Transcription
Is a day that ends in the letter Y. It is another scandal day engulfing Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense, Pete Hgsth. Or at least that's what it feels like this week. But hey, it's only Wednesday.
On Monday, Hegathth, with the help of White House press secretary Caroline Levit, attempted to throw Admiral Frank Bradley under the bus, saying he's the individual responsible for the highly controversial double tap boat strikes in the Caribbean on September 2nd, which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and lawyers and experts believe may have constituted a war crime.
Yesterday, Pete Hegsth at Donald Trump's cabinet meeting seemed to endeavor to further embarrass himself with Hegsth claiming, "Hey, I wasn't even in the room for that second boat strike," which was not exactly the impression he left with his former colleagues at Fox News when he went on their airwaves the day after the strike took place.
"That was definitely not artificial intelligence. I I watched it live. Uh we knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing and we knew exactly who they represented and that was trendy Aragway, a narot terrorist organization designated by the United States trying to poison our country with illicit drugs."
Brings us to today almost a full circle moment for Pete Hegth and the Trump White House. The initial massive scandal which embarrassed the country and Donald Trump and his national security team. Signalgate. It was a massive national security breach. It was made possible entirely by the sloppy and haphazard nature of Donald Trump's national security team when they shared national security information, including war plans. And then former national security adviser Michael Waltz accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist from the Atlantic, to that group chat on signal.
A damning new report is being released from the Pentagon's Inspector General. That is the top watchdog at the building that Hegsth is in charge of running. That report says that Pete Hgsth shared information in that signal chat. Information that put mission operations and servicemen and women at risk about a pending military operation in Yemen that took place in March of this year.
The defense department's inspector general finds that while the mission ultimately was not jeopardized, Pete Hgse violated his department's own policies when he used Signal, a commercial messaging app that is not approved for sharing classified information. The Inspector General's report scheduled to be published on Thursday, was described to The Atlantic by numerous US officials familiar with its findings.
Now, while that controversy ultimately led to Michael Walls being removed from his position as Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Pete Hegsath and the White House have maintained that he did nothing wrong. The Pentagon's chief spokesperson today called the Inspector General report a total exoneration of Hegsth.
It's important to remember that if anybody did this who was not named Pete Hegth, like any of the men and women farther down the chain of command, those men and women would be thrown out of the military and almost certainly face criminal prosecution, maybe even worse. And keep that in mind as we're covering Hegsth in the White House, throwing people like Admiral Bradley under the bus for an act being described by Democrats and Republicans this week as a quote potential war crime.
The Atlantic goes on to report this quote, "Current and former government officials have told us that if lower level employees shared such sensitive information on a commercial platform, they would certainly be fired and possibly prosecuted." The Inspector General's conclusions seem likely to create an impression among the military rank and file that there are two sets of rules. One for the Defense Department's presidentially appointed leadership and one for everybody else. And that is not a surprise in Pete Hegs Pentagon. It is the culture he's ushered in. It is what we on the outside, the American people, have come to expect in his nearly 10-month tenure, running the largest military on the planet.
But it's also an embarrassment not only for the nation that the military serves, for the men and women in it, and for its commander-in-chief, frankly, Donald Trump. And it calls into question just how much more embarrassment Donald Trump is going to tolerate from his handpicked, bipartisanly opposed Secretary of Defense. It's where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Shane Harris is here. He covers national security and intel for the Atlantic. He is byelined on the reporting about the IG report we just read from. With me at the table for the hour, my friend and colleague, senior political analyst, contributing host on Pod Save America, host of the podcast Runaway Country, Alex Wagner is here.
Shane, take us through what you know about the IG report.
"Well, this has been some time uh in the making. Uh we know that we'd anticipated even a few months ago, but it's now finally going to be published on Thursday. And people who've read it say that it is pretty unambiguous about uh what Pete Haggset did that the information that he shared in that signal chat which to remind everyone included very detailed information about the time that US war plananes would be over their targets in Yemen that if that information had fallen into the wrong hands it could have jeopardized the lives of US forces as well as the success of the mission. And you know it I think this is important to repeat because from the beginning the real issue with the way this entire signal chat was set up is that the members of that group obviously did not seem to know that they had included an outsider namely my editor Jeff Goldberg in that group and it would have been trivially easy to add anyone else to that group as well. So from the very beginning, the security of this channel that was talking about an active military operation had effectively been compromised. And I think that that's really a key finding of the inspector general report to say look the information the had it fall into the wrong hands could have been you know very significant losses could have occurred. And the other is that the report is is clear as saying that the information was classified at the time that Secretary Hegsth received it. And this is really important too. Information like battle plans and operations of the kind that he shared are presumptively classified because of the damage that could be done if they were exposed. Administration officials including Secretary Hegsth have long said the information was not classified. So this is going to raise some really interesting questions when we see the full report. Did he declassify it before he put it in that channel? Did he affirmatively take steps to do so? Um, what is clear from people who've read it is that the IG says the information was classified when Pete Hegth received it from US Central Command which has responsibility for the military operation. So you know ultimately I think this is a real uh uh affirmation of what we originally reported which was that this was an extraordinary security breach uh and that the secretary should not have been handling this information in the way that he did."
I mean, Shane, I I understand that we are um it certainly is as a journalist. It's it's part of a story you're covering. It is possible that he will say as an excuse, I declassified it before I put it in the chat, but I'm going to read them to you and then I I think your body of reporting and our ability to use our common sense will make clear that these were not unclassified messages, even if he is going to retroactively say he declassified them.
11:44 a.m. Eastern time. Pete Hgsth posted in the signal chat in all caps. Quote, "Team update." The text beneath this began. Quote, "Time now 11:44 Eastern time. The weather is favorable. I just confirmed with Sentcom we are a go for mission launch. Sentcom or Central Command is the military's combatant command for the Middle East. The HEGT text continues. 12:15 Eastern time. F-18's launch first strike package 1345 so 145 triggerbased F-18 first strike window starts target terrorist is at his known location so should be on time also strike drones launch uh I'm going to keep reading but I'm going to stop here."
In all of your years, is there any example you've ever covered where a military operation targeting a known terrorist location was declassified before it was communic communicated with other heads of national security agencies?
"Never. And there would be no need to do so. Those people who he was sharing that with all have the highest level security clearances. So why would he need to be declassifying information to share it with for instance the CIA director who was also in that chat or the national security adviser. I mean Pete Hexf when he's sharing this does not know that Jeffrey Goldberg who does not have a security clearance. we should emphasize was in that room. So you know if he is going to make an argument and we we're going to see I guess what his statement is when the full report comes out that he declassified at the time. My question is why why would you need to um if this is operational information that you're sharing with the CIA director, the national security adviser, people of that level, there's no need to declassify it. They're allowed to see classified information. So something about this doesn't really quite wash in the sequencing. Um, which is I think why it's important to kind of come back to this IG finding that it was properly classified in the first place. If Hexath is going to say now, well, I declassified it. Um, that seems sort of to me like a retroactive excuse that he would not have made had this information not become public as it did."
Let me read you a few other of the texts that he sent. Um, more F-18s launched, the second strike package. Um, 215 strike drones on target. This is when the first bombs will definitely drop pending earlier trigger-based targets. 1536 F-18 second strike starts. Also for Cabbased tomahawks launched, we are currently clean on OPSSE. That is operational security. Godspeed to our warriors. Um, it is a real time Tik Tok of an ongoing of a military operation as it's happening in real time. Um, and and just I don't mean to be dense here, but is is there any example you've ever covered of an ongoing military operation being declassified in the moment of it happening?
"No, not being declassified. I mean, there are plenty of examples of senior level officials sharing information in real time. Um, I'm not aware of the Secretary of Defense sharing them with so many other people in the cabinet this way, but if they were in the situation room or if he were briefing people, it's conceivable. This is the kind of information that's kept in a very tight circle of people and shared on secure government communication systems for a reason."
While Pete Hagsath is sharing that information in that signal chat, Jeffrey Goldberg, as he's reported, was sitting in his car watching it come across onto his phone. I mean, it really gives you a sense of just how dramatic the breach was here that this information in real time, as you say, was being broadcast out to a civilian. Um, you know, and I've said this before, had, you know, had this ended up with a much less scrupulous journalist, um, somebody could have tweeted this in real time. Somebody might have thought, hey, I've got a great scoop. I'll just go ahead and write the story now about a bombing operation that's about to begin in Yemen. We obviously did not do that. And in our earlier reporting, we detail how we handled it. But that's the risk here is that he's sharing this information in real time. If that had become known to the Houthis who have surfaceto-air missiles, who have air defenses, the lives of those pilots would immediately be put at risk because they would know, the Houthies would know that the attack was coming and when it was coming.