On Monday night, the news broke that a group chat between national security officials at the highest levels accidentally included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg–a vicious and often dishonest Trump critic–in a Signal chat that discussed the US attacks on the Houthis.
Goldberg related his monitoring of the chat in the most breathless terms, claiming that he received the “war plans” for the attacks accidentally. War plans would include strike packages, timing of the strikes, what units were involved, and various details of what should have been very secret and closely held information.
Democrats understandably went nuts, based on their rock-solid principle that classified documents belong solely in the hands of Democrats, who are empowered to leak them at will if it would hurt a Republican. Otherwise, such documents are useful for writing memoirs for which they will be grossly overpaid.
Needless to say, if the original story from Goldberg were wholly accurate, even defenders of the Trump administration would rightfully be angry that Signal was being used to discuss highly classified information. War plans should not be shared indiscriminately, and the chance for information to leak out from such a discussion if a determined adversary wanted to see them means that more secure means should be used.
Think about it this way.
Do you use X on your phone and on your computer?
What if some unauthorized, nefarious third party also had your X account and password functional on their computer? They could sit and wait silently for months and at the right time do something damaging…
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) March 25, 2025
Needless to say, the story was at least partly a hoax. We still don’t know exactly how Goldberg wound up being on the Signal chat, but we do know that Goldberg exaggerated what information he got, and that a lot of the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth is based on complete BS. Somebody made a big mistake–we don’t yet know who–or something hinky happened, but war plans were not leaked to a Trump-hating “journalist.”
Yesterday’s kerfuffle over the latest Jeffrey Goldberg/Atlantic hit piece proves yet again to never react to leftist attack pieces unless and until the facts are known.
It appears now that the following things are likely true:
1. White House counsel approved the use of Signal for non-classified discussions.
2. The phones the principals used had Signal pre-loaded when issued to them.
3. The Biden Administration used Signal in the exact same way.
4. The conversations Goldberg shared in his Atlantic piece were not classified.
5. Those same conversations discussed how to share classified information separately on classified IT system.
6. Literally the only proof we have that any classified discussions occurred is Goldberg’s assertion that the parts of the conversation he withheld from the article were “conceivably” classified.
7. Goldberg is a highly unreliable narrator who has created or participated in multiple wildly inaccurate anti-Trump hoaxes.
8. There are ways to illegally hack Signal which involve cloning a device that is legitimately involved in the conversation. An in-house IT employee could do this with ease as that functionality is purposely built into Signal for user convenience.
Based on the above, my current working theory (yes, it’s a THEORY and it could be wrong) is that the Biden White House left a hacker landmine in the system where the very last person who can be trusted with anything involving Trump was invited to a crucial national security discussion.
Illegal? Unethical? Yes.
But so is firebombing Tesla dealerships and fabricating “dossiers” about pee tapes.
The discrepancies between Goldberg’s rather outlandish claims and the more prosaic reality shouldn’t surprise us, but then again, we all see our blood pressure rise when a stressor hits us. Just because there have been a lot of hoaxes aimed at Trump and his advisors does not ensure that every criticism is wrong.
The Atlantic, or The New York Times for that matter, prints all sorts of biased, misleading, or even false information, but it does not follow that everything printed in either is wrong. In fact, both publish lots of excellent work. For that matter, The National Enquirer has a long history of printing nonsense, but they also got some scoops.
President Trump on Signal group chat:
“What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had Goldberg’s number or call through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the call.” pic.twitter.com/WUAiOZFhKm
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) March 26, 2025
Check your work, and theirs too if you want to figure out what is real and what is fake.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard:
There was no classified materials that was shared in that Signal chat.pic.twitter.com/cI5mlFooBS
— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 25, 2025
When the story broke, my first reaction was not “they shouldn’t use Signal” or to be outraged at the breach of security–I didn’t know the full story so I filed the story away for later consideration.
CIA DIRECTOR RATCLIFFE: “One of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer… One of the things that I was briefed on very early was the use of Signal as a permissible work use.”pic.twitter.com/oRBfXAzrgR
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 25, 2025
It turns out that Signal is an approved app for certain communications, as it was in prior administrations.
Jennifer do some research …
12/2024
“Today, CISA urged senior government and political officials to switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal
following a wave of telecom breaches across dozens of countries, including eight carriers in the United States” pic.twitter.com/N3cQLtrhTH— Lawyerforlaws (@lawyer4laws) March 25, 2025
Rather, my concern was that somebody in the Administration had Goldberg in their contacts. Goldberg is a snake. Why have him in your contacts?
read:https://t.co/LPPnDQiJJ9
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) March 25, 2025
Without knowing the full circumstances, it is hard to know what to think. Some people are speculating that the phones were cloned–each of these officials were handed phones preloaded with Signal, so some anonymous person in the Biden administration set them up in the first place.
🚨.@ScottJenningsKY just blew apart the narratives coming from the Atlantic hit piece published today and pointed out the facts.
“The Signal program was pre-loaded on a number of devices and agency computers in this circuit when they got there, so in their view, it was already… pic.twitter.com/bqBDUkkRcn
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) March 25, 2025
just blew apart the narratives coming from the Atlantic hit piece published today and pointed out the facts.
“The Signal program was pre-loaded on a number of devices and agency computers in this circuit when they got there, so in their view, it was already in use.”
“In some of the messages they talk about needing to go to the high side computers, which is the classified system.”
“So they clearly knew there was a line on what you could discuss in a chat like this versus a classified system.”
“There is a dispute over whether the term “war plans” is being exaggerated.”
“Look, I love the policy. It‘s well executed. You‘ve got a thoughtful policy discussion going on. We did what the Biden Administration would not do: stop these people from harassing our shipping lanes, our boats, and our Navy. So, good on the Trump Administration for reversing a bad policy.”
There are other speculations as well, up to and including that a bonehead mistake was made.
I don’t know, and neither do you unless you have inside information. Members of the Pravda Media certainly don’t know either.
This story is a good reminder that whatever you hear about a breaking news story is likely wrong and certainly incomplete, so caveat emptor.
