Ethics Alarms’ “Incompetence Monday” is concluding with a truly damning finale that should set ethics alarms ringing across the Trump Administration. We shall see.
It was revealed today that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed highly classified plans for U.S. troops to attack the Houthi militia in Yemen to an encrypted private chat group. That was irregular enough, but Hegseth didn’t notice that the editor-in-chief of “The Atlantic,” Jeffrey Goldberg, had been added to the text “chat” on the commercial messaging app Signal by Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.
Goldberg then wrote in an article published today telling readers that he had been mistakenly added into a discussion that could have led to a military disaster if the information had leaked. Great. Goldberg said he followed the conversation among senior members of President Trump’s national security team including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The attacks that were discussed in detail took place two days later. On March 15, Hegseth posted the “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg wrote. “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East.”
Goldberg did not publish the details of the war plans in his article. I can think of a lot of journalists who would not have exercised such restraint. Hegseth, and the U.S., were lucky.
There can be no excuse for such an outrageous breach of security. Not only was a journalist inadvertently included in the group, but the conversation also took place outside of the secure government channels reserved for classified discussions and sensitive military planning.
Writing in the New York Times, David French, a former JAG officer, was apoplectic. Hegseth, he raged, had “just blown his credibility as a military leader.”
“I’ve helped investigate numerous allegations of classified information spillages, and I’ve never even heard of anything this egregious — a secretary of defense intentionally using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans without even apparently noticing a journalist was in the chat. There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and, potentially, 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 or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted or destroyed.”
Perhaps the degree of outrage from French was goosed a bit by his extreme NeverTrump mindset of long-standing, but it would he hard to argue that this gaffe isn’t serious and a damaging embarrassment for the Trump administration. During his first term, President Trump repeatedly said Hillary Clinton should have been tried and imprisoned for using her private email server to communicate with her staff and others while she was Secretary of State. Waltz, who was on the botched chat, posted on social media in June 2023: “Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing.”
French concluded his opinion piece by going for the jugular. “Nothing destroys a leader’s credibility with soldiers more thoroughly than hypocrisy or double standards,” he wrote. “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 didn’t also apply to them. The best commanders led by example. What example has Hegseth set? That he’s careless, and when you’re careless in the military, people can die. If he had any honor at all, he would resign.”
He’s not wrong. This will be an early test of how serious the new administration is about accountability. Someone’s head should roll for this.
Ethics Alarms 
“… but it would he hard to argue that this gaffe isn’t serious and a damaging embarrassment … .”
Embarrassment? Hell no. It is well beyond that. If it is true, a caveat here as it is in almost all of the media, it is an immediate firing offense. It is adding significantly to the danger our armed forces face in combat operations for no reason other than gross incompetence.
Few thought Hegseth had wherewithal to be Defense Secretary. But the lock-steppers put him in anyway. Enough thought Trump was presidential. Now we’ll see if he prefers ass-kissers over the good of the country.
I am not optimistic.
I agree in all respects without qualification, HJ.
Concur.
I could make a fatuous comment about “DUI hires” but things are too serious for that, and have been for some time.
The US has gotten what it voted for.
“The US has gotten what it voted for”
Progressive pounces.
lol ok Zoe. If this episode helps progressives salvage some level of dignity after being completely trashed in opinion polls for months on end now, then go ahead.
But yes, we are getting what we voted for- a slash a burn run through our disgustingly bloated and over-scaled federal government.
We’re getting the long overdue pushback against the FDR technocratic revolution that was counter to American culture in many ways.
Yeah, this is probably a serious error. But don’t pretend like it’s some sort of “see how much better the progressive train would have been” moment.
“The US has gotten what it voted for”
I keep running into this. This seems to be one of the Talking Points that is being pushed.
Somebody on Reddit (yes, I know) wanted to know why conservatives are upset about this, using the canard “This is what they wanted.”
No, this isn’t what we wanted. This isn’t what we voted for.
We voted for border enforcement and for the enforcement of laws in general.
We voted for the end of racial and other minority preferences in hiring, promoting and admissions.
We voted for greater efficiency in how our tax dollars are spent.
We voted for the end of pushing pseudoscience on vulnerable children in the name of gender affirmation.
We voted for the end of parents being cut out of their own children’s education and being singled out for investigation after complaining at school board meetings.
We also voted for accountability. The Biden administration didn’t fire anyone except the guy who kept stealing people’s luggage at airports. If Hesgeth was responsible for this botch, he must go.
“The US has gotten what it voted for”
It’s essentially a “Nelson” (“Ha Ha!”) and not unfair or inappropriate, just misleading. Everyone who voted for Trump knew of the many downsides of his character and leadership style, many of them dangerous and unpresidential. Obviously they didn’t want to get a President in office with those traits, but it was and is an inextricable part of the package, and, as AM eloquently states, it was the rest of that package that carried the day. The reason Trump appointed extreme, loyal outsiders to his Cabinet was clear and, I have argued, forced on him by the way he was sabotaged from within during Term I. Hegseth was a very risky, reckless appointment; so were several of the others; Matt Gaetz was an unforgivable nomination: imagine what he might have done with classified information.
The problem with the taunt is that it’s like saying Democrats who voted for Clinton wanted him to end up in a sex scandal, or that Taft voters really wanted to have a fat President.
French said that if Hegseth had any honor, he would resign. I’ll add that if Trump had any honor, Hegseth would be fired. Immediately.
Don’t hold your breath to see who goes first.
Okay, now, going first, a spokeswoman/man to clarify what we underlings cannot grasp from plain facts.
Why would any government official use a third-party app to discuss sensitive national security and defense information? The answer: They wouldn’t if they had a modicum of competence.
This is appalling, and makes every single one of them look like swashbuckling fools.
That’s my take as well. They continued to participate in that conversation; JD Vance among them. Not one of them said uh guys, let’s take this elsewhere? I’m angered, dismayed, and disappointed.
Having vented my disgusts elsewhere, I would like to don my conspiracy theory hat for a moment. What if, and bear with me for a moment, what if the Trump Administration is avoiding the secure government channels because those have been compromised and leak information like a sieve? I will readily admit that hubris, stupidity, and incompetence are likelier explanations, but this does fit the Deep State narrative.
As foolish as it is to take this to signal, my gut instinct is along these lines – Trump doesn’t trust any official channels because he still hasn’t cleaned house.
I’m sure of that, and I’m also sure that if nobody gets fired, that’s the reason. And its not a good enough one.
There was no justification for using a non-government platform, and the fact that there was no military harm doesn’t make it a non-foul. National security is the worst place to have people in charge who appear to be careless.
Heh. Who knows? And yes, I have read that this is currently a “rule” that is permissible, but I still find it tragically stupid and careless. Carelessness by people charged with defending our country is de facto unethical.
Another headline for this post could easily be: Ethics Hero: Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic
There is no excuse . . . NONE . . . for discussing classified information outside of the proper systems (both technical and physical) that are designed to protect it. NONE.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen and heard this sort of thing happen quite a few times in my career. Once or twice it even became my job to scramble and contain it.
There’s a thing that happens when classified information becomes your everyday job: it becomes, in people’s minds, an everyday THING and gets treated with the same level of care as what you ate for lunch. That doesn’t make it okay, but that’s how it happens, and I have no doubt that this is what the new SecDef did.
I agree 100% that there needs to be accountability.
The only way this becomes okay is for either the President or the SecDef to declassify the information, which they would have the authority to do . . . but of course that creates its own set of problems.
–Dwayne
P.S. In retrospect, I think I’m actually fortunate that early in my career I supported a “special” project that only my boss also knew about, meaning I couldn’t discuss it with my coworkers who all had clearances but not that all-important Need-To-Know. It forced me to develop the mental discipline to compartmentalize things (since I was simultaneously dealing with multiple levels of sensitivity) and to remain wary about it at all times.
To really develop the mental gymnastics needed for successful compartmentalisation, try doing work simultaneously for multiple NATO navies, whose national interests may not quite coincide perfectly.
I had to beg off two such programs, as there was an obvious irreconcilable ethical conflict.
Fortunately the firm I was working for understood. That was 40 years ago, but it would only be prudent to say very little.
These people are clowns. Dangerous ones. But we knew that, or should have.
Good to see you again!
Good to see you again!
While I generally agree with the flow of the commentariat here, I think there is a massive difference between what Hillary Clinton did, and what Pete Hegseth did, and that progressives are ethically estopped from being smug about this. I’ve shifted even more on this since the hearing yesterday.
First off, I think it’s helpful to articulate what people actually did:
Hillary Clinton set up a private email server in places she had control over, probably in an attempt to foil FOIA and keep much of her Email activity out of the secured channels so they couldn’t be scrutinized. She not only did this deliberately, but she paid money to do it. When it came to light that this was a thing, instead of handing over the server to the investigating agencies, her lawyers turned over what they deemed pertinent and ran data-destroying software on the rest. It was later found out, through cross referencing with people inside the normal classification chain and through the FBI looking at the laptop of Anthony Weiner, that not only had Hillary not handed everything over, but that some of the material was actually marked classified at the time she distributed it.
Pete Hegseth discussed troop movements in a Signal Channel that someone else had invited someone who shouldn’t have been in it into.
While I can’t ignore the incompetence, there is a difference in magnitude, scope and intention here. Pete made a mistake that could have gotten people killed. Hillary communicated in a way that could have gotten people killed, knowingly.
Hillary’s main talking point was that nothing was marked classified as she was sending it. Not only was that not true and some was, but it was a ridiculous thing to say, by stepping outside of the normal systems, there was never an opportunity for the classification authorities to mark them, there was no classification fairy hovering over her shoulder, stamping documents in real time. By her logic, she could have emailed troop movements directly to the enemy HQ and it wouldn’t have been a classification breach because the email wasn’t marked.
Signal is an accepted form of communication. Not necessarily for classified information, but apparently a lot of people in a lot of agencies get work phones with signal pre-loaded on them. And recognizing that this is an incredibly technical distinction: The people who are the authorities on what would be classified were in that Signal group, while that information obviously shouldn’t have been communicated to a reporter, I doubt very much that the classification authorities would deem the information to be classified.
There is no vector from which a Hillary supporter has a leg to stand on here. There is no datapoint that can be articulated where Hillary’s actions were not objectively worse. While Republicans can have conversations on what should happen from here, and we should probably be interested in getting something done here… Anyone that ever carried water for Hillary should recognize that in already having defended worse, they should probably shut the fuck up now.
Comment of the Day, and one that saves me a post, and you know how I love that.