US intelligence leaders grilled by lawmakers about Yemen group chat leak

WASHINGTON

US intelligence community leaders faced oftentimes intense questioning Tuesday for their involvement in a leaked Signal group chat that inadvertently included a prominent journalist as senior officials discussed plans to strike Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Mark Warner, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, blasted the fiasco as "reckless" and "sloppy" while maintaining it is part of a larger pattern of the Trump administration's "incompetent" handling of classified information. He described it as "mind-boggling" that no one checked the names of those in the chat.

"There's plenty of declassified information that shows our adversaries, China and Russia, are trying to break into encrypted systems like Signal. I can just say this: If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer, and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired," he added.

Warner cited the administration’s "reckless" decisions to send the names of hundreds of recent CIA hires over an unsecured network, dismissals of key FBI personnel, including those working in counterterrorism and intelligence, as well as the decision to halt all foreign aid spending, which affected a broad swathe of US priorities, including the imprisonment of Daesh/ISIS terrorists in Syria and air defenses in Ukraine.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe maintained that no classified information was included in the discussion on the Signal messaging platform, seeking to downplay the gravity of the growing scandal in testimony before the committee that spanned more than two hours.

Ratcliffe separately acknowledged that he was included in the text chain, but maintained that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ultimately wields authority on declassification of any information that was shared in the group chat as it pertains to military strikes and planning, reiterating Hegseth's position that no classified information was divulged.

Atlantic magazine Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg said in his bombshell report Monday that he had been mistakenly added to the “Houthi PC small group” chat on March 13 after receiving a connection request from an account bearing the name of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz two days prior.

Alongside him in the group were accounts bearing the names of Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, Gabbard and Stephen Miller, a top aide to Trump.

On the morning when the strikes were ultimately carried out, March 15, Goldberg said he received messages that highlighted "the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation," including key operational details of the strikes such as intended targets and weapons the US would use. Congratulatory messages among the senior officials began to appear as the strikes unfolded, confirming his suspicions that the thread was genuine. He left the chat the following day.

Under questioning about whether the timing, types of weapons that were to be used and targets of the strikes would be considered classified information, Gabbard said, "I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time."

An incredulous Independent Sen. Angus King lambasted the suggestion that none of the information discussed was classified, saying, "What if that had been made public that morning, before the attack took place?"

"Secretary Hegseth put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets, the weapons we were going to be using, attack sequences and timing. Yet you've testified that nothing in that text in that chain was classified. Wouldn't that be classified?" he asked.

"I defer to the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council on that question," responded Gabbard.

Warner insisted that if there were no classified information in the thread it should be made public.

"The notion there's not even acknowledgement of 'hey, gosh, we screwed up' is stunning to me. And the idea somehow, well, none of this was classified, but we can't talk about it here. You can't have it both ways," he said.