Over the weekend, news broke that a serious security breach of U.S. intelligence had taken place on March 15. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disclosed war plans in an encrypted group chat to a group of senior members of the Trump administration. Participating in the chat were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, the National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the head of the CIA John Ratcliffe, and other senior officials. The information contained “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing”. There were numerous anomalies including the following:

1. The conversation took place outside the secure government channels that would normally be used for classified and highly sensitive war planning.
2. The highly respected editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, affirmed in an article that he published on Monday that he was mistakenly added to the text chat on the commercial messaging app Signal by Michael Waltz.
3. Goldberg was most cautious. He did not reveal the most sensitive information in his article, but he disclosed enough (portions of the chat text itself, including emojis) to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had been included in the text chat.
4. Several Defense Department officials expressed shock that Mr. Hegseth had put American war plans into a commercial chat group. They affirmed that having this type of conversation in a Signal chat group itself could be a violation of the Espionage Act, a law covering the handling of sensitive information. The revelation of operational war plans before the planned strikes had occurred could also put American troops directly into harm’s way.
5. In the conversation, Ratcliffe mentioned the name of an active undercover CIA officer.

Yesterday there was a Senate hearing that dealt with the presentation of the major threats in the world, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials including Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe. This hearing is an annual event, but there was something different this time. Democratic senators (Warner, Bennet, Ossoff, Kelly) took advantage of the hearing to grill Gabbard and Ratcliffe about the security breach. They repeatedly answered that the conversation in the group chat did take place but that the information provided was not “classified”. How stupid do they think we are? Detailed, sensitive information about imminent strikes on Yemen, and information regarding targets, U.S. weapons and attack sequencing should not be considered “classified”? The Dems continued the pressure. They used Gabbard’s own words against her, by quoting back her own descriptions of what information should be identified as “classified”. She and Ratcliffe were frequently asked about the weapons and targets mentioned in the conversation. And they frequently (and conveniently) answered, “I can’t remember” and “I can’t recall”.

In a press conference later in the day, President Trump repeated the official line that “this information was not classified” because if it were classified, he and his senior staff would appear to be seriously incompetent. The official party line is “Deny, Deny, Deny!”: deny that the information was classified, deny that the breach was serious, or deny that lives were put at risk.

Sooner or later, the administration will have to admit the information was (and should have been) considered “classified” OR that it was not classified and now should be made public. Either way, the administration should admit its serious mistake. Truth will win out in the end. We, the people, deserve the truth. We also deserve public officials who are mature enough to admit their errors and improve our government. We deserve accountability. In my blog postings earlier this year, I questioned the inferior qualifications of many of the Cabinet nominees. Sadly, many of these “leaders” have demonstrated their incompetence. At the very minimum, Hegseth and Waltz should be fired.