Summary
The Atlantic has published unredacted attack plans (non-paywall link) shared in a Signal group chat of senior Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg released the full texts after officials denied sharing war plans or classified information, arguing transparency was necessary amid accusations of dishonesty.
The leaked messages detailed U.S. military strikes targeting Houthis in Yemen.
OK extremely explosive texts sent via signal, a no go because of security concerns and people screaming. Yeah wtf how much have you been upside down? American ISP’s and important infrastructure has been completely hacked with the Chinese for a long time (thus certainly also forwarding to Russia) and Trump has ended all attempts against what companies directly and lets the attackers continue peacefully in. Not a no go? No uprising? So if Russia and China can secretly monitor all traffic in America (so that end devices can also be infected and messages can be attacked directly even before anything is encrypted) is that absolutely ok…?
Dafuq wtf
schizo comment
https://lemm.ee/comment/19198639
Dont know why deeple crypted that translation in non sense . anyway better as sending plaintext like some Rusmericaner. ;)
oh, if it’s translated that would explain it lmao.
Dude literally looks like the bad guy’s top henchman that dies super easily after meeting the main character.
Not sure about legality, and not that the US military care, but confirming someone id, and that he is visiting a gf or family member, then bombing the house, sound like a war crime.
It’s okay when the US does it.
I’m sure USians would be perfectly normal and react calmly and rationally if a foreign power killed 50 innocent people while assassinating a target on US soil.
It is a crime and Israel is doing it too so Trump and the whole clown car just follows the lead. I am all for killing people who have done heinous shit but killing everybody in whole build just to get tom them is beyond fucked up.
Israel, Russia and now the US just joined the club!
They will pay no penalties for this. Trump deserves to be hanged for treason but that hasn’t happened yet.
We actually have munitions that don’t blow up too. We could literally have killed just him. This isn’t 20 years ago anymore.
We are currently clean on OPSEC
While actively leaking information lmao
Jesus Christ, they’re just so fucking stupid. This is the kind of thing that would see employees of a major corporation fired in an instant, but I just know that these careless chucklefucks are going to be in my news feed for a while yet, possibly another four years so long as they keep currying the favour of Trump. This shit is pathetic, the rest of the world is embarrassed on behalf of American citizens for having to deal with this incompetence.
Why only four years? What happens after then?
HitlerPig makes history with a third term.
Presumably, another candidate is elected to office. If not, it’s a coup, and he continues as “President For Life” like other dictators.
Bold of you to assume there will be more elections
Oh, there will be “elections”, just like how Russia has “elections”.
Hope springs eternal, and all that.
You make a good point. These traitors want to privatize the entire government, but no private sector company would accept the sort of behavior that is SOP for these MAGA Morons. None of them would survive their probabtionary period. That’s why they’re all in MAGA government, where competency is irrelevant.
The interesting part of publishing all the texts is it only serves Trump’s plans. To tear America away from Europe and force America to find new global relationships. Interesting times we are living in.
There is the outside possibility that the journalist was added on purpose
“Won’t look good if this leaks and we don’t bomb them” is literally in the leaked chats. Journalist was added on purpose imo.
I’ve had this thought in the back of my mind since learning about this. How does one accidentally add someone to a group chat?
Why would an unfriendly journalist be in your (and everyone elsew) phone only as initials?
I honestly have 0 ideas as to why, but it’s just too stupid of an action to not be on purpose. I’m sure we’ll find out one day. These people aren’t very confidential and will probably blab about it on a talk show down the road.
We are four years out from a book deal.
Why do people even fight for these clowns?
Whatever… Exactly zero consequences…
Nonono this time they really got him. He’s truly fucked now. He’s getting slammed over this. America every day for 8 years now.
Didn’t the original article say it mentioned a CIA operative?
It is mentioned in the text, but I don’t see anything redacted in the screenshots either.
Edit: It could be in the very first message, it’s not clear if there is text between the first and second screenshot.
A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. Ratcliffe had testified earlier yesterday that the officer is not undercover and said it was “completely appropriate” to share their name in the Signal conversation. We will continue to withhold the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted.
Who CARES? They will LIVE and LEARN! Unlike HER EMAILS!
What happened with her emails? HRC was prosecuted or something? Or did they just do nothing then too?
The state almost never punishes itself.
Turns out she was innocent. She didn’t follow the protocol for classified documents. However the documents were not classified until after they were sent. She didn’t break the law.
It didn’t stop them though. Something must’ve been in those documents because they got buried in bureaucracy in following lawsuits.
In June 2016, in response to the Republican National Committee’s complaints filed in March 2016, the State Department estimates it will take 75 years to complete the review of documents which are responsive to the complaints. It has been observed that a delay of this nature would cause the documents to remain out of public view longer than the vast majority of classified documents which must be declassified after 25 years.
What about “Fast And Furious?”
The take there was that the President is personally responsible for any action taken by any subordinate.
At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”
The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:
- •“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
- •“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)”
Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.
The Hegseth text then continued:
- •“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
- •“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
- •“1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
- •“MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
- •“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.
- •“Godspeed to our Warriors.”
🇺🇸🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀🌌
What does Ohio have to do with this?
“We are currently clean on OPSEC” - man leaking information on a non-official channel while cosplaying as a military leader.
My daughter’s daycare is more stringent on OPSEC for christ’s sake.
It’s like an email with a “If you’re not the intended recipient please don’t read and dispose of this message” footer levels of OPSEC.
Team Stupid
Pretty well contradicts the testimony of Gabbard about no specifics
“We are currently clean on opsec”
Not anymore you ain’t
Clearly, they never were.
If they were using Signal on personal phones, an unofficial channel on unofficial devices, they already weren’t, even before they accidentally included a journalist in the chat.
“Sorry, we dont know where the war crimes came from. Chat is deleted”
Oh what the future holds
And don’t forget, one of those phones was in Moscow!
One guy on the call was actually in RUSSIA at the moment of the text. What are the odds that Russia was monitoring the phone of a visiting American governmental figure?
By all accounts, Signal’s encryption is robust, so they’d need spyware on the device to monitor the contents of the chat, or even to see who else was in the chat. Since these people were using their own personal devices and not government devices, there’s a higher chance that Russia or China or some other power could have put spyware on their device. So that is a major lapse in security, and there’s a chance it could have been spied on. But the person being physically in Russia shouldn’t make it any easier for the Russian government to spy on the chat itself.
Gabbard testified that she couldnt recall if weapons systems (F-18s, Strike Drones) were mentioned, and she also testified that targets werent identified, yet the transcript reveals thatbthe target was a specific person, not a group or encampment.
She either lied/ covered up, or is so incompetent she didn’t understand what a weapons system is or what constitutes a target. Or both.
My money is on both.
The US military got so lucky here.
They’re lucky that the incompetence was exposed so early in the administration. Signal isn’t allowed on government phones, apparently, so this was all done with personal devices. We’ve already seen how many people have compromised phones with something like Pegasus installed. This is why secure government phones exist in the first place. Who knows how long some foreign spy agency might have been reading the group chat if they hadn’t done such a stupid leak.
They’re lucky that the guy accidentally included in the group chat was a responsible journalist, not some rando who’d stay in the group chat and just keep leaking this stuff, or someone who might have chosen to sell access to China or North Korea or something.
They’re lucky that the target was Houthi rebels, and not a near-peer nation state. Even with hours of advance warning, the Houthis probably wouldn’t have been able to shoot down F-18s. But 3+ hours is plenty of time for a more advanced enemy to set up an ambush.
Can you imagine how it feels to be one of the F-18 pilots reading this article, knowing how close you could have come to getting killed?
Trump has always carried a personal phone, which he has always refused to allow intelligence agencies to sweep for spyware. Every bad actor in the world knows what he says the instant he says it.
I wouldn’t be surprised of the NSA or a similar agency controls key cell “towers” near the White House and other places he often goes, Mar A Lago, etc. Even in normal times, that’s just good practice, but with Trump it might allow them to do some filtering or drop data strategically.
Yeah, except now the NSA is being run by a MAGA loyalist, so they probably haven’t figured that out yet. Besides, they’re all Russian operatives, they’re probably making it easier for the Commies to listen in.
The White House has been buggier than a tenement since the last HitlerPig administration.
The texts really highlight how much more dangerous Vance would be
He’s Yale educated and put with his wife to become a “power couple” by the freaking “Tiger Mom” who’s a Yale professor who gets lots of up and coming conservatives clerkships up to even the SC. Including Usha Vance with multiple now SC justices.
He’s not some hillbilly bumpkin, he’s incredibly dangerous, like the HW Bush to Reagan.
That’s why I hate people always focusing on trump. trump is the distraction just like Reagan, both god awful humans aware of what they’re doing, but not the ones really calling the shots, and the most replaceable of all the pieces.
Would people do what Vance told them to do though?
He’s a couch fucker, but he’s undeniably got more charisma than HW, and HW still beat Dukakis…
History rhymes bro
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_United_States_presidential_election
Which is easy when the last names never change I guess.
Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts had been considered a potential candidate, but he ruled himself out of the race in the fall of 1985. Two other politicians mentioned as possible candidates, both from Arkansas, did not join the race: Senator Dale Bumpers and Governor and future President Bill Clinton. Joe Biden’s campaign also ended in controversy after he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labour Party.[32] The Dukakis campaign secretly released a video in which Biden was filmed repeating a Kinnock stump speech with only minor modifications.[33] Biden later called his failure to attribute the quotes an oversight, and in related proceedings the Delaware Supreme Court’s Board on Professional Responsibility cleared him of a separate plagiarism charge, leveled for plagiarizing an article during his law school.[34] This ultimately led him to drop out of the race. Dukakis later revealed that his campaign had leaked the tape, and two members of his staff resigned. Biden later ran twice more for the Democratic nomination, unsuccessfully in 2008 and successfully in 2020. He was inaugurated as the 47th vice president in 2009, serving two terms under President Barack Obama. In 2021, he became the 46th president, over 33 years after his first campaign for the office ended.
Al Gore, a senator from Tennessee, chose to run for the nomination. Turning 40 in 1988, he would have been the youngest man to contest the presidency on a major party ticket since William Jennings Bryan in 1896, and the youngest president ever if elected, younger than John F. Kennedy at election age and Theodore Roosevelt at age of assumption of office. He eventually became the 45th Vice President of the United States under Bill Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000, losing to George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush’s son.
My point being, the Vance’s are going to potentially be around another 30-40 years.
It took Biden 40 years to be VP, and a decade more to be president.
It does remain to be seen if Trump’s cult of personality will carry on after him. Will be interesting to see how all these sycophants will shake out when it happens. I’m not sure Vance will come out on top.
Will be interesting to see how all these sycophants will shake out when it happens.
Exactly like with HW…
Or if you want to get away from Republicans: the Vances and the Clintons share an insane amount of pararells.
JD is no Bill as far as charisma, but they have similar backgrounds and married insanely smart women with very conservative economic beliefs very quickly after meeting them at Yale Law School then immediately getting into politics using their wives political connections as much as their own.
Like I said, history rhymes.
People need to stop being so shortsighted, or the wealthy are gonna keep winning off the same proven playbook.
They’re all set to “third way” the Republican party and provide an alternative to trumpism when it fails and have the billionaire money behind them to try and fight a progressive in 28.
Do people honestly not see it coming?
I mean, Berlusconi’s populism morphed into Salvini’s own spin, but such a development doesn’t translate well into American politics
So if Vance takes over, will you then have a ottoman empire?
He’s not some hillbilly bumpkin, he’s incredibly dangerous, like the HW Bush to Reagan.
A one-term president who may have been much smarter than his predecessor but lacked the charisma and wasn’t able to get much done as a result.
JD Vance is much smarter, but there’s only one god emperor in this cult. If Trump died, the GOP would suddenly lack a focal point and would go back to infighting and chaos.
You have zero idea about either of them…
But are very proud of your opinion it seems
The Atlantic putting a paywall on this when they got the texts for free from a government handout is peak America…
Government official work => no copyright?
Good journalism is very expensive to produce. You got to pay for it somehow.
Exactly why I used to subscribe to the Washington Post until Bezos wiped his ass with it. I’ll have to look into subscribing to The Atlantic now.
I have been The Atlantic subscriber for about 5 years now. I think it has pretty great writers on staff. Their physical subscription is pretty cheap too.
Yeah I’m considering dumping NYT too. I heard Reuters was a better ‘investment’. Please someone tell me if that’s wrong. I don’t want to support Billionaires.
Wired “has been killing it” during the ongoing soft coup, to quote my journalist wife, and we’ve replaced our WaPo subscription with that. We can never dump NYT just because of the recipes.
PBS and NPR are pretty decent places to put your subscription moneys
Hopefully they survive this administration.
I’m not disagreeing in a general sense, but it’s funny to make that argument here when this info basically fell into the journalist’s lap. Very little actual journalism went into making this story possible
But think of how much money is going to be needed for the security detail this guy is gonna need for the foreseeable future. Or the costs of retaining legal representation to help him navigate through what is guaranteed to be an endless sea of investigations, frivilous lawsuits, etc. that the Trump administration is guaranteed to launch until something sticks.
I wouldn’t be getting on any planes any time in the near future if I were him either.
This story may have fallen into his lap, but it sure as hell wasn’t free.
This was a gift given to the Atlantic, though. I guess you gotta milk it for what it’s worth.
JG got the texts for free but he’s probably gonna need someone watching his 6 now. And I’m pretty sure a lawyer is billing for helping them figure out how to publish the details and still avoid getting trapped into anything illegal, like naming the CIA agent.
Nah, the guilty parties already told congress nothing the texts did not contain classified material, so releasing them should be fine. It’s not like this administration would suddenly change its mind now, surely.
Turn JS off to “bypass” it
OP linked an archive link, and updated the post to have it.
But I clicked it before and had the same reaction as if I opened a box labeled “dead dove”.
Oh Lordy.
So many people talking about the fact that this leaked, and not enough are talking about what leaked.
We have political leaders throwing up fire emoji’s over dropping a building on a terrorist, with no regard for the, what, dozens? of innocent lives that were lost in the crossfire.
If you have to kill someone, sure, that’s a moral position we can discuss. No one should ever be celebrating it, particularly when others died in the process. But hey, they’re not Americans, so they don’t count.
It’s like the confirmation of Brett Kavenau when he threw a hissy fit about how he “likes beer”…
That in and of itself should have disqualified him. If someone isn’t capable of being even-keeled and not throwing a temper tantrum, then they shouldn’t hold the highest judicial office in the land…
The dude cried and vowed retribution against one of the two parties in the US…and was still confirmed to the highest court in the country. Fucking wild.
That would have disqualified him from almost any normal job interview.
“If we discussed dropping a building on a terrorist we should also discuss bombing weddings, so let’s stick to using proper communication channels and following proper protocol for records”
We have political leaders throwing up fire emoji’s over dropping a building on a terrorist, with no regard for the, what, dozens? of innocent lives that were lost in the crossfire.
Correction: They dropped a building on a “terrorist” (read: brown person the US doesn’t like).
There is a reason to attack him. I don’t agree with the whole situation but shooting at cargo ships and American warships is going to get a response. I just expect the world’s most technological military to do a better job of not attacking innocent people in getting to him.
I don’t agree with the whole situation but shooting at cargo ships and American warships is going to get a response
It’s going to get a response, but that response is as immoral as the status quo it’s trying to protect.
It’s immoral on it’s face because of how they’re doing it is my point. There’s certainly a political philosophy discussion to be had about the underlying international system and American system, but there’s none to be had about throwing extra explosions around to “intimidate” a third country.
but there’s none to be had about throwing extra explosions around to “intimidate” a third country.
There is, and not having that discussion does nothing but help the imperial core maintain their facade of moral legitimacy even as they murder innocent people all over the world.
plus they were probably brown, not white, so it double-y doesn’t count.
Since when do American leaders care about “collateral damage” ?
The largest terrorist organisation in the world.
Since when do Americans im general? They sure were all united when they were leveling my country
Americans do not all support wars.
When you claim to be a democracy, and you have two group, both see killing Palestinian and brown people is okay, and your 2/3 of the population still vote for them, your statement objectively false.
So what should they vote for no one and stay home?
Are you suggesting that if a person votes for a given candidate then it means the person agrees with everything the candidate does?
Ah yes, blame the victims, that’s sure to solve the problem. I suppose I should also blame the people who live in the building that was dropped for boarding with a terrorist? I mean they can just choose to be somewhere else, right?
Fuck off.
Zero comfort while I stand in the rubble of my former home
Most countries in America do care
We have political leaders throwing up fire emoji’s over dropping a building on a terrorist, with no regard for the, what, dozens? of innocent lives that were lost in the crossfire.
As someone who was around for “We’ll put a boot in yer ass, it’s the American way” this does not surprise me in the slightest.
They are so incredibly dishonorable it’s appalling.
If you have to kill someone, sure, that’s a moral position we can discuss. No one should ever be celebrating it, particularly when others died in the process
I can think of a few deaths worth celebrating
There are only a few handful for whom I’d pull the trigger myself, but quite a multitude more that I would celebrate their passing with glee.
I just think, especially when we’re pulling the trigger ourselves, we should be sad, maybe disappointed, that it’s come to that. Bad people are still people, and while I believe they throw away their right to life when they start indescriminately revoking it from others, I don’t ever want to find myself happy to take life. I’ll be happy later, in the better world that’s been created.
idk why anybody is surprised, seeing how the republicans operate this should be obvious as fuck
No one should be surprised. We’ve seen who these people are time and time again. But we shouldn’t be so desensitized to moral bankruptcy that we completely overlook such a disgusting disregard for human life.
idk what to tell you anymore, i don’t care about human life lmao.
You all ruined it for me by being so fucking stupid. Like i’m sorry, but how is a satirist supposed to live in a climate where everybody is just fucking stupid. The answer, inevitably, is benevolent disregard for human life, because clearly nobody cares about it enough to do anything about it.
We’re talking about the same guys funded by the guy who says the ideal society is Mordor. This doesn’t surprise anyone. Everyone is expendable for the company’s machine, they wouldn’t mind targeting innocent people, let alone causing civilian casualties when targeting real terrorists.
the guy who says the ideal society is Mordor
I’m sorry, who with the what now?
Peter Thiel.
These dumbfucks have no empathy. They will tell you empathy is weakness. In reality empathy is a social defense mechanism. If we all have empathy for each other it limits the harm we do. What they’re missing is not having it isn’t some kind of advantage, historically we are the most savage to those without empathy. It causes the mob to turn their empathy off and give in to their worst impulses. They think they’ll be the first ones in history to avoid that fate. They won’t.
Sic semper tyrannis
Look at what JD “couch fucker” Vance wrote. Regarding potentially delaying the strike. He didn’t give any shits about the benefits or risks to lives, only the optics (oil prices going up), politics and his hatred for helping Europe.
Sure, clearing the shipping lanes is “good” but it’s more helpful to Europe “gross” so that’s a tick “con” colum.
Their “worst case scenarios” were all “it could look bad”.
They shouldn’t be doing any of that on Signal anyway.
