Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Rosa Brooks: My pleasure, Greg.
Brooks: This is a stunning, stunning story. And I think the rest of us are all just feeling hurt that Mike Waltz didn’t add us to the Signal chat. I know Mike Waltz, and I’m going to write him a note saying, Next time you disclose classified information, I’d really like to be in the loop too. It’s stunning because (1) they accidentally included a journalist in a discussion of targeting war plans, (2) they were having this discussion on Signal, a commercial app, and not on existing secure U.S. government channels, which they’re supposed to be using if they’re discussing classified information, and (3) imminent plans to bomb a target are, of course, classified. How could they not be, unless the president just announced we’re going to start bombing tonight? Of course, they’re classified. But if they’re so convinced that nothing is classified, they can demonstrate that by telling Jeff Goldberg to go ahead and release the transcript of the entire chat, which he saved because he is a journalist. And unlike them, he apparently believes in record retention, which the government officials are supposed to believe in.
Sargent: Well, to one of your points, I want to play some audio from the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday. Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, grilled Gabbard hard, asking pointedly if the information was classified. She says it wasn’t. Then this happened.
Tulsi Gabbard (audio voiceover): Senator, I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time. And I defer ...
Gabbard (audio voiceover): I defer to the secretary of defense, the National Security Council on that question.
Sargent: Rosa, we know that operational details were in fact in the texts, as Goldberg has said. And in fact, Gabbard admits straight out under questioning from Senator Mark Kelly elsewhere that there was discussion of military targets in general. And Ratcliffe also admitted to that. Rosa, what do you make of those exchanges?
Sargent: I think there’s no question about it. She was clearly totally flummoxed and didn’t know what to say. I want to move to Fox News for a second. Fox’s top propagandists all have spun wildly about this. As Matt Gertz of Media Matters documented, Laura Ingraham blamed the prominence of the story on left-wing networks. And on her show, Senator Josh Hawley laughably tried to dismiss this as “griping about who is on a text message and who is not.” Jesse Watters tried to laugh it off, saying, “Did you ever try to start a group text? It’s hard.” And Sean Hannity claimed that the media just wants to distract from Trump’s supposed accomplishments, and he called the media “state-run.” I think he maybe forgot, Rosa, that the state is actually in the hands of Trump and his allies right now. But that aside, this spin seems almost desperate to me. What do you think?
Sargent: That certainly seems inarguable to me the way you said it. I want to try to get at something, though. What is the chain of command here? It seems that the national security adviser Mike Waltz set this thing up. Is that how these things happen? In a situation where a bunch of the most senior people in the administration wants to deliberate about something like this, what is supposed to happen there?
And I am, in fact, glad that they were at least having some discussion and that it’s not just Pete Hegseth goes off in a corner and bombs people without checking in with anybody beforehand. I appreciate that. That piece of it is normal process. The piece of it that is not normal process, as we’ve been discussing, is to do this over a commercial app in which you’ve accidentally included a journalist. Another piece that is troubling is it’s not really clear what people like Steve Miller are doing in that conversation—but that’s a whole other story.
Brooks: In a normal administration, what would have happened is that through secure channels, the national security adviser would have made all of the other principals aware through their staffs that he wanted to convene a Principals Committee meeting, which can be done virtually. All these people have classified mobile devices. Typically, any senior national security officials such as the secretary of defense, the director of national intelligence will have a home SCIF in their home. If they’re traveling, they can use a SCIF at an American embassy—most consulates and embassies have SCIFs, secure rooms for this purpose and secure video conferencing and audio facilities and so forth.
It’s not just about the device itself, it’s about how you are connecting. Are you using commercial software that has not been vetted by the U.S. government to connect to that conference that you’re having, whether it’s by text or audio or video? You don’t want to be in a place where eavesdroppers or those with zoom lenses and so on can see what you’re doing. And we the United States, the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense of all people, know exactly how good U.S. surveillance technologies are, and exactly how good the surveillance technologies of U.S. adversaries—state adversaries such as Russia and China—are. You don’t need to be sitting next to somebody in the little league game in order to see their screen. Our satellite camera technologies are good enough that sometimes you can see that literally from the sky.
Sargent: You’d think. I want to go back to the Senate hearing for a sec because there was another set of exchanges that really underscores your point. It involves Senator Mark Kelly and DNI Gabbard and CIA Chief Ratcliffe. Here’s what happened.
Gabbard (audio voiceover): Well, the information was not classified.
Gabbard (audio voiceover): There are other factors that would go into determining that classification.
John Ratcliffe (audio voiceover): Pre-decisional strike deliberation should be conducted through classified channels.
Brooks: Yeah. Absolutely. They’re contradicting themselves all over the place. The White House did confirm the authenticity of the chat. On the one hand, they’re saying, Well, it’s authentic, but it wasn’t classified, but can Jeff Goldberg release the transcript? No, we wouldn’t want that to happen. Well, if it’s not classified, they should let him release it. If it’s classified, they should admit it’s classified, and they should fix this. If anyone else had been involved in this, good God. Can you imagine Joe Biden doing this? Can you imagine anyone in the Biden administration doing this? We know what happened with Hillary Clinton. We know what a big deal her emails were. This would be instant firings. Instant firings here.
Sargent: Again, sounds inarguable to me. And concerning this, this effort by them to pin it on some unnamed supposedly existing staffer, Politico reports, according to a source very close to the White House, “everyone in the White House can agree on one thing, Mike Waltz is a effing idiot.” Now, I don’t know whether Mike Waltz is an idiot or not; but judging by what you’re saying about the process, this is somebody who really should have known what should have been done here. And he’s probably someone who should be fired for this, right?
But the many layers of fuck-ups involved here, and the fact that it involved every single principal level national security leader in the Trump administration.... This wasn’t one person with a brief onetime lapse for one thing. I don’t think we know how many people were part of that group total together—we know a number of the participants, but not all of them—but not a single one of them said, Oh, guys, we should not be doing this over this channel or guys, we can’t authenticate who is on this chat. That is the really mind-blowing piece. And it raises the question: What else are they doing in a slipshod manner? What else are they doing in a half-assed manner? What else are they doing in an insecure manner?
Sargent: OK, Rosa, I’ve saved the best for last. It’s Trump’s latest response to this whole thing. He’s sitting there with Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, and he does this almost rote gesture of slapping Mike Waltz on the wrist so gently, it’s almost incredible. And then Mike Waltz says, Of course, we’re going to keep the network secure, sir. Listen to this.
Michael Waltz (audio voiceover): Yes, sir, we are. We have our technical experts looking at it. We have our legal teams looking at it. And of course, we’re going to keep everything as secure as possible. No one in your national security team would ever put anyone in danger. And as you’ve said, and we’ve repeatedly said, the attack was phenomenal, and it’s ongoing. But the media wants to talk about everything else except for the hostages you’re getting out of the Middle East, Iran on its back foot, sea lanes getting reopened, peace in Europe. As we just saw today with the Black Sea ceasefire, we were just on with Steve Witkoff, myself, our team in Saudi Arabia. They want to talk about all this other stuff except for your amazing successes and the successes of your team.
Brooks: Oh, Mr. President, you are very handsome and so very brilliant. Look, that’s the way Trump operates. We know that he will jettison people who he thinks are being critical of him. Mike Waltz knows which side his bread is buttered on. Honestly, although I think, as I said earlier, that in any normal universe, Mike Waltz would have resigned yesterday, I almost hope he won’t because the people waiting in the wings behind Mike Waltz are a lot worse than Mike Waltz. This was careless to the point of criminal negligence, but Mike Waltz is not a raving lunatic. And frankly, some of the folks in Trump’s orbit are raving lunatics. I would rather have Mike Waltz as national security adviser than almost all the possible alternatives in Trumpworld right now.
Sargent: Rosa, I think it’s going to have to get much, much, much worse for anything like that to happen. And unfortunately, I think it is going to get much, much, much worse. Rosa Brooks, thank you so much for coming on with us today.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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