#signal leak

[amethystsadachbia]

as I was reading about the leaked Signal chat, "The Final Countdown" came up on my playlist and I can only hope that it portends the final countdown for this entire administration. join me in a prayer circle to manifest this

[onlytiktoks]

[victusinveritas]

[alanfromrochester]

and some of MAGA likes saying that this was a setup to embarrass the administration, related to deep state arguments about members of the executive branch not falling in line with the executive

For anyone who hasn't been up to date on the clown show that is the American news, I'll give a quick recap because oh boy.

So Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. One day, he gets a notification on his phone from the messaging app "Signal". He sees that he's been added to a group chat called "Houthi PC small group". He thinks nothing of it at first, until a couple days later he sees on the news that the U.S. is bombing Yemen. He takes a look and sees that he has been added to a group chat by the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

Plenty of government officials including vice president JD Vance were in this conversation, and they were discussing their bombing on Yemen. And Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added by mistake.

So Goldberg approached the White House, who confirmed that he had been accidentally added to the chat. He then posted part of the conversation in a news story on the front page of his news website, omitting any classified information as to not get arrested for that level of security breach.

The response from the administration has been wild. They're all smearing the journalist, obviously, but their responses at first varied from "he made it all up" to "he must've hacked is way in" to "big deal, people add people to group chats on accident all the time". Eventually, they were put in front of Congress to testify under oath, where they said that nothing in the conversation was classified information like military hours or types of weapons used.

In response, Goldberg said "Oh, so it's not classified? Okay then! That means I can do this," and then he released the full unedited conversation. The conversation was nothing but classified information like military hours and the types of weapons used.

Not only are they communicating on private phones on third party apps as a way to circumvent the Presidential Records Act (the chat was interestingly set to auto-delete messages after 4 weeks), but it really kinda highlights the incompetence of America's leadership right now.

They're not going to win.

[justgot1]

Archive link

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion...

...Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story...

...Waltz and the other Cabinet-level officials were already potentially violating government policy and the law simply by texting one another about the operation. But when Waltz added a journalist—presumably by mistake—to his principals committee, he created new security and legal issues. Now the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it. That is the classic definition of a leak, even if it was unintentional, and even if the recipient of the leak did not actually believe it was a leak until Yemen came under American attack.

All along, members of the Signal group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security. In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group—which, at the time, included me—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”

-----

Absolutely astonishing. Holy shit, the incompetence. In normal times, heads would be rolling. But let's watch as they do absolutely nothing. Incredible.

[skull-pun]

The Atlantic journalist could have exposed a lot more than he did if he'd stayed in that group chat.

But no, he decides to leave because he thought it wouldn't be "appropriate" to stay.

Bro when did journalists become such pussies.

[sharkchunks]

[tiggymalvern]

Almost the funniest thing about the Signal group chat and the Atlantic journalist is that the White House can't even decide on what spin to put on it. Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt are denying that it ever happened, saying that Goldberg is a lying liar who lies. Tulsi Gabbard initially denied that she was in ever the group chat, then changed her mind and went with, 'Nothing in the group chat was all that secret, so no biggie.' The CIA director has confirmed that yes, it happened, and he was in the group.

Meanwhile, the White House staff seem to be roughly evenly divided over whether to blame it all on Mike Walz and sack him, or call it a minor glitch like Trump and pretend it never happened.

[makingdonalddrumpfagain]

Signal Leak

[onlytiktoks]

[victusinveritas]

[parttimereporter]

THE ATLANTIC RELEASES FULL SIGNAL CHAT!

[themidoripanda]

Remember when they wanted to lock Hillary Clinton up for her emails

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Now the whole world knows that weather was favourable for the American air strike against the Houthis in Yemen, that it was carried out by supersonic F-18 combat jets, that MQ-9 Predator drones were employed in the action, that the target building collapsed, that the Americans knew that “their top missile guy” had a girlfriend, and that the editor-in-chief of one of the news outlets the Trump administration reviles the most was in on the entire thing. The presence of Jeffrey Goldberg on the open Signal commercial communications platform is one of the great mysteries of an administration that – with trade warfare against its closest ally and an all-out assault on the Social Security administration, which runs the popular domestic entitlement program – is full of mysteries. But even this was a surprise. Here are some of the principal take-aways from an episode that has taken the breath away from both insiders and outsiders in Donald Trump’s Washington.

mystery onion of horrible stupid people - that is the current white house

Why was Mr. Goldberg invited into a military management meeting that presumably was top secret? When German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was asked why and how the First World War began the way it did, he gave the answer that applies here: “Ah, if only one knew.” If only one knew why a journalist who has been a Trump irritant for years – it was Mr. Goldberg who quoted Mr. Trump as saying that the war dead were “suckers” – was included in this communication. The person who initiated the parley was national-security adviser Michael Waltz, and he said he didn’t know either. Unless he was an information leaker to the Atlantic editor – there’s no evidence of that, at least as yet – he presumably wouldn’t have had Mr. Goldberg’s contacts.

David Shribman had a hoot writing this, you can tell.

Has anything like this happened before? Not exactly. Or remotely. But there have been examples of military details falling into unlikely hands. The British knew in advance that George Washington would mount his dramatic crossing of the Delaware on Christmas Night, 1776. A Union corporal, apparently resting in a field before the pivotal Battle of Antietam in 1862, discovered a piece of paper wrapping three cigars. He sent them up the command chain to General George McClellan, who as a result had the Confederate battle plan in hand. “Now I know what to do!” Gen. McClellan said, and then added, in a reference to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.”

Continental Army War Group Chat accidentally added William Howe and Lord Cornwallis uwu

What are the implications here? None, in terms of the operation itself. It proceeded as planned, and as Vice-President JD Vance hoped (“I will say a prayer for victory,” he typed). This information was revealed only after the engagement was concluded. In fact, Mr. Goldberg didn’t share the battle plans and the course of the episode until administration officials said that the communications link was no big deal and didn’t include any information of value. Mr. Goldberg then released more information to counter the officials’ claims. But over all, it invites comparisons with the comment sometimes attributed to the British diplomat Talleyrand in reaction to Napoleon’s 1804 order for the murder of the Duke of Enghien: “It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder.”

Shout out to Talleyrand! Shout out to the Duc d'Enghien Incident!!

That said, I think Goldberg handled the situation as best he could given that a) he didn't know it was real until late and then b) nothing could be confirmed until after the fact and c) it was technically classified information etc. etc. So not sure I would frame it how Shribman has in the above para'.

Apart from the operations specifics, what else did we learn? One conclusion is not really a new discovery: The Trump team is made up largely out of sycophants determined to please the President. But we did learn that the Vice-President, ordinarily considered chief sycophant, had independent ideas about the operation and that he was willing to express them openly, though in the end he acceded to the consensus of the group. He’s not the first vice-president with separate ideas. Hubert Humphrey differed with Lyndon B. Johnson on the conduct of the Vietnam War, especially as the 1968 campaign, in which the Minnesotan was the Democratic nominee, reached its climax. As vice-president, Joe Biden had qualms about the raid that Barack Obama approved to kill Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. And of course, then-vice-president Mike Pence refused Mr. Trump’s order to overturn the 2020 election.

What should America’s allies think? They very likely think the Trump administration is sloppy at best, incompetent at worst. But they should be assured this particular slip-up is not going to happen again. Even so, European leaders will not soon forget Mr. Vance’s description of European countries as “pathetic.” The good news for Canada is that it wasn’t mentioned.

lololol shout out to the no shout out Canada??? come on Shribman just say it: allies think the US is currently run by a bunch of dumb lil bitches and that the US people let their basest, cruelest desires override good sense and an opportunity for sound governance.

What are the implications down the line? Political, political, political. The Trump administration, and the President himself, has dismissed the entire episode as no big deal: no one was hurt, the operation wasn’t compromised, these things happen, Mr. Goldberg has “made up a lot of stories and I think he’s basically bad for the country.” He publicly praised Mr. Waltz as “a good man” – though, tellingly, it emerged Wednesday that the President was enraged and described the national-security adviser as, in the characterization of Politico’s source, “so stupid.” Often in such cases, the figure at the centre of such a contretemps either is publicly shamed (the Ronald Reagan administration made it clear that budget director Dave Stockman had been taken “to the woodshed” after 1981 damaging revelations to The Atlantic); is forced out (the fate of a top health official after his 2020 suggestion that the first Trump administration had bungled its response to the coronavirus pandemic); or resigns (the Trump White House staff secretary accused in 2018 of abusing two former wives). Two things are certain: The Trump team will rush to put this behind them. The Democrats, who rushed to describe the administration as imprudent and incompetent, will do their best to keep it in the public eye.

I think there's also much to be said about real incompetence versus engineered incompetence versus real incompetence taken advantage of as a means to continue the authoritarian takeover.

G&M doesn't really ever get into the fact that Trump is staging, more or less, a full coup.

Expert on authoritarian leadership and takeovers/coups, Ruth ben Ghiat wrote in an article recently:

The news that Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth and other luminaries of the Trump-Musk administration were using Signal —an encrypted message system, but not an official government channel—to talk about war plans for Yemen bears out this essay I wrote five days before the inauguration. It introduces the idea of engineered incompetence, a state of affairs found in many authoritarian states and now being revealed as a defining trait of the Trump-Musk administration. The essay was about Hegseth, but the concept applies to DNI head Tulsi Gabbard and many other Trump appointees. As I wrote in the New York Times on Jan. 30: "Authoritarian states abound with examples of engineered incompetence, when leaders appoint individuals to Cabinet positions who lack the skill-set and high-level connections needed to succeed. This makes those individuals more dependent on the leader and creates more space for the leader’s powerful cronies to influence the institution to their own benefit (one could imagine that Elon Musk, who is an interested party due to his many defense contracts, might prefer Hegseth as Secretary of Defense over a tough and seasoned professional)."

I don't know that Trump is so sophisticated as to think this through beyond personal enrichment and a desire to be surrounded by sycophants, but the end result is the same.

Anyway - entertaining morning reads for you.

[skelskeleton]

I love how I get insta blocked by some edgelord socialism cosplayer blog for pointing out that the group chat leak is something we should leverage to get even a fraction of people on our side lmao

"oh the fact the group chat is about a bombing means we morally shouldnt—" yes the bombing fucking sucks and you can think both suck and still strike the anvil while its hot.

national security is a big deal to all but the koolaid drinkers and gentlely going "hey maybe dont vote conservative in 2026 bc this party is a national security risk" is going to do more good overall than idk reading socialist theory to them?

Apparently its controversial to want to ease people into our side by showing their side does not care about them because in tumblr land everything is black and white

anyways shoutout to @technofeudalism or whatever the fuck their tag is, hope you firebomb plenty of walmarts while a good pressing issue slowly gets sweeped under the rug since you didnt want to capitalize on it. Touch grass.

[leresq]

I don't see anyone talking about how the people bombed in the attack that was in the Signal leak were purportedly Houthis, supporters of Palestinian liberation. Not only that, but the leaders of the United States government in the chat bragged about collapsing a home with civilians inside. Yes of course, the Signal leak should be used against the Republicans, but can we not ignore the content in those chats? I feel like condemning the war crimes themselves should be more pressing than condemning the potential risk the leak had to the perpetrators of those war crimes.