Simple Q-and-A About the Signal Leak

This post is about the constantly unfolding news of the “Signal Group Chat,” which properly has dominated mainstream coverage for the past two days. Here is my triage scheme for thinking about what matters in this fiasco.

1) How big a deal is this, really?

On the merits, it’s enormous.

Whether “on the merits” will take hold in the world of US discourse, no one can say. But the merits, in my view, are these:

-It is as big a journalistic coup as I can remember. And my memory includes reading Seymour Hersh’s Harper’s report on My Lai when I was in college.

-It is the most shockingly careless and sloppy security lapse by senior US officials that I’m aware of at any point in the long sweep of US security concerns.

-Anyone who has served in any branch of the US military, or has dealt with classified documents at any level in a civilian or intelligence role, recognizes what would happen if he or she had made a comparable sloppy mistake.

As a civilian you’d be immediately fired. You might face criminal charges. (I knew that, when I worked in the White House decades ago and had a high-level security clearance.) In uniform, you’d be dishonorably discharged and perhaps court-martialed. The cloud would hang over you forever.

Yet as I write, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Waltz, and others are still at large and in their roles. For reasons explained below, I think the three of them should be dismissed.

The Antietam case in 1862, mentioned above, appears to have been a pure blunder by low-level Confederate troops, which accidentally gave Union forces an advantage. But most other big intelligence losses through the long sweep of US history—from Benedict Arnold in the Revolutionary era, through Klaus Fuchs and others during the Cold War, to Robert Hanssen, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning in more modern times—seem to have been motivated by money (Hanssen), romance (many cases), or ideology and whistle-blowing (most others).

By contrast, the Trump-era Signal leak appears to have come from flat-out stupidity. Plus indiscipline, amateur-ness, incompetence, and worse. It’s like the Antietam cigars of the digital age, but by higher-ups.

If anyone has a comparable example of “national jeopardy, through stupidity” from another administration, I’d like to hear about it. I’m not counting the decision to invade Iraq.

2) Why does this matter journalistically?

Because in real time a reporter and a news organization unmistakably had the goods, and knew how to handle them.

What the Atlantic posted two days ago wasn’t “sources say.” Or “associates who asked not to be named.” Or “from multiple interviews, a picture emerges.”

Instead they had screen shots. With time stamps. And real names or initials attached in a way that this even this administration could not find a way to deny.

And while it was apparently blind luck on Jeffrey Goldberg’s part that he got looped into this Signal discussion in the first place—versus the months of shoe-leather reporting of Woodward and Bernstein, or the breadcrumb-trail Seymour Hersh followed toward the My Lai story—he appears not to have set a foot wrong once fate put him on this path:

-While the discussion was underway, he recorded what he was seeing, with screen shots that later made his account undeniable, even by the Trump team.

-He stuck to the high road in his first installment, explaining why he was withholding details that might still be sensitive.

-But once team Trump decided just to lie its way out—which has become its default approach, and which they’ve relied on to work with “the base”—Goldberg and the magazine were in a position to use receipts to say, “Well, actually…”  

Today they published the operational details that Pete Hegseth had breezily shared via Signal. Whether or not this info was technically classified, any sane person—especially any sane person who had served in the military or any branch of the government—would instantly see how reckless this was.

If you’ve ever worked in any position of national responsibility, you know that this is not information to be shared on social media. That is, unless you worked for team Trump/Musk/Vance/Hegseth.

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3) Why does this matter procedurally?

America’s worldwide strength is surprisingly dependent upon trust.

-To the east, across the ocean toward the UK and Europe, free nations have through my lifetime trusted the United States to be on their side in struggles against dictatorship in general, and Soviet/Russian aggression in particular. Thus they have generally bent to US policy decisions, accepted US military presence, and acted as if the US had the lead voice.

-To the west, across the ocean toward Japan and South Korea, many nations in East and Southeast Asia have trusted the United States to be on their side as at least a balancing force against China. US warships now pay regular port visits to Vietnam, as part of an informal alliance hard to imagine several decades ago. Again the crucial ingredient is trust.

-To the north, we have Canada. Whose new prime minister said last week that the United States is “a country we can no longer trust.”

-To the south, we have Mexico. Whose fate is inescapably connected to that of the US. And the whole expanse of Latin America, with whom US relations have gradually improved over the decades—until now.

And beyond are Australia, New Zealand, and other states that have built their economic and security policy upon trust of the United States.

Which of them will now continue to trust American officials with sensitive intelligence information, once they have seen the Secretary of Defense, the CIA director, the Director of National Intelligence, and even the serving Vice President behaving like Beavis and Butthead while discussing state secrets?

I am proud to be an American. I am ashamed of this know-nothing face my country is now presenting. I would not trust these shallow US clowns if I were in a free-state government, from Finland to Singapore. Even today’s Vietnam.

4) What should happen now?

At least three people clearly need to resign:

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