The Gang That Couldn't Spook Straight

Debra Saunders on Mar 26, 2025

WASHINGTON -- Over the past 48 hours, President Donald Trump's national security team has looked like a pack of amateurs.

On Monday, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he somehow got plugged into a group text among President Donald Trump's national security top guns as they went over plans to bomb the Houthi militia in Yemen over the weekend.

The shared texts were a blunder. As Goldberg reported, the group discussed "precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing" on phones via the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Warning: In February, the Google Threat Intelligence Group reported observing "increasing efforts from several Russia state-aligned threat actors to compromise Signal Messenger accounts used by individuals of interest to Russia's intelligence services."

On Tuesday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard -- two spooks on the Signal spoke chain -- were set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The already scheduled hearing provided the perfect opportunity for the two to admit they screwed up in epic proportions, apologize and, at the very least, offer their plans to make sure they wouldn't screw up again.

Instead, Gabbard argued that the leak did not involve classified material, which is beside the point. Ratcliffe was insufficiently contrite. Both should have acknowledged a lapse in judgment and a renewed commitment to putting security first.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who also was part of the Signal chat, unloaded on Goldberg from a tarmac in Hawaii. Hegseth called The Atlantic editor "a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist."

But even the White House did not challenge the content of The Atlantic story.

"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," National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes responded in a statement sent to various outlets.

Hughes also referred to the texts as "a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials."

True that. The texts display spirited engagement on the part of Team Trump. Vice President JD Vance opined the timing of the Yemen bombing was a "mistake," but he told Hegseth, "if you think we should do it let's go."

Democrats point out that Republicans were brutal when it came out that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was using a private server for sensitive State Department correspondence, so they should hold Team Trump accountable.

They're right. The base should put heat on Team Trump when it falls short on security best practices.

According to Trump, an aide to national security adviser Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret with a sharp understanding of global dynamics, was responsible for inadvertently adding Goldberg to the group chat.

During a pool spray Tuesday, Trump told reporters he did not think Waltz needs to apologize.

Both Trump and Waltz threw shade on Goldberg, who is the swell behind the sketchy 2020 story about Trump allegedly calling U.S. troops who died in combat "suckers" and "losers."

In this case, however, Goldberg held onto the group-chat story until after the Yemen strike began and withheld parts of the texts in the national interest. He then delivered a wake-up call to Washington that the intelligence community needs to be more vigilant about phones and group texts.

Going after Goldberg isn't going to make this country safer.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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