The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Their War Plans
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Signal messages discussing sensitive U.S. military plans were not on CIA director John Ratcliffe's phone when the CIA reviewed them, the CIA's Chief Data Officer has said.
In a court document submitted Monday as part of a lawsuit between nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight and White House officials, Hurley V. Blankenship said that when the CIA reviewed a sensitive Signal group chat on March 31, days after news broke that a journalist had been erroneously added to it, "substantive messages" were not present and instead the chat showed only its group name and administrative settings.
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Federal Judge James Boasberg, the chief U.S. district judge in Washington, on March 27 ordered Ratcliffe—along with other members of the group chat Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—to preserve all messages from March 11 to 15 in the chat group.
In a declaration, Blankenship wrote: "I understand that the Director's personal Signal account was reviewed and a screenshot of the Signal Chat at issue was captured from the Director's account on 31 March 2025, and transferred to Agency records systems the same day."
He added that the screenshot "reflects the information available at the time the screenshot was captured" which did "not include substantive messages from the Signal chat."
Instead, it had the group chat name "Houthi PC Small Group, and reflects administrative notifications from 26 March and 28 Match relating to changes in participant's administrative settings in this group chat, such as profile names and message settings."
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Signal messages discussing sensitive U.S. military plans were not on CIA director John Ratcliffe's phone when the CIA reviewed them, the CIA's Chief Data Officer has said.
In a court document submitted Monday as part of a lawsuit between nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight and White House officials, Hurley V. Blankenship said that when the CIA reviewed a sensitive Signal group chat on March 31, days after news broke that a journalist had been erroneously added to it, "substantive messages" were not present and instead the chat showed only its group name and administrative settings.
and
Federal Judge James Boasberg, the chief U.S. district judge in Washington, on March 27 ordered Ratcliffe—along with other members of the group chat Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—to preserve all messages from March 11 to 15 in the chat group.
In a declaration, Blankenship wrote: "I understand that the Director's personal Signal account was reviewed and a screenshot of the Signal Chat at issue was captured from the Director's account on 31 March 2025, and transferred to Agency records systems the same day."
He added that the screenshot "reflects the information available at the time the screenshot was captured" which did "not include substantive messages from the Signal chat."
Instead, it had the group chat name "Houthi PC Small Group, and reflects administrative notifications from 26 March and 28 Match relating to changes in participant's administrative settings in this group chat, such as profile names and message settings."
@taiwan_girl said in The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Their War Plans:
He added that the screenshot "reflects the information available at the time the screenshot was captured" which did "not include substantive messages from the Signal chat."
Ha! In other words, the messages auto-deleted (or were manually deleted) but the screenshot is valid. How silly.
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@taiwan_girl said in The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Their War Plans:
He added that the screenshot "reflects the information available at the time the screenshot was captured" which did "not include substantive messages from the Signal chat."
Ha! In other words, the messages auto-deleted (or were manually deleted) but the screenshot is valid. How silly.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of a March attack on Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, the New York Times reported on Sunday, raising more questions about his use of an unclassified messaging system to share highly-sensitive security details.
Hegseth allegedly shared the same details of the attack that were revealed last month by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate chat on the Signal app by mistake, in an embarrassing incident involving all of President Donald Trump's most senior national security officials.
The Times, citing four sources familiar with the message group, said that second chat included details of the schedule of the air strikes.
Hegseth's wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, has also reportedly attended sensitive meetings with foreign military counterparts, the Wall Street Journal has separately reported.
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Who would have guessed an alcoholic tv host wouldn’t be fit for the job of secretary of defense?
@jon-nyc said in The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Their War Plans:
Who would have guessed an alcoholic tv host wouldn’t be fit for the job of secretary of defense?
He probably just copied and pasted the same classified attack details to another Signal group chat.
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Hegseth says he should investigate and fire himself. Sorry, he was talking about Biden.
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@jon-nyc said in The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Their War Plans:
Rep Don Bacon, USAF General, retired, is the first republican to call for Hegseth’s removal.
Nobody with the word 'Patriot' in their X handle seems to agree with him.
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John Ullyot, a diehard Trump supporter who argued before his confirmation that Pete Hegseth was “the best man to shake things up at a Pentagon,” now says that after “months of total chaos,” his missteps and misjudgments have left the “building in disarray” and that Hegseth should be replaced, after what Ullyot called a “month from hell.”
Beginning with the Signalgate snafu, in which Hegseth shared obviously classified attack plans over an unsecured messaging app and then issued a ham-handed nondenial denial, and ending with the haphazard firing of three top staffers last week, Ullyot, who resigned last week, said enough is enough.
“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” Ullyot wrote in an opinion essay in Politico published last night. “Even strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.”
“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account,” Ullyot said. “Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”
Under fire for his handling of Signalgate, and now facing new allegations that he also improperly shared Yeman strike plans on another private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer, Ullyot describes an atmosphere of paranoia about leaks that had led to a “near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks.”
Here is his opinion writing
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/20/pentagon-chaos-ullyot-hegseth-00205594 -
@jon-nyc said in The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Their War Plans:
I read that piece earlier today. Seems like it was written for an audience of one.
To be fair, Ullyot was shit-canned, sorry he resigned a little while ago after something or other, so he might be a tad disgruntled. It's also possible he's disgruntled because of the morons who didn't get shitcanned, sorry resigned.
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Hegseth had Signal messaging app installed on an office computer
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/23/hegseth-signal-pentagon-computer/
The move was intended to circumvent a lack of cellphone service in much of the Pentagon and enable easier communication with other Trump officials, said people familiar with the matter.
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I mean, thanks for the reporting but of course they used Signal to make it easier to chat with others (officials or not). I is a widely used app in DC (reporters, government officials, intel folks) the difference is folks would never use it for classified conversations, it was always "Let's meet in XYZ SCIF to discuss this". Pure lazy/amateur hour.
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https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/24/hegseth-chief-of-staff-pentagon-leaving-00308721
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s controversial chief of staff, who played a central role in a power struggle that gripped the Pentagon, will exit the agency today.
Joe Kasper was originally expected to transition to another role within the Defense Department, but is now planning to go back to government relations and consulting, he said in an interview.
He will continue to support and advise the Pentagon, he said, but as a special government employee. This will limit him to performing temporary jobs for just 130 days a year.
A former longtime chief of staff to indicted Rep. Duncan Hunter, Kasper was a leading figure in the firings of senior adviser Dan Caldwell, Hegseth deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg. The trio were ousted last week in a leak investigation.
Some officials saw the wave of firings as a bid by Kasper to consolidate power.
“Kasper did not like that those guys had the secretary’s ear,” a person familiar with the dynamic said. “He did not like that they had walk-in and hanging-out privileges in the office. He wanted them out. It was a knife fight.”
