CAUGHT IN A(NOTHER) LIE, TRUMP ADMIN TRIES TO PUT OUT PANTS ON FIRE

By Chris Michael

The Guardian

The Atlantic magazine has published fresh messages from a group chat including top US officials where they discuss operational details of plans to bomb Yemen.

The initial revelations by the magazine and its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the chat on the messaging app Signal, have sparked a huge outcry in the US, with the Trump administration facing withering attacks over the disastrous leak of sensitive information.

However, the magazine did not include specific details of the attack in its initial article, saying it did not want to jeopardize national security. But numerous Trump administration officials, responding to the scandal, have said that none of the information on the Signal chat chain was “classified information” – despite the Atlantic describing it as operational details of the US strike on Yemen’s Houthi militia, which has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea.

In a new article published on Wednesday – hours before a House intelligence committee hearing was set to begin featuring two participants in the chat, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe – the Atlantic said it was now releasing that information.

“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in non-secure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the magazine said.
The magazine then reproduced numerous messages from the text chat between the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth – who said on Tuesday that “nobody was texting war plans” – and top intelligence officials, including Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, who was in Russia at the time.

They included details of US bombings, drone launches and targeting information of the assault, including descriptions of weather conditions.

They also mention specific weapons to be used, timings for attacks and references to a “target terrorist”, presumably a Houthi militant. There is further discussion of confirmation that a target had been killed, and the use of several emojis.

“If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests – or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media – the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic,” the Atlantic wrote.

Trump administration officials yesterday claimed that the messages contained no classified information. Gabbard and Ratcliffe, who were participants in the chat, said the leak contained no classified information.

The Atlantic also quoted an email response from the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, after the magazine contacted the Trump administration to say it was considering publishing the entirety of the email chain, in which she said the chat did not include classified information but also that the White House did not want the messages released.

“As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat,” Leavitt wrote. “However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation.”

Donald Trump, when asked on Tuesday about the leak, also said: “It wasn’t classified information,” while adding that the leak was "the only glitch in two months."

After the story was published, Leavitt once claimed on X that “these were NOT ‘war plans’. This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”

Democrats will probably use the intelligence committee hearing to demand an explanation of how operational attack plans are not classified information and how the details included in the messages are not war plans.

Last week, NPR reported that the Pentagon and its staff specifically warned its staff specifically against the use if Signal because of its security vulnerabilities. In a Pentagon “OPSEC special bulletin” sent on 18 March, it warned that Russian hacking groups could aim to exploit the vulnerability.

The messages in the Signal chat were set to automatically delete in under four weeks. The Federal Records Act typically mandates that government communication records are kept for two years.

The Atlantic said it withheld the name of Ratcliffe’s chief of staff on request, but otherwise published the messages unredacted. It said it did not generally publish information about military operations if it could possibly harm US personnel but that accusations from the Trump administration that it was “lying” caused it to believe that “people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions”.

“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in non-secure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the magazine wrote.