SIGNALGATE: AN UNFORGIVABLE NATIONAL SECURITY BREACH
Top Trump administration officials in the military and intelligence agencies have committed an unbelievable and unforgivable breach of national security. Investigations by Congress and the military are essential. Officials responsible should resign, be fired, or be impeached, and perhaps prosecuted.
(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)
There is NO EXCUSE for top Trump administration officials communicating secret military plans over Signal, an unsecured, commercial messaging app, whose use is SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITED by Defense Department policy. Included in the Signal chat group discussing the March 15 attack in Yemen, before and during the action, were:
Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Secretary of State Rubio,
The President’s National Security Advisor Waltz and Chief of Staff Wiles,
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Ratliffe and the Director of National Intelligence Gabbard,
Vice President Vance, and others.
None of them, over the four-day chat (3/11 – 3/15), raised a red flag over the illegal use of an unsecured communication channel, with a reporter accidentally included no less. This is astounding. Any government employee of lower rank who engaged in such a breach of security would be fired immediately and jailed without bail. Concerning elements of this national security breach include:
The incompetence, inexperience, and cavalier attitude toward sensitive information of these top Trump administration official is stunning and unacceptable.
This strongly implies that senior Trump administration officials are regularly having very sensitive communications over an unsecured, commercial messaging app in violation of the law.
Some of them were using their personal, unsecured phones. Experts have stated that it’s highly likely foreign intelligence services are monitoring their personal phones. (Official government-issued secured phones have special encryption and other security features, including the inability to download apps, such as Signal, WhatsApp, X, etc. that make a phone vulnerable to hacking.) [1]
Secretary of Defense Hegseth repeatedly lied about what had occurred and Gabbard and Ratliffe lied under oath at a Senate hearing. [2]
President Trump stated he had no knowledge of the breach on March 24. Based on the pre-attack messaging, which Trump was not part of, it appears the decision to go ahead with the strikes was made by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, not the President, which is startling. Stunningly, the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the military was also not included.
The name of at least one CIA operative was revealed in the messaging. [3]
The revelation of a specific, targeted individual and on-the-ground intelligence about him, while the strike was on-going, is breathtaking and put intelligence sources at risk. (Apparently some of the intelligence and sources were Israeli and the Israelis are furious about the compromising of their information and sources.)
It must be assumed that Russia and China (and maybe other adversaries such as Iran and North Korea) have the ability to intercept these unsecured communications, according to multiple experts. An internal bulletin from the National Security Agency warned staff in February 2025 not to use Signal, citing concerns that the app was vulnerable to Russian hackers. [4]
The Signal messaging app being used by top Trump administration officials deletes communications after a set period of time – days or a few weeks. This violates federal laws requiring the preservation of documents and communications. Signal may well have been deliberately used here and in other communications to evade having a public record. [5]
All members of Congress, and particularly any with military service backgrounds, should be enraged and determined to get to the bottom of this. It is a national security breach of breathtaking seriousness that could or may have endangered the lives of military and intelligence personnel. Our troops and our country are clearly not being kept safe. If the Iranians had access to the messaging and had alerted their Houthi allies (the targets) to prepare for the attack, including anti-aircraft weaponry, the U.S. jets and pilots would have been at serious risk and the success of the mission would likely have been compromised.
The military itself should undertake a rigorous investigation with decisive punishment for those guilty of compromising national security. [6]
Reporters and internet sleuths have found personal information about phones and email addresses for a number of the chat participants, including usernames and passwords for email accounts for Hegseth, Waltz, and Gabbard. This makes it highly likely that foreign adversaries have been monitoring everything they have communicated since their nominations. [7]
There are many serious implications of this breach of national security. Here are a few:
Allies will NOT be sharing sensitive intelligence with the U.S. because they cannot trust that it will be kept secure. (This exacerbates their concerns raised by Trump’s behavior in his first term and his taking of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago at the end of it.)
U.S. soldiers’ lives are at-risk because Trump administration members are not maintaining security about upcoming military actions and allies won’t be sharing their intelligence.
U.S. CIA agents’ lives are at-risk because Trump administration members will include their names in unsecured communications and allies won’t be sharing their intelligence.
If you haven’t already, please contact your US Representative and Senators to express your concerns and outrage about this astonishingly dangerous national security breach. (And if you have been in touch with them, it can’t hurt to contact them again.) Ask them to demand a full investigation of the unsecured communication about the March 15 military action in Yemen. Ask them to demand the resignations, firing, impeachment, and/or prosecution of the officials involved. Hypocritically, Hegseth, Rubio, Gabbard, and Ratliffe have all stated the importance of secure handling of sensitive information and the need for accountability when it is mishandled in past attempts to criticize Democrats for supposed breaches of national security. Just imagine what Republicans would be saying if a Democrat had committed a breach anywhere near this serious!
You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.
[1] Hubbell, R., 3/27/25, “Signalgate: A crack in the façade?” Daily Edition Newsletter (Signalgate: A crack in the facade? - by Robert B. Hubbell)
[2] Queally, J., 3/26, “Here are the texted war plans that Hegseth said ‘Nobody was texting’ on Signal,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/war-plans-signal-hegseth)
[3] Cox Richardson, H., 3/24/25, “Letters from an American,” (March 24, 2025 - by Heather Cox Richardson)
[4] Cox Richardson, H., 3/26/25, “Letters from an American,” (March 26, 2025 - by Heather Cox Richardson)
[5] Hubbell, R., 3/25/25, “Criminal recklessness,” Daily Edition Newsletter (https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/criminal-recklessness)
[6] Editorial, 3/26/25, “A ‘gross error’ that needs to be punished,” The Boston Globe
[7] Hubbell, R., 3/28/25, “Let’s ‘create a ruckus’,” Daily Edition Newsletter (Let's "create a ruckus." - by Robert B. Hubbell)