What Do You Know About Signal and How Does the CIA Detect Its Threats? Ailsa Chang: Is There a Classified Information in the App?

Chang: Let’s talk about the classified nature or non-classified nature of the information, because you’re right, Gabbard said that there was no classified material shared on that chat. But if Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting is correct, that text thread included the name of a CIA officer and information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, attacks sequencing. Are there any conceivable circumstances where none of that information would be classified? You tell me.

Warner: Well, I think we will. I think we’re going to see the full text. The journalist is thinking about it. There’s no classified information according to Gabbard today. There is no reason that it shouldn’t be released.

Chang: Are we going to see accountability if none of your Republican colleagues are willing to speak out against what happened without their support?

Mark Warner: I think they do. And I think it was extraordinarily telling that none of my Republican colleagues came to these folks’ defense. If anybody hasn’t heard, let’s just review very quickly there was a Signal — a good encrypted application, but it is not a classified means of transmitting information. Russia and China are attempting to break into Signal-based systems. Two, you’ve got this senior level of individuals communicating on this non-classified channel and plain sloppiness put a journalist on and nobody bothered to check who’s this other person on the line.

Ailsa Chang: You and your fellow Democrats, as expected, had pretty sharp words today for the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA. They didn’t seem to care about this entire Signal episode at all. Do you have a sense of whether any of those Republicans share your concerns?

The Pentagon advised against using the app last week, even for un-classified information, saying that a vulnerability had been identified.

The President downplayed a huge security failure after the Senate hearing. “There wasn’t any classified information, as I understand it,” said Trump, adding that people in the government use Signal.

“It was a chilling thing to realize that I’ve inadvertently discovered a massive security breach in the national security system of the United States,” he said in an interview with All Things Considered.

After Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed that a top Trump administration official mistakenly added him to a group chat on an app with plans to bomb Yemen, a hearing about the incident was held.

“You’ve got this senior level of individuals communicating on this non-classified channel and plain sloppiness put a journalist on and nobody bothered to check who’s this other person on the line,” Warner told All Things Considered’s Ailsa Chang.

Among the senators reprimanding members of the Trump administration was ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, who slammed the incident as “mind-boggling.”

Rhode Island’s Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the armed services committee, said that he would be meeting with another senator to chart out a course of action and collect evidence to investigate. “It is an egregious violation” he told NPR.

Warner said that if there was no classified material, share it with the committee. “You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is the national security of our country.

Warner: One of the things I have loved about the [Senate] Intelligence Committee, I was chair under the last administration and vice chair now, is that we have a tendency of almost always being bipartisan. I absolutely believe if the administration tries to stonewall this, we will have bipartisan support for us as the Intelligence Committee, the oversight committee that’s supposed to be making sure things are appropriate. We’ll get a look at this at the transcript.

As for that mortifying incident in which a journalist was invited into a supposedly super-triple-extra-confidential conversation with top military and intelligence leaders, it’s hard to know what’s worse: not being aware who was in the group chat or conducting the chat on mobile phones. The people who were supposed to be in the group may have thought they were safe because their messages were protected by the Signal messaging app. The people using a chat are as safe as the people talking on it. Just a few days ago, the Pentagon issued a warning that Russian hackers were tricking people into letting them join their Signal group texts. Steve took an invite to join the chat and did it from Moscow.

White House Meetings and Security in the U.S. Military: Ned Price, George W. Bush, and General Relativity

If we were to do this, any one of us who served in the military would be in the area, according to a former congressman.

Ned Price is a former CIA analyst who was a deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

“The meetings of the Principals Committee are held in the White House Situation Room, perhaps the most secure venue within the U.S. government,” Price said.

“These secure rooms are built to discuss classified information,” NPR’s Greg Myre reports. “You can’t take a phone into these rooms. All of the top-ranking national security officials have secret compartmented files at their homes and offices, as well as in their offices.

Price says that a national security team accompanies them when they travel to set up a secure tent to protect their communications.

Goldberg told NPR on Monday that Hegseth shared “operational military information” that included targets, weapons and attack sequencing. Goldberg said he would not provide additional details because he considered the information to be too sensitive to share more widely.

Goldberg did not say what was in the communications that could be damaging or what the details of the upcoming strikes would be.

The Trump White House Security Committee meets with Principals Committee Chairman, Susie Wiles, and G. Myre, and a counterexample to a congressional hacking warning

Messages on Signal are encrypted — journalists at NPR and other outlets use it as a way to maintain privacy. The first Trump administration targeted such apps five years ago, complaining that their messages couldn’t be decrypted even by law enforcement agencies with a warrant.

Experts say sensitive government communications can be done using official devices and through security measures rather than using open-source software.

The Principals Committee chat’s 18 members included Vice President Vance; White House chief of staff Susie Wiles; and “S M,” an apparent reference to Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Also in the group: CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom were questioned about the breach during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday.

“Those agencies are absolutely fanatical about secure communications,” NPR’s Greg Myre says of the CIA and DNI. “Yet based on Goldberg’s account, no senior national security official raised concerns about sharing war plans on Signal.”

The Pentagon sent an email to all of their staff about a vulnerability in the messaging app. The risk of Russian professional hacking groups is cited in the notice. The notice was apparently sent days after Goldberg told Waltz that he had somehow been added to the PC group, and left the chat.

Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee pushed back aggressively against those claims by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Deputy Defense Secretary JD Vance and Suppressed Senator Susan Collins, an official of the Signal message group, have not shared classified information outside proper channels

Ratcliffe said his communication in a Signal message group were permissible and lawful.

Gabbard refused to say whether she was on the Signal chat group, but added that she has not shared any classified information outside of proper channels.

Goldberg wrote that Gabbard and Ratcliffe were among the 18 individuals who participated in the text chain, a group that Goldberg said also included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Goldberg initially believed it was a fake, but eventually came to believe it was real after reading the text messages for a few days. He said his inclusion in the group must have been inadvertent. He thought that someone else with the same initials as Goldberg was supposed to be included in his account.

At the White House, the National Security Council confirmed the authenticity of the message thread on Monday, saying it was “reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”

The security breach raises questions about the Trump administration’s handling of sensitive information, say both sides of the aisle.

Democrats in Congress had roundly criticized many of Trump’s security and intelligence picks for their perceived lack of experience during the nomination process — and are now calling for further investigation.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have publicly called for an investigation into what they respectively called “this unacceptable and irresponsible national security breach” and the “damage it created.”

“We’re very concerned,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters on Monday, adding that his panel would look into the matter directly.

Other Republicans have been more direct with their alarm, including Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who serves on the Intelligence Committee. The incident was very likely to happen to Collins.

Another member of the intel panel, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., suggested ahead of Tuesday’s hearing that the committee would have a deeper conversation on the breach behind closed doors.

Rounds said he would not make a judgement on it until he heard an explanation from the individuals involved in it.

Source: Intelligence leaders: We didn’t share classified information in Signal chat group

Zero-Click Spyware: How the House GOP Sentiments Met Operated on a Capitol Hill High School Student Leadership Challenge

In the House, Republicans have largely been more muted. The issue did not come up during the House GOP weekly meeting on Tuesday, signaling hopes to downplay the matter.

“Obviously that was a mistake and a serious mistake, and I apologize for that,” he said. But Johnson described the participants in the chat as “patriots,” adding, “that was a successful mission.”

There isn’t a way to make a phone unhackable. In the secure rooms where Washington officials conduct their most important conversations, phones are not allowed in the door.

So-called zero-click spyware is now sold to regimes and corporations around the globe. Users in 150 countries have been targeted by Apple. The NSO Group, an Israeli company, developed a program that has been deployed in several countries. Frank Figliuzzi is a former assistant director for counterintelligence of the F.B.I. You don’t need to be very smart.

The story of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday: Senator Gabbard and Ratcliffe grilled again about the leaked Signal chat as more details emerge

The story claims that the statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump combined with the assertions made by several administration officials lead us to believe that people should see the Signal texts.

The leaders denied sharing any classified information in a way that was improper or illegal, but the ranking Democrat challenged them.

It’s the second trip to Capitol Hill in two days for Gabbard and Ratcliffe, who were grilled about the gaffe on Tuesday by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Habba said at the White House that it was what it was. I think that this is something that they are making a big to-do about nothing, at the end of the day. A reporter is working hard to get a story.

Krishnamoorthy said that this is classified information. Details about the operations and a weapons system are included.

As the attack was underway, Hegseth sent two messages saying the F-18 fighters and MQ-9 drones would be launched. Krishnamoorthi then asked Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse if those are weapons systems.

Another Democrat, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, cited an executive order and a Defense Department manual that deem information “classified” if its unauthorized disclosure could harm national security, specifying details such as military plans and weapons systems.

“I’ve seen things that are a little less sensitive being presented to us with high classification,” said Castro. “And to say that it isn’t is a lie to the country.”

Source: U.S. intel leaders are grilled again about the leaked Signal chat as more details emerge

Plan for a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen: a high-level discussion on Signal and their view on a future air raid campaign

During a high-level chat on Signal, an open-sourced messaging app, officials discussed a plan for a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen.