More details have emerged of the content of the US national security group text accidentally sent to the press during a planned strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen last month. The leaked exchange revealed an anti-European rant from the Defense Secretary and Vice President, especially, and the by-name mention of a CIA operative while one participant was chatting from Moscow.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz had created the group on the publicly available encrypted Signal app and inadvertently included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who was subsequently privy to war planning in real time and other highly classified communications.
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The text group included CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, Vice President JD Vance, and more than a dozen high-level officials with top secret and special access security clearances.
According to flight data analyzed by CBS News, Witkoff was in Moscow while messaging back and forth with the team. While the entirety of the group text exchange has not been made public, more details have emerged: Witkoff seems to have contributed little more than emojis: “[hands-praying], [flexed-bicep], [two American flags]” in response to news that the strikes in Yemen had been executed.
However, as the texts were flying back-and-forth on the messaging app that Kremlin hackers have long targeted, the special envoy was having a late-night meeting with Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
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“During the group discussion on Signal… Ratcliffe named an active CIA intelligence officer in the chat at 5:24 p.m. Eastern time, which was just after midnight in Russia,” CBS reported. “Witkoff’s flight did not leave Moscow until around 2 a.m. local time, and Sergei Markov, a former Putin advisor who is still close to the Russian president, said in a Telegram post that Witkoff and Putin were meeting in the Kremlin until 1:30 a.m.”
Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team, a State Center for Cyber Defense unit, warned last week about Russian efforts to hack Signal accounts. Malware was sent to employees of defense industry firms and members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, arriving from what seemed to be their own existing contacts.
While Ratcliffe identified the CIA operative on the Signal chat that included the press, Hegseth apparently shared top-secret details, including “targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
Hegseth and Vance had a hearty exchange about their “loathing” for Europe: perfectly on-message for Trump’s “America First” platform and his hand-picked team, but not material intended for public consumption.
“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said in the chat.
“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading,” Hegseth said later. “It’s PATHETIC.”
You need to do better.
As Democrats, and some Republics, on Capitol Hill have called for a full investigation of the breach and access to the entirety of the exchange, two members of the group chat, Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were, coincidentally, appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday for a planned hearing on international security threats.
During that hearing, which was not convened to discuss the breach, Gabbard admitted that she had also been abroad while the chat group was active, but downplayed any damage done.
“There was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard, who has previously caused controversy with comments sympathetic to Russia and Syria, told the committee.
For his part, Trump said he would “look into” the use of the Signal app, but preferred to slander Goldberg, who was inadvertently included, rather than those who caused the breach, calling the editor-in-chief a “sleaze bag” and said “nobody gives a damn” about the story.
Several Democratic members of the Senate committee used the occasion to lean in on the debacle, nonetheless.
“This swampiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for him is entirely unacceptable,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) said, admonishing Ratcliffe.
“It’s an embarrassment,” he said. “You need to do better.”
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