We all know the story by now. The editor of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally invited on March 13th to join a secret group messaging chat that divulged plans for a top-secret U.S. military strike in Yemen. The wayward invitation came from National Security Advisor Mike Waltz who mistakenly sent the invitation to Goldberg instead of a spokesman for the National Security Council (NSC) named Brian Hughes.
Goldberg, the accidental recipient of this critical info, published in The Atlantic what he knew about the secret plans. He also pointed out that members of the Trump administration had used the Signal app on their unsecured personal devices running over networks that were likewise not secured to disseminate classified information and data. Of course, the concern was that U.S. enemies (who knows which countries that is anymore) could hack into the app which the U.S. government has no control over.
Waltz had originally received Goldberg’s contact info when the editor emailed the Trump campaign campaign last October to criticize Trump about his feelings toward men and women who served in the military. Goldberg’s email was forwarded to Brian Hughes who was a spokesman for Trump at the time. While Waltz never called Goldberg, his phone number was accidentally saved in the contact card for Hughes.
The White House has said that it was Waltz’s iPhone that suggested he add Goldberg’s number to Hughes’s card since the device thought it was a related contact number for Hughes. So when Waltz was looking to add Hughes to the group chat on Signal, he accidentally added Goldberg’s number instead.
It’s all a plausible denial but still doesn’t explain the use of the Signal app. But the administration does have an answer. The government supposedly lacks an alternative messaging app that can be used to text in real-time to two agencies at once. So what else could the administration do but continue using Signal?
The whole affair is an unfortunate series of events. Perhaps Waltz should have been more alert to what he was doing but the president already appears to be giving him a pass for this error.
