But her emails
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8:04 am, March 28th, 2025 - 17 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, International, making shit up, social media, spin, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, uncategorized, us politics, war, you couldn't make this shit up -
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Probably like the rest of you I have been watching what is happening in the US of A and wondering if I should be laughing hysterically or being really worried about the future of humanity.
The details have now emerged.
Atlantic Monthly’s Jeff Goldberg has written about how he was included in a Signal group with the ominous sounding title “Houthi PC small group”.
It sounds like he wondered how this happened and if the inclusion was a joke. Then increasingly detailed texts started to appear detailing an attack on Yemen.
How was he included?
Mike Waltz suggested that the White House was checking into it. Goldberg responded by pointing that Waltz was the person who joined him to the group. The answer seems pretty clear. I don’t think much of an investigation will be required.
After the White House attacked Goldberg he released screenshots of the texts and let them do the talking. And the texts themselves back up his claims completely.
The attempts to deny that what has happened here is a colossal stuff up are that bad they are quite funny. It feels like I am watching a darkly satirical comedy being a cross between Monty Python and The Thick of It.
Particularly the claim that no sensitive information was included and that it was not a “war plan”. It feels like the English Language no longer has any meaning.
The chain also shows JD Vance questioning Trump’s decision to launch the operation. Shortly after this release he headed off to Greenland to join his wife. Physical separation from Trump was obviously something he thought was important.
The questions arising from the event are numerous:
- Why were they using Signal?
- Why were they discussing clearly sensitive information on Signal and not using Government secure methods?
- How the hell did they include Goldberg?
- And why did they include someone Hegseth has described as “deceitful and highly discredited so-called ‘journalist’ who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes”?
- Why are they denying that clearly sensitive information was released?
- And what are they doing about the security breach which appears to be as severe as any I have ever seen?
On that last point this article from Spiegel International is pretty worrying:
Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.
To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases.
As such, the reporting has revealed an additional grave, previously unknown security breach at the highest levels in Washington. Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices. It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike.
Meanwhile Fox News is talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
There should be charges, people should be sacked and there should be a purge on the use of Signal for the discussion of secret information. You can bet that there are other chat groups. This clearly did not appear out of isolation.
Meanwhile American comedians are having a great time. This Stephen Colbert clip is especially funny.
Hillary Clinton is I am sure laughing hysterically. Someone should check on her to make sure she is ok.
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I think his rag is the Atlantic monthly…
[Aarg I meant to say that. Now corrected – MS]
If these guys were serving military personnel, posting classified info on a commercial encrypted chat service from personal phones would be enough to land them deep in the shit. Adding a journalist into the chat is a whole different category of moronic incompetence, but it's unlikely anyone who followed the selection process for these officials is surprised by it.
Also: forget any maybes about the possibility of China or Russia hacking these conversations, you could pretty much guarantee it. The pilots flying these missions can count themselves lucky the targets were still there and air defences hadn't been boosted.
They even made it extra easy for the Russians to get into it. The participants were using their personal phones as Signal cannot be downloaded to official phones. And one of them was actually in Moscow at the time he was receiving these messages.
You also have to think about the compromising of the intelligence sources. The group chat revealed that the Houthi target was known to have entered the building "where his girlfriend lives". The building was then targeted. It is not rocket science that the Houthi leadership will be looking for whoever and however the Americans knew about that. Putting sources at risk is a major no no.
A shambles on so many levels.
Good point, they'll be combing these texts for anything that might give them a hint who might have dobbed them in. And likely killing some innocent party if they come to the wrong conclusion. It's potentially deadly incompetence in more ways than one.
For your consideration Micky…from my Open Mike post yesterday–given your opinion that there are likely other group chats, was the US Houthi Strike group chat using Signal a bungle or intended? Paul Buchanan at Kiwipolitico poses some interesting points about the use of project 2025…
https://www.kiwipolitico.com/2025/03/signalling-deliberate-reckless-disregard/
to quote his para #5
“5) There are reports that Signal was used to avoid Freedom of Information ACT (FOI) and Official Records Act (ORA) scrutiny. This was recommended by Project 2025 to eliminate information data that might be considered prejudicial or controversial if made public under the FOI or as part of ORA obligations (since apps like Signal permanently delete conversations once they are closed, so no records of them are kept). Deliberately trying to circumvent the ORA is illegal. Think of the historical precedent: Nixon’s Watergate tapes;”
Project 2025 is no longer an authoritarian ultra neo lib wish list, it seems the ideological driver and underpinning of the Trump administration.
https://www.project2025.org
I've never seen chaos feed on chaos so big to support a US President.
He is completely upending the world trade system with full union support, and the entire world defence detente balance …
… and executing both at the same time with some of the worst and dumbest clown hires the Washington administration has ever had.
We keep thinking there will be some enormous crash of hubris against him, but it's just failing to occur.
It's worth doing a post on the paradox of political virtue:
Ardern and Biden do pretty much all the right things and get caned for it and consigned to the dustbin of history …
… Luxon and Trump do a succession of dumb things that are so dumb it's hard for even the collective MSM and blogging media or even respective Parliaments to get their arms around, and just truck on with doing outrageous dumb stuff.
If I get 4 hours on the weekend clear I'll try to step it through.
For a whole lot of people Ardern did the right thing and she does get praised for it. But like Biden, there are a whole lot of people treating political parties like sports teams and feel they have to support the "team" by being loud and obnoxious, and even more so when their team is doing badly.
I don't think American politics is going to be able to step back from this level of corruption and law-breaking – it's gone so far over the line that it can't come back. It might if people start going to jail but with the president's power to pardon, that punishment loses its potency anyway.
Agree.
The question is whether we will. That Fast Track legislation is so corrupt and many of the projects are a decade long.
Biden happily supplied the weapons that are inflicting genocide in Gaza.
Should we (ie anyone with awareness) be surprised by any of this ? Expect more…and worse. The lunatics have indeed taken over..
But hey, burn it all…down
Oh, also on the sidebar to this story..we have trump voters experiencing major buyers remorse. Do they expect sympathy? Understanding? Did they not read the warning label? QED…Selfish morons end up screwed. Ah well….
No chance the hole text thing is in the false flag red herring territory .
Now where did I put my tin foil hat!!
It's just so bizarre I find it hard to believe they didn't want it public , why would you link in a news editor???
Because they are just a bunch of idiots, and completely incompetent.
The thing is this
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y41xdrxnyo
As for CISA
short version
https://www.hstoday.us/federal-pages/dhs/people-are-scared-inside-cisa-as-it-reels-from-trumps-purge/
long version
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-cisa-under-trump/
They use Signal as messages disappear and leave no record.
White House comms focus on, the invitation to the journalist onto the chat, appears to be the diversion to distract people from noticing.
Across the Tasman.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/27/stephanie-foster-signal-australian-home-affairs-secretary-trump-scandal
Ultimately as Pablo noted on Politico
If Signal is used to avoid Freedom of Information ACT (FOI) and Official Records Act (ORA) scrutiny – well deliberately trying to circumvent the ORA is illegal.
Thus to this
here yesterday
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-27-03-2025/#comment-2029713
It seems Hilary Clinton is being productive and writing her perspective in the NY Times.
Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/opinion/trump-hegseth-signal-chat.html
I can't give you any details because it's pay-walled.
That screen shot you included seems proof Waltz is guilty, as you imply, since it comes from the Signal source. Will he blame a junior staffer?? Which reality are they gonna use though, the one we're in or Trump's alternative? The Israeli high command seems to prefer the former:
So their Trumpian alt-reality is competing really well with ours. Looks like a classic Schrodinger's Cat scenario, in which both are looming in the adjacent possible realm with equal force, yet neither has broken through to collapse the wave function.
One suspects that Biden's cratering has now been Trumped by the Waltz/Hegseth cratering, and Trump is slowly wakening up to the imminent realisation that this is happening. Anytime soon, his `just a glitch' stance may yield to "You're fired!" Waltz was in the media claiming he had no idea how the journo got added to the member list on Signal. He didn't even say God did it. Well, here's a clue: "Goldberg, who is Jewish" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Goldberg] In with Trump, no problem…