As I watch this Signal chat trainwreck play out all over the internet, folks are taking the Hatfield & McCoys approach to this situation. Democrats are outraged about how dangerous and careless the Trump national security team was with their lack of situational awareness on this group text concerning this operation. Republicans are playing the “but what about “ game and trying to spin this as a minor breach of protocol. Partisan politics never takes a rest in America, problem is, this isn’t really a partisan issue, it’s a much bigger issue of Operational Security (OPSEC).
For folks who aren’t military, Operational Security (OPSEC) is the management and control of sensitive information to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. In a nutshell, when you are involved with an operation or a deployment, you don’t go around talking about in a public forum and certainly not on an unsecure chat system. I deployed several times in my military career and my family never knew what country I was going to be deployed to. The idea is to “fly below the radar” so our adversaries can’t find at any operational details a head of time.
The Trump administration is trying to tamp down this wildfire, but this was a serious breach of security, and it should be addressed as such. The recent communication of this category of information over the Signal messaging app has been dismissed by President Trump as a mere “glitch”. It is definitely that. I believe the bigger problem is how long has this type of communication been used in the first two months, key parts of the administration might have inadvertently been leaving sensitive information vulnerable to enemy interception.
Another issue, Secretary of Defense Hegseth stated in the chat that “We are currently clean on OPSEC”. Speaking about this mission on an unsecure chat app is the opposite of “clean OPSEC”, it’s more like sitting around a bar with ten friends giving all the details of the bank robbery you are about to pull off, this is next level stupid!
I can tell you with certainty that at my level in the Air Force, OPSEC training was an annual requirement. Deployment schedules, timetables or any type of troop movements were never discussed out in an open forum. It seems to me that this OPSEC problem really exist at a very high level in our government. Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Mike Pence all mishandled Top-Secret documents on different occasions and none of them were punished for it. If this chat mishap occurred at our level in the military, the folks involved would have been discharged and probably charged with a crime. These upper-level cabinet members never receive any type of admonishment for these misdeeds, they should receive the same type of punishment we would have been given, but I digress.
Of course, no scandal in Trump world would be complete without the “deny, deny, deny obligatory response and followed by name calling the magazine and author because that’s what we do in the fifth grade. Trump called Jeffrey Goldberg a “total sleazebag, defense secretary Pete Hegseth referred to him as “deceitful and highly discredited.” Walz called him the “bottom scum of journalist.” Funny thing, it seems to me the most competent and creditable guy on that chat was the guy who wasn’t supposed to be there, and he was the only one practicing OPSEC.
Trump’s national security team was in front of the US Senate on Monday for a hearing on ironically, national security. Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence and John Radcliffe, CIA director both raised their right hand and then lied their asses off. I’m guessing they didn’t believe the Atlantic magazine would release the transcript of the chat, that was a bit of a miscalculation, they released it the next day. They were in front of the House committee the next day when the transcript was released. It looked like they took the Oliver North course on answering questions, they were a lot of, “not to the best of my recollection” answers. It’s really a shame that no one in government can admit to their mistakes anymore.
John Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco got on national television and made this statement; “There an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. Further statements, detailed discussions, are not to conceal responsibility because I’m the responsible officer of the Government.” He may have not been in the planning of the operation, but he still took the rap for the mistakes that were made. Harry Truman famously said about being the POTUS, “The buck stops here” which means the ultimate responsibility for all actions lies with person of authority and you can’t pass it off to others. I’m pretty sure he meant this for every President, someone should explain this to our current leader.