Anger over US military plans being inadvertently disclosed to a journalist on a Signal Messenger group chat was apparent as the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA director John Ratcliffe and FBI director Kash Patel took questions at a congressional hearing.
The Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, which was supposed to focus on global threats to the US, came one day after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported that he had inadvertently learnt details about US plans for attacks on Yemeni Houthi rebels after he was added to a group chat on the messaging app Signal.
The group appeared to include Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and others.
There was no reference to the recent incident from the intelligence committee chairman, Republican Senator Tom Cotton, during his opening comments. But Democratic vice-chair Mark Warner did not mince words.
“Classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system,” Mr Warner said. “It's also mind-boggling that all these senior folks were on this line and nobody checked security hygiene 101, like the names on the group chat.”
Mr Warner reiterated what he described as common knowledge that the discussion of classified information should never take place outside of sensitive compartmented information facilities, also referred to as SCIFs.
“This is one more example off the sloppy, careless, incompetent behaviour towards confidential information, and this is not a one-off, a one-time error,” he added, referring to the Trump administration.
The large-scale military strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis – which began March 15 – were in response to the group's continued attacks on Red Sea shipping. At least 53 people, including five children, were killed and 98 others injured in the first round of strikes on March 15, according to a Houthi Health Ministry spokesman.
After The Atlantic broke the story, Mr Hegseth said on Monday that “nobody was texting war plans” and attacked Mr Goldberg as a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist”.
Ms Gabbard refused to say if she was included on the group chat.
“I’m not going to get into specifics because this is currently under review,” she told Senator Warner, who asked if she was the member in the group chat using the initials “TG”.
Mr Ratcliffe, however, acknowledged that he took part in the group chat.
“Signal was loaded on to my computer at the CIA,” he said, recalling when he first assumed the position of CIA director. “The records management folks at the CIA said it was permissible, and this was a decision made from the Biden administration.”
Mr Warner then asked him if he considered the conversation regarding military operations in Yemen to be classified.
“My staff followed the processes,” he insisted. “It [Signal] is permissible to use and co-ordinate for work purposes.”
Later on Tuesday, Mr Waltz admitted that a mistake had been made.
“We made a mistake. We’re moving forward,” he told Fox News. He added he was taking responsibility for what had occurred and that no staffer was to blame. Mr Waltz said he had not spoken to Mr Goldberg and that he had been trying to add someone else’s number instead.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X before the Senate hearings that the White House was looking into how Mr Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread, and continued to question his motives.
“Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” she said. “Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective.”
Although it is known for robust end-to-end encryption, Signal, and other encrypted messaging services are not immune to being compromised.
With the growing prevalence of increasingly powerful and accessible quantum computers, experts have also warned that once tried-and-true encryption methods may become more vulnerable.
“Telecommunications, oil and gas, logistics, transport, energy, power grids, anything that falls under the category of critical infrastructure could face challenges,” said Marc Manzano, general manager of cyber security at SandboxAQ, a company that works at the intersection of quantum technology and artificial intelligence.
Yet all the encryption in the world can also be rendered moot if the users accidentally do things to compromise communications, such as what happened with the Trump administration officials who added a journalist to a group chat.
Signal's founder, Moxie Marlinspike, used the incident to promote the app.
“There are so many great reasons to be on Signal. Now including the opportunity for the vice president of the United States of America to randomly add you to a group chat for co-ordination of sensitive military operations,” he posted on X. “Don’t sleep on this opportunity.”
Before the hearing on Tuesday, Mr Cotton insinuated to Fox News that the use of Signal for communicating sensitive information through the app was not unique to the Trump administration.
“It is my understanding that the Biden administration authorised Signal as a means of communication that is consistent with presidential record-keeping requirements for its administration and that continued with the Trump administration,” he said, before pivoting to the contents of the Signal chat.
“I agree with the President, I think the whole national security team is doing a great job as evidenced by the campaign against the outlaws in Yemen.”
On Monday, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described the security breach as “amateur behaviour”.
“This text chain was not a secure conversation and the app used is not approved for discussing classified military operations,” he said on the floor of the Senate. “When Pete Hegseth came before the Senate as a nominee, Democrats warned that something like this might happen.”
In a press release issued while the Senate hearing was under way, the White House sidestepped the issue of US national security being compromised.
“Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Trump and his National Security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted US troops and disrupted the most consequential shipping routes in the world,” the news release read, also describing the recent military strikes in Yemen as an “unrelenting action” to hold Houthis accountable.
