'Signal-gate': Trump Team Brings Neocon Journo Into Yemen Attack Planning Sessions?
In one of the most bizarre foul-ups (or was it?) of all time, Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz invited The Atlantic's editor-in-chief into a Signal discussion group (!) where the Admin's attack on Yemen was being planned. What if it was no leak at all and instead a "pro-war psy-op"? With secure communications equipment available to the Administration...why did they discuss apparently highly classified war-planning information on a commercial chat app? Will heads roll?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is out of the studio today.
So I will have a briefing for you, and hopefully, you will find it of some interest.
And I just want to talk about one topic today, and I think it's probably one of the most bizarre things that I've ever heard of.
And that is, you may have seen it breaking late yesterday and coming in through today.
That is apparently the situation surrounding the planning of the Trump administration's bombing of Yemen.
And specifically, the inclusion of a journalist into the discussion forum of the planning for the event.
So let's back up a little bit now.
Let's go, let's put on that first clip because this is what I'm talking about that came out in the Atlantic of all places.
And this is Jeffrey Goldberg.
Now, remember that name because we'll talk about who it is.
But this article was a bombshell yesterday.
The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans.
That's a pretty good headline, I say, as a former editorial page editor.
You go into it a little bit, and here's what Goldberg says if you go to the next one.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern time on March 15th that the United States was bombing Houthi targets against Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming.
And I've highlighted this.
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.
This is going to require some explaining.
Now, before we move on, just read, that's something I never thought I would read.
The Secretary of Defense texting a journalist specific details of an upcoming attack.
It's simply unheard of.
But when you hear more about it, it gets even weirder because here's how it happened.
Go to that next clip.
So here's Jeff Goldberg.
He is the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Magazine.
Again, we'll get into the Atlantic magazine a little bit more in a second.
But here's Goldberg sitting there.
He's on Signal.
He gets a ping on Signal.
And here's what happens.
On Tuesday, March 11th, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz.
Hmm.
Signal is an open source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text messaging services are capable of delivering, Goldberg continues.
I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump's national security advisor.
I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Mike Waltz.
And now Goldberg goes on to talk about how he thought it might be a spoof.
It might be some other journals having one on him.
It might be a foreign entity attempting to put some propaganda through Goldberg's pen, so to speak.
So he was very suspicious of the whole thing.
And I would say rightly so.
But go on and he says, two days later, Thursday at 4.28 p.m., I received a notice that, and I highlighted this, I was to be included in a signal chat group.
It was called the Houthi PC Small Group.
A message from the group, Goldberg continues, from Michael Waltz read as follows.
Team establishing principles group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours.
My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies agency chief of staff level.
following up from the meeting on the sit room this morning for action items.
And we will be sending this out later this evening.
Now you can imagine you're Jeffrey Goldberg.
You're sitting here in a small PC group that you've been invited into by Mike Waltz and you have these principals in the group coming into the group and you're just sitting there and it's obviously clear that you're in the group and nothing's happening.
No wonder he was suspicious.
Now, Bernard at the Moon of Alabama website, which I assume most of you read, I certainly read it.
It's one of the best.
Now, he makes a good point.
Why the Atlantic?
Why Goldberg?
Put this on now because he makes a good point with which I agree completely.
He said, The Atlantic is the worst magazine in America.
Its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, dropped out of an Ivy League university to volunteer to be an IDF prison guard during the Palestinian Intifada.
In his memoirs, Goldberg revealed that he helped cover up serious prisoner abuse.
Goldberg is a neoconservative who has yet to see a U.S. instigated war he dislikes.
To trust his reporting is dangerous.
So that's a good reflection.
Even if they were going to bring someone in, why would it be someone like Goldberg from the Atlantic?
By the way, Goldberg hates Trump's guts, which who knows?
I don't know exactly why, but he's definitely a non-pro-Trump person.
So they invite Mike Waltz invites Goldberg into this group of principles, very, very high level to discuss the bombing in Yemen.
That's already about the weirdest thing I've ever heard of.
And now I'm going to continue with Bernard's quotes from Moon of Alabama about the whole issue.
I'll probably return to Goldberg's points later, but no, we have to sort of watch the timeline here.
If you go to the next one at 8.05 on Friday, March 14th, quote unquote, Michael Waltz texted the group, team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings for the president's guidance this morning in your high side inboxes.
High side is the classified section of your intake.
At this point, he continues.
This is Goldberg.
The fascinating policy discussion commence.
Now, here's where it gets interesting.
The account labeled JD Vance responded at 8.16.
Now let's pause here for a second.
You're Jeff Goldberg.
You're sitting in a chat group started by Michael Waltz, the president's national security advisor.
And JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, rolls into the group at 8.16.
And here's what JD said, team, I'm out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan, but I think we're making a mistake.
Goldberg adds that Vance was indeed in Michigan that day, and he adds that because he's still sort of pinching himself and wondering what's going on.
So back to his writing.
The Vance account goes on to state, quote, 3% of U.S. trade runs through the Suez.
40% of European trade does.
And I'll take an aside to point out that we have mentioned that Thomas Massey also raised this issue that really is not a very important trade route for the United States.
So returning to Goldberg's recollection, this is JD Vance talking.
There's a real risk that the public doesn't understand this or why it's necessary.
So Vance is basically the vice president is breaking in and saying, look, guys, this is not a real big issue for us.
I don't really think this is going to be an easy sell for the public because they don't see why it's necessary.
This is a European issue, not an American issue.
That sounds pretty JD Vancey, I think.
And then Vance continues.
And this part I think is worth remembering for something later on that I'm going to show you.
And this is Vance saying the strongest reason to do this, as POTUS said, is to send a message.
So attack Yemen to send a message.
I think there are better ways of sending a message.
So as we move ahead, now go on to the next one.
At 1144, the account labeled Pete Hegseth.
So you're hanging out in a chat room, right?
Mike Waltz.
Then the vice president rolls in.
Then the Secretary of Defense rolls in.
I can only imagine what Goldberg must have been thinking as he's sitting there.
Hegseth posted in the group, team update.
And this is Goldberg saying, I will not quote from this update or from certain other subsequent texts.
The information contained in them, hadn't they been read by an adversary of the U.S., could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East.
What I will say, and this again is Goldberg, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this signal conversation, is that Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets and weapons the U.S. would be deploying and the attack sequencing.
So here they are sitting on a signal chat group.
And as we know, or if we don't know, we can presume there are extremely secure facilities for government officials who are dealing with highly, highly classified information.
And attack plans would definitely fall into that category.
There are ways.
You go into a SCIF, a sensitive compartmentalized information facility, and that's where you have these conversations.
Or there are, you certainly don't use your cell phone on signal.
Okay, simple.
So why is he doing this?
Why is Hegseth on Signal typing in, okay, we're going to have these bombs and this?
It's crazy.
It's super, super crazy.
But, and here's more: there's a lengthy text.
Goldberg continues.
If you go to the next one, according to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen will be felt two hours hence at 1:45 p.m. Eastern Time.
And so here's Goldberg.
So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot.
If this signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed.
At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen.
Explosions were then being heard across Sana'a, the capital city.
So at that point, Goldberg realized that he literally was in the chat room with the vice president, with Hegseth with Waltz and with many others.
Stephen Miller, with a little Mike Rubio, was in there.
Who else?
There are plenty of others.
This is a high-level group.
So he's sitting there, and all of a sudden he realizes that this was real.
And so he took a screenshot.
Immediately following the explosions, he took a screenshot of the reactions of the most senior people in our government.
And you can see it here.
John Ratcliffe, that's right, I forgot him, head of the CIA.
He rolls in and says, a good start.
And here's Michael Waltz, the president's national security advisor, who invited a journalist into a chat room to listen to these detailed plans.
Instead of a detailed commentary or an analysis, he simply put out three emojis, a fist bump, an American flag.
And fire.
I find that astonishing.
I find that absolutely astonishing.
And so we hear Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio says, good job Pete, and your team.
Michael Waltz says the team in Mal did a great job as well.
Stephen Miller said, good work, all powerful start, powerful start.
And we have Jd Vance saying, this doesn't make any sense, it's not a big deal for America.
Was It Accidental?00:11:08
The only reason to do it is to send a message.
That's what he said.
This is not to single out Jd Vance, because some other people on the chat said the similar thing.
But you wonder, you know, you hear that America is hated around the world and despised around the world and not trusted around the world, and you think well, why?
Well, the Neocons try to tell us, well, they hate us for our freedoms, they hate us because we're so good, they hate us because they're so rich.
Um well, I would.
I would posit that one of the reasons they hate us is because this is how they view sending a message.
I'd like you to queue up that video and let's put on 20 seconds.
These are the bombs that were dropped on Yemen and continue to be dropped on Yemen.
If you can cue that up and play 20 seconds of that video.
This is the aftermath in a residential part of the capital of the U.S. bombs.
This is sending a message.
This is a civilian area.
Who do they think they are the Israelis?
You know they bomb civilians.
This is not.
There are better ways of sending a message.
Uh, to be honest, and and I didn't go into a lot of the other part of this chat, but one of the things that Vance brings up, rightly so, is that why is there the urgency now to bomb this why?
Why do we have to go in now and uh and bomb them?
Why don't we just wait a month?
And I think it was Hegseth that came in and said, well, we could wait a month.
I don't see any reason to uh, to wait.
Why don't we go ahead and do it now again, sending a message?
Well, this is the kind of message you send now.
If this was your neighborhood and a foreign country blew it up, how would you feel about it?
And you would say, well, they should stop stopping our ships.
Well, they're not stopping our ships, they're stopping Israeli ships.
Uh, because Israeli ships are are participating in the genocide of Gaza and they've stated the reason why they're doing it, and they're doing it with U.s weapons.
So let's go back to Bernard in the MOON OF Alabama website, because his article is titled, he does an analysis of This.
And actually, I didn't know he was going to do it.
I was going to talk about this anyway, but he did an analysis.
I always respect him.
So I wanted to look for his perspective.
And it's worth it.
It's worth, this is the whole point.
It's worth pondering.
Was this leak is the headline of Bernard's piece?
Was this leak accidental or was it pro-war psyops?
In other words, is Mike Waltz truly that dumb?
Or was he trying to be clever and send a signal?
Or, third option, was it coordinated between Waltz and a few others in there saying, hey, we're going to give a scoop to a journal.
He's going to think it's a leak and he will get out what we want him to get out.
It's a question I don't have an answer for.
However, here's Bernard's impression of this conversation, particularly the emojis that Mike Waltz put up.
He said, the juvenile behavior of the participants all but confirms that the characters are genuine, which probably I would agree with.
It, however, leaves many questions.
Now, here are the questions that Bernard has: Why did Michael Waltz, a former advisor to Dick Cheney, seek to add war pimp and anti-Trumper Jeffrey Goldberg to his contact list?
What did he plan to leak to him?
Signal is an encrypted chat application, which until recently was financed by the U.S. government.
That is in itself a good reason to not trust it.
There have also been reports that several foreign entities are trying to crack it.
Now, I highlighted this part: why would high administration officials who have access to more secure communication systems use Signal to chat with each other?
Very good question.
We don't know the answer to that.
Why were they on Signal?
Go to the next one.
Why are Vance and others implying that freedom of navigation in the Red Sea is for the good of Europe and that Europe should pay for it?
The framing doesn't fit.
Now, this is the part I think where Bernard is suggesting that this may be some sort of a psyop to have it intentionally leak and get Europe to pony up for it.
And Bernard goes on to point out that the reason for the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea is the Zionist genocide in Gaza.
Israel is the country most hurt by the stop of sea traffic to its harbors.
The closure of the Red Sea has increased ocean transport costs for a container from $2,000 to $8,000 for everyone, including the U.S., because the transport around Africa takes longer, et cetera, et cetera.
But the entity most hurt, of course, is Israel.
So he's saying this land-basing of Europe to press it for more money is a part of Trump's general program to leak this as part of a chat, which hardly even mentions Israel or Gaza, is reinforcing that message.
That's the main reason I find this leak suspicious, Bernard says.
It is a very good point.
And he also makes a very good point.
And we're getting close to our closing here: that if you go to the next one, and this doesn't even need Bernard to explain it to us because it's pretty obvious, the use of signal and the sending of confidential war plans over it, of course, is a breach of several laws and regulations.
There are rumors that National Security Advisor Wallace would be punished for this, but I don't expect any firing or other consequences.
That is Bernard's take from it.
I am not so sure about that.
However, Politico wrote to this morning, and I don't have a clip of the headline: Waltz's future in doubt following accidental war plan leak.
Accidental or was it accidental?
That's the question that I don't know the answer to.
The other part, it's in one of these recantings of recounting of what happened, was that Waltz had set his signal to part of the chat to disappear.
I guess you can do that, to delete within a week and what have you.
And of course, that goes against American law too, in that senior officials have to retain their records for the you know for the for history, what have you.
So that may have been a law break too.
Certainly discussing materials such as this, which are classified to an extent that even the classification level is itself classified.
You know, we have secret, we have confidential secret, top secret, SCI, and then within SCI, there are different code words that you classify.
And this would have been, I can't even imagine the level of code word that this would have been classified.
Here's our war plans.
Oh, who's this guy, Jeff Goldberg?
I don't bother him.
He's just hanging out.
You know, Biggie.
It's really hard to believe, to be quite frank with you.
So, so in this Politico article, it talks about Waltz may be in some hot water because of this.
Politico is like reading Pravda.
You have to read between the lines.
What they're reporting isn't the truth.
What they're reporting is the truth from the perspective of someone who is pushing in narrative.
So keeping that in mind and spinning that in your head as you read this, it makes you wonder what's happening.
I have a couple of quotes from Politico that I'll finish up with.
If you put it on the next one, a senior administration official told Politico on Monday afternoon that they are involved in multiple text threads with other administration staffers on what to do with Waltz following the bombshell report that the top eight inadvertently or not included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeff Goldberg in a private chat.
Now, here is the official who is being quoted.
Half of them are saying he's never going to survive or shouldn't survive.
And two high-level White House aides had floated the idea that Waltz should resign in order to prevent the president from being put in a bad position.
Final clip over here, if you can put it up.
And now here is the same official.
It was reckless not to check who was on the thread.
It was reckless to be having the conversation on Signal.
You can't have recklessness as a national security advisor.
A person close to the White House was even more blunt.
Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing.
Mike Waltz is a blanking, and I blinked out the word a little bit.
It starts with an F.
I won't go any further than that.
Idiot.
And I think that was pretty obvious to a lot of people when they brought him in.
I don't know.
What do you guys think?
Did Waltz do it on purpose?
Was this maybe a plot?
And I read in one of these accounts that there are people getting together trying to get Waltz out.
I don't know if it was Vance, may have been Hegset, but there are factions developing that want Waltz out.
The guy doesn't seem like the brightest bulb in the bunch, if you ask me.
But at the same time, I have at heart, I have a hard time understanding why he would do something so foolish and reckless.
So anyway, this is one of those times where we don't have an answer, but I think this is a massive, massive scandal on a number of fronts.
Number one, just the operational security issue.
It makes it look like the Keystone cops.
You don't do these kinds of things.
And these guys are supposed to be, after Biden's bunch of weirdos, they were supposed to be a little more competent.
So it looks terrible on one hand.
But on the other hand, you have this sense leaking out that, no, this is really not anything that critical to U.S. security.
It's not really critical to our safety.
But let's do it anyway.
Send a message.
Boom.
You blow up a few dozen kids, a few dozen wives, a few dozen civilians.
And it just shows how callous and cold and murderous American foreign policy is.
And it hasn't changed.
It hasn't changed.
This is exactly how Blinken and Biden and his gang were.
Obama was the same way.
And now we're seeing, even though with a lot of things the Trump administration has made improvements, he is in danger.
And in fact, he is getting dragged into the same thing that presidents get dragged into.
They get sucked into these foreign conflicts.
They think they're going to emerge, especially someone with Trump's personality.
He's going to emerge.
He's going to solve the Ukraine problem.
He's going to solve the Middle East problem.
Presidents and Foreign Quagmires00:00:51
He's going to be elected king of the world and get a bunch of prizes.
It's a danger and it's a threat to his domestic agenda.
Yemen's not a threat to the United States whatsoever.
They even admitted it.
What is a threat to the United States is $36 trillion in debt, a country that's literally falling apart, and a divided population.
And one of the things feeding that is a bloated government.
So they have to move beyond, in my opinion, bumper stickers and to get to the real meat of it, which is passing legislation to cut all of these agencies out, to cut out the, well, to end the Department of Education, the USAID, end them all, refocus.
So anyway, it's an interesting chapter and we'll see what happens in the future.
In the meantime, I want to thank you all for tuning in to the Liberty Report.