During a heated Senate hearing Tuesday, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee grilled the nation's top security officials about their participation in a Signal group chat and accidentally discussing war plans with a journalist.
Among the senators reprimanding members of the Trump administration was ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, who slammed the incident as "mind-boggling."
"You've got this senior level of individuals communicating on this non-classified channel and plain sloppiness put a journalist on and nobody bothered to check who's this other person on the line," Warner told All Things Considered's Ailsa Chang.
The hearing, previously scheduled, came a day after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed he was mistakenly added to a group chat where the nation's top security officials discussed highly sensitive plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.
Goldberg told NPR that he was not vetted before being added to the chat.
"It was a chilling thing to realize that I've inadvertently discovered a massive security breach in the national security system of the United States," he said in an interview with All Things Considered.
Speaking to reporters after the Senate hearing, President Trump downplayed the massive security breach. "There was no classified information, as I understand it," Trump said, adding that many people in the government use Signal.
NPR recently learned that a Pentagon-wide advisory went out last week warning against using the app, even for unclassified information, saying "a vulnerability has been identified."
During the Senate hearing, Warner described the actions of the nation's top intelligence officials as "sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior."
"If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired," he said.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Ailsa Chang: You and your fellow Democrats, as expected, had pretty sharp words today for the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA. Notably, none of your Republican colleagues seemed intent on focusing at all on this whole Signal episode. Do you have a sense of whether any of those Republicans share your concerns?
Mark Warner: I think they do. And I think it was extraordinarily telling that none of my Republican colleagues came to these folks' defense. If anybody hasn't heard, let's just review very quickly there was a Signal — a good encrypted application, but it is not a classified means of transmitting information. Matter of fact, we have evidence that Russia and China try to break into Signal-based systems. Two, you've got this senior level of individuals communicating on this non-classified channel and plain sloppiness put a journalist on and nobody bothered to check who's this other person on the line.
Chang: But I ask you, if none of your Republican colleagues are willing to speak out against what happened without their support in seeking accountability, are we going to see any accountability?
Warner: Well, I think we will. Listen, I think we're going to see this, the full text. I think the journalist is thinking about releasing it. Gabbard said today, there's nothing classified. [If] there's nothing classified, there's no reason why it shouldn't be released.
Chang: Right, you said OK, "Share it with the committee."
Warner: She refused to acknowledge…
Chang: At first.
Warner: … whether she was using her phone or a government phone, but Ailsa step back for a moment — even with what we know right now, we have the vice president disagreeing with others about an imminent bombing — having that information, if it had gone out ahead of time, I can tell you that Russia and China, Iran, that's what their spies would love to have. That very information alone in any traditional way would be viewed as classified and not supposed to be disclosed.
Chang: Let's talk about the classified nature or non-classified nature of the information, because you're right, Gabbard said that there was no classified material shared on that chat. But if Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting is correct, that text thread included the name of a CIA officer and information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, attacks sequencing. Are there any conceivable circumstances where none of that information would be classified? You tell me.
Warner: There was no conceivable circumstance. And let me acknowledge we over classify in this country, but they shouldn't be changing the rules. And the hypocrisy here of the director of national intelligence, who literally 11 days ago tweeted out, like, we're going to go after every leaker and anybody that leaks, we're going to pursue to the full extent of the law and then to be so cavalier and treat this information because if it'd gotten out, Americans could have died in terms of the Houthis being able to reconfigure or redirect their defensive capabilities. This is kind of Security 101. If this had been a military officer or a CIA case officer, they would be fired with this kind of behavior, without question.
Chang: If it turns out that Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic decide not to release further content of what Goldberg saw on that group chat. You did ask Gabbard today. You said, well, if nothing's classified, then share the contents with the committee. How do you proceed at that point if you want to see those contents that are apparently non-classified according to her?
Warner: One of the things I have loved about the [Senate] Intelligence Committee, I was chair under the last administration and vice chair now, is that we have a tendency of almost always being bipartisan. I absolutely believe if the administration tries to stonewall this, we will have bipartisan support for us as the Intelligence Committee, the oversight committee that's supposed to be making sure things are appropriate. We'll get a look at this at the transcript.
Chang: Well, let me ask you this, if she is open…
Warner: Can I just add one last quick thing here? If this was the first time. It would still be awful, but it wouldn't be as awful as it is right now. This is the same administration that a couple weeks in inadvertently released the names of 200 CIA new agents. Many of those who can't be deployed and this is the administration that Elon Musk and his so-called DOGE boys released classified information almost on a daily basis.
NPR disclosure: Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation.
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