A Monday headline from The Atlantic rose above the rest: “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
We love government transparency around here (even inadvertent transparency), so we clicked and read a number of stories on the matter.
We read, along with millions of others, that Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had apparently been inadvertently added to a group chat where top officials were discussing plans for ongoing military operations against the Houthis in Yemen.
The chat was taking place on Signal, an open-source, commercially available messaging platform that touts secure messaging through encryption.
We’ve since heard several responses from the federal government, almost simultaneously, calling it a glitch, indicating it isn’t a big deal, and even that Goldberg is a liar, despite others in the federal government stating the communication was authentic and taking responsibility.
There were statements issued that no classified data was transmitted, and that Signal is secure and approved for use on government phones.
On Wednesday the chat was called “sensitive policy discussions” and we were told we should find the conversation reassuring because of how “dynamic” the military and intelligence team is.
We recognize that more information will come out in the coming days, but we feel like we know enough to be the opposite of reassured.
Not realizing you’ve inadvertently let someone without proper government clearance into your “secure” and “sensitive” policy discussions isn’t very reassuring. Lying about it while simultaneously authenticating it isn’t very reassuring. Using an app to discuss sensitive data after the National Security Agency warned against using that app a month prior due to vulnerabilities (including Russian hackers using phishing scams to gain access to conversations) doesn’t leave us reassured. The use of emojis instead of actual words somehow also isn’t very reassuring coming from top people in what’s supposed to be one of the world’s top nations.
The incident has brought up numerous questions from national security experts and average Americans alike, and could have put service members in harm’s way who didn’t need to be there.
And then there’s the whole bit of it where those in the highest positions of our country were chatting in a group text and didn’t even know who all was in the group. Whoops.
Some have joked that “VP” in the chat could have been Vladimir Putin.
Whether or not you agree with the action taken in Yemen or not, or if the information Goldberg was privy to is considered “war plans” or not is beside the point. What matters right now are security and trust.
The American people deserve the answers to each and every question being asked of the federal government regarding this situation, without our nation’s top officials turning to insults, name-calling and gaslighting.
Because of this, there will likely be questions that we won’t have answers to for a long time, if ever. Just a few of those are: What else is being or has been communicated via methods that have not been approved for the transmission of classified or sensitive information and matters of national security? Are these records being kept in accordance with our nation’s laws? How inadvertently transparent did the United States just make itself to our adversaries at a time when our relationships with our allies are strained?
We’ll keep waiting to be reassured.
Randi Pierce
