Another attack on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has come up short.
A little more than a week after a devastating U.S. military attack on Yemeni Houthis, an attack that effectively ended their closure of the Red Sea. The Atlantic broke an amazing story. The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a Signal group chat led by Hegseth that provided running commentary on the initial stages of the airstrikes. Goldberg published much of the chat log in The Atlantic, more to provide "the receipts," as they say, than to impart information on the event; see The Atlantic Releases Full Signal Message Chain, and It's Underwhelming – RedState.
BACKGROUND:
BREAKING: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Addresses Atlantic Story – RedState
White House Closes Ranks to Defend SecDef Hegseth From Coordinated Attacks – RedState
Immediate calls for Hegseth's scalp were made from people who had decided to devote their professional lives to getting him fired. Their claim was that Hegseth had put lives and the operation at risk by using a civilian phone and a commercially available secure messaging application to inform a group of administration officials, and Jeffrey Goldberg, to give an update on the pending attack. As a result, the DOD Inspector General was tasked to get to the bottom of it all.
The report, released on December 3, found:
(U) We concluded that the Secretary sent sensitive, nonpublic, operational information that he determined did not require classification over the Signal chat on his personal cell phone. The Secretary is the head original classification authority in the DoD based on Executive Order 13526 and DoD Manual 5200.45 and holds the authority to determine the required classification level of all DoD information he communicates. However, because the Secretary indicated that he used the Signal application on his personal cell phone to send nonpublic DoD information, we concluded that the Secretary’s actions did not comply with DoD Instruction 8170.01, which prohibits using a personal device for official business and using a nonapproved commercially available messaging application to send nonpublic DoD information.
(U) The Secretary sent nonpublic DoD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes. Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.
The most serious allegation against Hegseth, though also the flimsiest, was that he endangered the airmen carrying out the mission by divulging targets and targeting information. This was proven to be bogus. The report states that USCENTCOM provided Hegseth with detailed strike information between 8:54 p.m. on March 14, the day prior to the strikes, until one hour before the strikes (12:55 p.m. EDT). The time on target was at 1:46 p.m. EDT on March 15. This highly classified information was boiled down into the following Signal chat:
(U) “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
(U) “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
(U) “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
(U) “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier “Trigger Based” targets)”
(U) “1536: F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
(U) The phrase “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
The IG team inserted the classification markings.
As you can see, there is nothing here that identifies either targets or attack times. Had the Signal chat been compromised, there is little the Houthis could have done besides put on their brown trousers. The sequence of events developed by the IG, see page 17 of the report, states, "The times for the strikes listed in this email no longer corresponded to the times indicated in the group chat, indicating that the email sent at 2054 EDT on March 14 was the source of the Signal chat information." So not only was there no specific information in the chat, but the times Hegseth sent for various events were changed by USCENTCOM before mission execution.
The Department of War is claiming exoneration.
Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said of the report: "This Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along - no classified information was shared. This matter is resolved and the case is closed."
I think the best we can say is that it is a mixed outcome. On the one hand, nothing in Hegseth's messages, even if they had been on a RedState LiveBlog, would have put American troops in danger or prevented the ultimate comeuppance of the Houthis. Hegseth determined the information shared to be unclassified, and that is well within his prerogative:
“I took non-specific general details which I determined, in my sole discretion, were either not classified, or that I could safely declassify” and created an “unclassified summary” of the USCENTCOM strike details to provide to participants of the Signal chat.
You may not like it, but you don't have to. The Secretary of War is the ultimate "classification authority" for defense-related information. If the Department of War creates the information, the Secretary of War can declassify it.
On the other hand, the affair was sloppy. Quite honestly, I don't know what sort of mobile devices are available for this kind of conversation, but obviously, they are needed. Using a civilian phone with an off-the-shelf security application just isn't good business. The fact that Jeffrey Goldberg was in the chat shows just how risky this means of communication is. In the words of a man who knew about war, General George S. Patton, Jr.: "There is only one sort of discipline—perfect discipline. Men cannot have good battle discipline and poor administrative discipline." He also said, "You cannot be disciplined in great things and undisciplined in small things."
I've said time and again, I think Pete Hegseth is the right man at the right time for the Department of War. The number of enemies he's made, particularly among senators and members of Congress with fat stock portfolios, shows a lot of powerful people are scared of the direction he's taking the Department of War, and not from love of country. Because of the danger he poses to the status quo, the attacks will become more frequent. Knowing that, it is incumbent upon Secretary Heseth not to provide easy hits for his enemies. This was an own goal that, while it did no damage to the mission, it did add to the narrative that Hegseth is out of his depth.
Inspector General Report
Pentagon Inspector Generals Signalgate Report by streiff
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