Pentagon has warned members of the military against using for Department of Defense business? Who was on the chat? Were they posting in it directly? Were they posting through subordinates? How often is sensitive business being conducted on Signal?
There are so many questions that arise that the Department of Justice should be answering.
And I mentioned criminal charges. Federal law makes it a crime when a person, through gross negligence, removes information relating to the national defense from its proper place of custody and it is delivered to anyone in violation of trust or is lost, stolen, abstracted or destroyed. It’s way too soon to say whether Hegseth’s incompetence is also criminal, but I raise the possibility to demonstrate the sheer magnitude of the mistake, a security breach this significant requires thorough investigation. I can assure you that a Signal chat is not the right place to share sensitive information about upcoming American strikes.
The White House’s spin is laughable. It’s weak. They have claimed that there were no actual war plans shared.
Audio clip of President Trump: The attack was totally successful. It was, I guess, from what I understand, took place during. And it wasn’t classified information. So this was not classified.
Hegseth has attacked Goldberg, who has behaved incredibly responsibly in all of this. He did not share the national security information that came into his possession. He still has not shared it. This is a very responsible thing for a journalist to do, but he’s been attacked mercilessly.
And then they minimize the information. They say it wasn’t real war plans. Well, if this is no big deal, if these weren’t real war plans, they could release what was on the chat so that Americans could see for themselves. But so far, they’re not doing that.
The way to handle a security breach like this is to immediately, especially in the case of Hegseth, suspend him from his duties pending investigation. And I would say the same with the national security adviser, who inadvertently brought Goldberg into the chat.
The only thing that bars me from saying “Suspend everyone who’s on that chat” is, you would be hollowing out the administration in a time of real crisis globally.
Nothing destroys a leader’s credibility with soldiers more thoroughly than hypocrisy or double standards. When leaders break the rules that they impose on soldiers, they break the bond of trust between soldiers and commanders. The best commanders I knew did not ask a soldier to comply with a rule that they didn’t also follow. The best commanders led by example. So what example has Hegseth set? That he’s politically loyal, but also that he’s careless? And when you’re careless in the military, people can die. And that’s why I say, if he has any honor at all, he will resign.
Finally, the implications for national security are grave. The reason I say that is I would urge listeners not to look at this incident in isolation. This incident is occurring in a larger context. If the present course of action holds, which is the administration tries to brush it off and holds no one to account, then what you’ve had is a further reaffirmation that the American military is becoming a political military.
So you had the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, leading attorneys in the military, the JAG officers, JAG generals in the military, relieved for political reasons. Then you have the secretary of defense retained in spite of the fact that he violated every standard of operational security in a way that would lead any other soldier to face dramatic consequences. He’s still in office, and as of the moment of this recording, there seems to be no indication that he’s either going to step down or be fired.
So what does that say? It says that we’re replacing standards of professionalism with standards of political loyalty. I have seen far greater consequences applied to service members for far lesser security breaches than the kind of hand waving that we’re seeing now from the administration, where it’s minimizing what occurred, denying that it’s significant. This is not the way any other soldier would be treated under similar circumstances, but the rule is there’s one standard for MAGA, especially the MAGA loyalists, and there are other standards for everybody else.
And if you make the American military more political than professional — then you make the American military more like the Russian military. You make the American military more like the military of totalitarian states. And as fearsome as many of those militaries can look on paper, I guarantee you political militaries, pound for pound, are much less effective than professional militaries.
The stakes are, what are we doing to the very culture of the United States military? Are we telling it that the days of professionalism are over and the days for political loyalty have begun?
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