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To the great democracies. | |
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
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We're funded by these television companies and more, including Mediacom. | |
| Nearly 30 years ago, Mediacom was founded on a powerful idea. | ||
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| MediaCom, decades of dedication, decades of delivery, decades ahead. | ||
| MediaCom supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| The story came out just after noon yesterday from The Atlantic. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief there with the byline on the story. | ||
| Here's the headline. | ||
| The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. | ||
| The subhead, U.S. National Security Leaders Included Me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. | ||
| I didn't think it could be real. | ||
| And then the bombs started falling. | ||
| This is the lead. | ||
| The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern Time on March 15th that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. | ||
| I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. | ||
| The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, had texted me the war plan at 1144 a.m. | ||
| The plan included precise information about weapons, packages, targets, and timing. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg writing in The Atlantic, he goes on to say, I've never seen a breach quite like this. | ||
| It's not uncommon for national security officials to communicate on the signal texting app, but the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters, not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of pending military actions. | ||
| Jeffrey Goldberg was on MSNBC last night discussing getting these texts and writing the story. | ||
| You know, the national security world is a pretty serious world, and especially at the level below the principles, there are people who take their responsibilities extremely seriously and take security and safety and cybersecurity and digital security very, very seriously. | ||
| And there are people, we both know of people who've gone to prison for mishandling sensitive information. | ||
| And so, you know, one of my problems, and I've been asked this question a few times today, it's why did you have such a hard time believing this? | ||
| And the answer is because it's unbelievable. | ||
| I mean, I've never experienced this through the pre-9-11 period, 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. | ||
| You know, these are life and death issues, and you don't just put out specific targeting information, specific timings of attacks that have not yet taken place into a commercial messaging app. | ||
| And so I obviously convinced myself, as I state in the story, that this was a disinformation operation of some kind. | ||
| Somebody, a state actor, non-state actor, I don't know who. | ||
| We're trying to entrap you, sir. | ||
| We're trying to entrap me or fool me or I couldn't figure out what the actual motive was. | ||
| That was one of the hard parts. | ||
| But, you know, I wanted to understand, you know, what was going on here. | ||
| The most, at the end of the day, the most obvious explanation that it's just real was for most of the time I was following this the most improbable because I'd never seen senior government officials act this way. | ||
| The Atlantax Jeffrey Goldberg last night on MSNBC. | ||
| This morning, we're getting your reaction and talking about congressional reaction as well. | ||
| There seems to be plenty of it so far. | ||
| To help wrap that up, we're joined this morning via Zoom by Stephen Newcomb of Axios. | ||
| He is the co-author of the Hill Leaders newsletter. | ||
| Stephen Newcomb, what's the most interesting reaction you've seen so far to this story? | ||
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Well, I think that the reaction so far from Republicans on Capitol Hill has been pretty interesting. | |
| Roger Wicker, who is the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he wants to look into this. | ||
| This is a person who in the last week, two weeks, has been sort of softly critical of Mr. Hegseth and the Trump administration and the Defense Department. | ||
| But, you know, the events of the last 24 hours have really forced this to a head. | ||
| And for Senator Wicker, somebody with prominence, with power in the Senate, to say that this is something that he wants to look into, this is a pretty surprising move on Capitol Hill for Republicans. | ||
| And Democrats anything but softly critical about this story and this leak. | ||
| This is Senator Elizabeth Warren on X yesterday. | ||
| This is blatantly illegal and dangerous beyond belief. | ||
| Our national security is in the hands of complete amateurs. | ||
| What other highly sensitive national security conversations are happening over group chat? | ||
| Elizabeth Warren yesterday, what can Democrats do about this as they control neither the House nor the Senate? | ||
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Yeah, they actually, it's relatively decent timing for Democrats on two fronts. | |
| One, they have CIA Director John Ratcliffe and DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee today. | ||
| I'm told by Democratic sources that a lot of that questioning for both of those individuals is going to focus around the Atlantic article and the fallout from that. | ||
| And then also, secondly, this sort of comes at a time that Democrats have been trying to find a way to go on offense against Republicans. | ||
| If you remember, two weeks ago, lawmakers left Washington. | ||
| Democrats were in a pretty significant spot of disarray. | ||
| A lot of questions about the leadership of Chuck Schumer, drama between Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| And in the last 24 hours, they've sort of been able to turn their ire toward the Trump administration, toward Pete Hegseth, and the national security apparatus. | ||
| So it comes at a pretty opportune time for Capitol Hill Democrats. | ||
| And we should note the national security apparatus confirming the authenticity of this chat in statements put out yesterday. | ||
| It's Brian Hughes of the National Security Council, the spokesman, saying, at this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to that chain. | ||
| And Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, seeming to be the one that originally added Mr. Goldberg to this chain. | ||
| When is the next time we're going to hear from him or see him on Capitol Hill? | ||
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I'm not sure. | |
| And I'm sure that there will be a push to get a lot of these folks in front of Capitol Hill, at least from the Democratic side. | ||
| I think that today the reaction from Mr. Ratcliffe and from Ms. Gabbard is going to be telling about how much they're willing to engage with these questions. | ||
| My understanding is that through our reporting and the conversations we've had in the hallways, like I said, there's questions on both sides of the aisle, not just from Democrats who want to sort of understand how this happened. | ||
| I mean, it's hard to explain just how sort of dumbfounded and caught off guard folks on Capitol Hill were by this story. | ||
| I mean, the way that Mr. Goldberg sort of explained it as being unbelievable, it's because it is unbelievable to a lot of people who have been in D.C. for a long time. | ||
| So truly a breathtaking story that is setting up for at least an interesting day on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. | ||
| And before you go, as a reporter, explain the Signal app and how reporters use that on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Why is that an app of choice? | ||
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Yeah, so the messages are encrypted. | |
| It gives you a level of security, some anonymity going back and forth between sources. | ||
| You may use the app if you're talking about more sensitive materials, some subjects that you wouldn't want a paper trail of. | ||
| But it's still a third-party vendor. | ||
| And when it comes to war plans and top-secret military operations, it's not advisable to do it on that platform. | ||
| So it may be useful for journalists, for officials, even national security officials, as Mr. Goldberg said, planning meetings and so on and so forth, but not military operations. | ||
| It's just unheard of. | ||
| And as we've said, this is likely to be the focus of most of the attention on Capitol Hill today. | ||
| But outside of this story, Stephen Newgum, it is a busy week on Capitol Hill. | ||
| What else are you watching for today? |