Summary
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied allegations that he texted classified war plans to a Signal group chat that mistakenly included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.
The National Security Council confirmed the chat’s authenticity but called the inclusion of Goldberg an inadvertent mistake.
Lawmakers from both parties demanded investigations, with former CIA Director Leon Panetta warning of potential espionage violations.
Hegseth dismissed Goldberg as a “deceitful” journalist. Trump denied knowledge of the incident.
He knows they have the screenshots and the NSC confirmed it, right?
https://x.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1904221405618577650
NSC statement: “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.” - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
The Trump administration does not deny this Signal group chat about the war planning for the Yemen strikes is real. Trump’s top national security advisers added reporter
@JeffreyGoldberg
@TheAtlantic
to the war planning text chain on non-government social media app, perhaps breaking secrecy laws. Read this shocking story below.
Pro tip: if you change the
x.comtoxcancel.comyou can make the link use a twitter mirror and not give Musk revenue if people click on the linkMore “sourcing the quote” than anything else, but thanks!
Sigh. Todays word of the day is kakistocracy.
The classified plans aren’t allowed out of the SCIF and the phone isn’t allowed in the SCIF. Anything you learn in the SCIF cannot be stored, shared, or spoken about outside of a SCIF especially on electronic media. If anyone in the military did this, like lets say Chelsea Manning, and shared it with a journalist, like say Julian Assange, they would end up in prison for a while.
Chelsea Manning*
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
A lot of people assume this is the correct way to speak because it’s chronologically correct, but the general consensus in the trans community is that she was always Chelsea Manning, and always was a woman, and the time that she spent using the other name and gender need not be reflected upon. I do not know how Chelsea Manning personally feels about this, and every individual is entitled to their own respect, however the general etiquette when you do not know is to NOT deadname or misgender them, regardless of what era of their life you are referring to.
This is not an attack. Just a PSA.
Have a peaceful evening.
I respectfully disagree with that consensus.
Her legal name was Bradley Manning when she was charged and tried: https://web.archive.org/web/20110726100828/http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/eCache/DEF/12/444.html
When referring to legal proceedings it only makes sense to use someone’s legal name during those proceedings. Court documents do not get retroactively updated when someone changes their name.
Ultimately, what is disrespectful to Chelsea Manning is entirely determined by Chelsea Manning not the Lemmy Community, Military Community, Trans Community, or any other group.
Nobody gets to be offended for me, and I am the sole determiner of what is respectful and disrespectful to me.
You are entitled to disagree, and as i said before, I do not know Chelsea Mannings’ stance on the matter. Some trans people do refer to their past tense selves with their previous names, or even do not change names after coming out or transitioning. You are correct that court documents will not be altered.
The point that I am making is that, in general, it is considered disrespectful and quite rude to dead name and misgender someone unless they have given you express permission to do so. It’s really not a matter of being technically correct, it’s just a matter of being kind.
Unless you are friends with Chelsea (which I am not), or unless you are directly quoting something out of the court document (and even then, you can just say “Manning”), there’s no need to use the name that she used to go by, and there’s no need to use he/him pronouns. We’re talking about Chelsea Manning right now, but this goes for any trans person that you are not personally acquainted with. Another example would be to say that Caitlin Jenner is an Olympic Medal winner, regardless of what she looked like or what name she won those medals under, or what category she won them in.
Again, not an attack. I’m just making noise.
Hope your night is going well.
(But fuck Caitlin Jenner, she’s a bad person)
Thank you for informing me.
That’s still deadnaming and misgendering tho, as I understand it as a cis guy myself. I encourage you edit your original response with her current name and gender
All that is true. In addition, those communications are subject to records retention laws, so using signal and flagging them to be deleted is illegal in itself.
Ah yes - the classic Trump approach… just yell Fake News as loud as possible.
I’m seriously hopeful that the people who have historically given into this lie are wising up.
Don’t hold your breath. The Repubs will just say they haven’t read the news.
While acknowledging that Trump voters are emotional and fear-prone, they’re not entirely stupid and generally not cultists, probably, maybe. Can we have some sliver of hope? The ones I know are certainly not stupid but are tragically misinformed and savants of confirmation bias. I’ve also noticed that they care a great deal. It seems more like a target misalignment problem than a broken turret.
The ones I know are certainly not stupid but are tragically misinformed and savants of confirmation bias
Can you please define “stupid”? Because this feels like a very apt definition of the word you’re trying to use
I think he means there are some otherwise intelligent people voting against their self interests because the echo chambers and media they are exposed to have convinced them to.
Smart people can be misinformed too. Finding a way for them to be informed could help those ones (I wish I knew some of them, because I think I could help, but the trumpets I know are the cultist ones with really screwed up morals).
A smart person is impossible to dupe twice. This is Trump second term, anyone voting for him a second time after the first one does not deserve to be called “intelligent”. They are as stupid as they come and they can only blame themselves for that, especially in an era where information are abundant and vary.
This is moronic, elitist, trash
The only characteristic of stupidity is being misinformed? Everyone is misinformed to some extent. There are myriad aspects to intelligence. We’re all imperfect monkeys.
Nobody is denying that we are all imperfect monkeys nor is stating that being misinformed is the only characteristic of being stupid. I’m simply sayig that making mistakes is human, perservering in being mistaken is diabolical, as we say here in Italy. They knew the man from the previous administration and they actively choose to support him still after they saw what he was able to do with January 6th, besides all other misdees he achieved between 2016 and 2020. They are either morons and idiots or bad people, no inbetween left imho. If you still believe they are capable of changing without receiving an heartfelt apology from them, buddy, I’ve got a coliseum to sell to you, contact me in private
I understand the rage completely. As an American, I have lost hair for it. The tiny optimist in me believes that these people have a limit. They will never apologize for anything, but we can hope that they’ll trend more toward sanity once they discover how fucked Trumpism is. Many of them are fucking idiots, but a lot of them aren’t.
Narrator: “They weren’t.”
My seed of hope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT-2EobJKzE
Nice!
In my circle they are, thankfully.
What do they think if this latest bit of bullshit?
They don’t care.
He’s hurting people they hate, that’s all they care about.
Also, start with talking bad of media that was involved (see Orange’s first comment).
Working the playbook. Step 1: Deny
"You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again…This is a guy who peddles in garbage.
Hegseth then added, “oh wait, that’s me.”
Prove that the sender of that message doesn’t match the cryptographic fingerprint of Hegseth. If he didn’t send it, then it wont match.
Signal allows you to verify all your contacts in the group chat.
This is so easy to solve. Jfc
The journalist just has to show the safety number of the person who sent it, and hegseth has to verify it with his device. They’re obviously already in each others contacts, or at least are aware of each other’s presence in the group chat. Its pretty hard to ignore some random journalist entering the chat since it alerts the entire group.
What makes signal great is, yes, privacy, but also the authentication of your contacts. You know you can’t possibly be talking to someone else’s device if you have verified their safety number.
Oh sure, now he wants to wash his hands of something.
Getting blackout drunk and sending texts isn’t uncommon for raging alcoholics. Source: I used to be an alcoholic (sober for 6 years)
6 years, wow. Nice one. Keep it up.
6 years strong! Wooooo! Congrats!
To be clear, Hegseth (the guy with a history of getting blackout drunk) isn’t the same as Michael Waltz, the guy who invited Goldberg to the chat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waltz
Waltz, unlike Hegseth, is not a random idiot, he definitely knows better.
“Waltz received four Bronze Stars while serving in the Special Forces during multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa. He served in the Bush administration as a defense policy director in the Pentagon and as counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney.”
As far as Hegseth (or any of the rest of them for that matter) was concerned, the list was all vetted and pre-approved people.
The fact that NONE of them actually vetted the list before saying anything speaks volumes.
They went down the line asking “Hey, who else in your department needs to be a contact on this?” and they all sounded off one by one, except Goldberg.
Nobody thought to ask “Hey, J.G., we haven’t heard from you yet. In fact, wait, who is J.G.?”
Waltz, unlike Hegseth, is not a random idiot, he definitely knows better.
I’m pressing X to doubt so hard rn
You don’t get to work for Cheney if you’re an idiot.
Please, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Waltz as rebuking proof to your statement
That was ages ago. Each covid infection causes brain damage, each person has had covid 4 to 8 times by now, and older people are hurt the most by covid… So even if the guy was smart 30 years ago, we can’t assume he is smart today
Why do you think everyone has had covid a bunch of times? As far as I’m aware i’ve never had it and I’m sure there are billions more on the planet who haven’t.
I assume they meant in that group.
JFC we have better OPSEC in EvE Online!
This makes me wonder if this was part of a ploy to let the public know how messed up things are in a “blink twice if you need help” kind of way. Or did Waltz feel these people are undeserving of their cabinet appointments and so managed to lift the veil so we can all see it? Is he mad that he wasn’t considered for the Secretary of Defense position? Is this his way of being Jim from The Office and looking into the camera?
Gratulations! More years of soberness to come for you!
deleted by creator
He must have been drunk and had a blackout.
inadvertent mistake.
Lets give the benefit of the doubt and say it was a mistake. Is that a matter and a position, where such a mistake is tolerable? Or is it something that disqualifies for any position in that domain and demands immediate resignation?
Because if you seriously make a mistake, and you realize the gravity of it, you take responsibility for it. If you instead remain in position, you either don’t recognize the gravity of it, which is an even bigger reason to resign, or you indeed acted with intent.
But in this case it did not start with inviting Goldberg. It started with making a chat group on an unauthorized app, likely using unauthorized devices to discuss matters that are explicitly forbidden to be taken out of specific permitted official channels.
inadvertent mistake
…as opposed to the other kind of mistake.
I mean you can do something intentionally and then later realize that it was wrong to do so.
That’s most mistakes. They’re still inadvertantly mistakes.
You’re right Pete. It wasn’t texting.
It was RCS through an untraceable encrypted messaging app named Signal
Which is WORSE since records are destroyed
About the technical part, Signal uses the Signal Protocol instead of RCS. (Google also uses the Signal Protocol to encrypt some RCS messages in Google Messages, but the Signal Protocol and RCS are not the same thing.)
Well shit you know what I mean …messaging with data. But thanks for the specifics I knew it wasn’t RCS but that’s all I could think of
He’s going with the Shaggy defense? “It wasn’t me”. I mean, it works for them. It will probably all blow over because no one is going to do anything. But this should absolutely destroy him.
🎵Journalist caught me on Signal (It wasn’t me)
He saw me schemin’ on Yemen (It wasn’t me)
Even list of ordinance (It wasn’t me)
He even caught me on a screenshot (It wasn’t me)
He saw the bombs dropping on Sanaa (It wasn’t me)
Heard the words the CIA told me (It wasn’t me)
Late night host laughter getting louder (It wasn’t me)
Shouldn’t have drunk that vodka!🎶
Ordinance means a rule
Ordnance means bombs
Oh that’s a fun fact. Did not know.
You dumb fuck, there are screenshots of all of it, plus your own people admitted it
These dipshits can’t get their thumbs out of each other’s butts long enough to get their story straight. I’d laugh if I thought there would be any real consequences for this nonsense.
Only 46 months to go…
I’m not usually an alarmist, but this one has the hair on the back of my neck up…
This feels like a false flag to target journalists spreading “misinformation.”
I was reading the Atlantic article thinking 'What a bunch of dumb fucks." Until I read this part:
The Hegseth message goes on to state, “Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. 2 immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive
Hard stop right there. “This is intentional.”
Then Tulsi comes out talking about “aggressively pursuing” journalists., and now P Heggs is just gonna play dumb?
Smells pretty bad, imo.
(False flag may not be the right term here, but I hope my point is still clear enough)
And yet the information was valid and confirmed? The bombs dropped right when Signal User “Pete Hegseth” said they would; NSC confirmed this was a genuine thread. It seems too elaborate to be a false flag event.
I’m not saying it was bad info. And adding a journalist to a “private” signal chat that was probably going to happen either way isn’t exactly elaborate.
International warfare seems pretty elaborate to me, or am I misunderstanding your point?
I think so…
The attack wasn’t the “false flag” (I think I misused that term), that was going to happen anyway. I think adding a journalist to their little group chat about it was.
They knew it would come out, and now they have the pretext to start going more aggresively after journalists spreading “deceitful” information.
I’m not saying I’m right, it just stinks.
But the information wasn’t deceitful, it was verifiably true. The people this looks bad for is those involved in the group chat, save the journalist. It looks especially bad for Mike Waltz, the user who added the journalist to the chat. I suppose i just don’t see how the Trumpists could benefit from this leaking the way it has.
I hope you’re right
and we look indecisive
Ugh. I didn’t want to agree with you but this little flex for the faithful seals it.
I think it was a deliberate leak. A mole from inside the administration is trying to warn us of Trump’s actions before he does them.
>Signal is most secure with these new usernames and group chat links, sir, let me arrange this for the whole small group from your account
Ya but… stupidity… hmmm 🤷♂️
If someone left their phone unlocked, that’d make sense. (I assume a serious wartime messaging app would make it very difficult to just leave unlocked like that… could be doing lots of biometrics too)
