Hegseth Sends Top Secret Attack Plans to Journalist - By Mistake

That deflection shield is looking pretty battered these days. Got a handle on a new line?

 

If we had a competent admin I could see the point of discretely handling it. However, you know that’s not the case with the current admin. They haven’t owned up to it, said my mistake, and we’ll make changes. No, first they gaslight, lie, and then only after receipts were provided give a weak “I may have screwed up” apology.

This had to be public to put pressure on the admin to get back to using the proper secure communications systems our country has spent immense sums of money and effort to create and maintain. There’s no way you can convince me that sharing high side info on unsecured devices is an acceptable practice (no matter how secure Signal is it doesn’t matter if they gain access to one of the devices).

We know we’re so concerned about the ability of other nations to gain access to devices that we provide officials burner phones for use in other countries and they have to leave their main devices in a secure location.

 

Top economy in the world, historically low unemployment, added almost 17 million jobs during the admin, led the world coming out of global inflation, historic highs in the stock market, violent crime at historically low levels, etc.

 

Couple of real questions that should be asked.

1. What other chats are they using on signal?

2. Why aren't they using secured phones?

 

No idea. Don’t think FOIA was even considered. They were probably just being lazy and rationalized their way to using signal

 

I don't recall trying to do that. And I won't. I remain professionally flabbergasted by the collective judgment.

 

Point taken, but it's the same thing that would have happened to one of us if we had used a personal server to store classified materials then destroyed said server before law enforcement could seize it, the same thing that would have happened if one of us brought cocaine into the White House and left it behind, the same thing that would have happened if one of us had a sexual relationship with a subordinate then lied to investigators about it, the same thing that would have happened if we had ordered subordinates to break into a psychiatrist's office to dig up dirt on someone problematic to us professionally, and so on. I wish laws were not just for little people, but both parties continue to prove the point.

 

Good point. Supposedly Signal is used more by gov officials. For this group, it's probably a combination of hubris and lack of experience. Maybe thinking those extra security steps "take time and are unnecessary for us top leaders." And Pentagon's warning "doesn't apply to us"



Pentagon warned staffers against using Signal before White House chat leak | US national security | The Guardian

 

Please don't deliberately miss my point. Every circumstance I listed above would have severe consequences for a member of the armed forces, just as you suggest. And no one feels the least bit bad for them. For politicians, political appointees, their family members, etc., accountability is a function of who holds political power. We both know this is true. We both know it won't be any different next time or the time after that.

 

Karolyn "Take-it-or" Leavitt tells Americans that they should "be grateful" for the competence of the national security team for the way they handled their own incompetence, while deflecting the discussion towards the Middle East. She hastened to add that of course Donald "Dunce" Trump was confident in his national security team--after all, Trump is a confidence-man.

Leavitt Tells Americans to Be ‘Grateful’ for Trump’s ‘Competent’ Team After War Leak Debacle

 

She is the definition of gaslighting.

 

I guess this one feels different to me. Many of the things you listed are sins of arrogance. Mistakenly inviting a reporter to a war plans chat feels like flat out incompetence.

 

I heard him on an interview today. I flat out disagree with your take here.

Goldberg is an experienced reporter in the national security field. When he first got the invitation and for quite a while he was 100% sure this was a hoax or a hack or something other than it appeared to be. So he just let it play out. Then as others joined it became obvious it was real.

He is a reporter. He could have blown the whistle earlier, but he didn’t. He didn’t do anything to endanger national security or any lives. After the fact, I would say he has an obligation to report it, not only as a reporter, but as a service to the nation to the sheer level of incompetence of these clowns.

Duing the interview he wasn’t sure he was going to release the transcripts but later he did. I suspect it was in response to the lies and gaslighting of the administration saying he was lying.

I have to say while I respect your opinion on many things, you have lately been performing unnatural gymnastics in an impossible effort to play things down the middle. This is just bad, and wasting any text on somehow assigning contributory blame to the reporter is really missing the boat.

 

No argument here.

 

If things are exactly as they appear, it’s both.