New Texts Prove Hegseth Leaked ‘Court-Martial’ Level Secrets
www.thedailybeast.com
Trump’s top officials insisted no classified information was included in the chat, but defense sources now contradict that claim.

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.

    • @cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      46•7 days ago

      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.”
      • @kata1yst@sh.itjust.works
        96•7 days ago

        “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.

        • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
          27•7 days ago

          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.

          • @Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            15•7 days ago

            “Sorry, we dont know where the war crimes came from. Chat is deleted”

            Oh what the future holds

          • @barneypiccolo@lemm.eeEnglish
            3•7 days ago

            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?

            • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
              4•7 days ago

              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.

      • @merc@sh.itjust.works
        15•7 days ago

        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?

        • @barneypiccolo@lemm.eeEnglish
          6•7 days ago

          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.

          • @merc@sh.itjust.works
            0•7 days ago

            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.

            • @barneypiccolo@lemm.eeEnglish
              1•7 days ago

              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.

      • @barneypiccolo@lemm.eeEnglish
        9•7 days ago

        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.

    • @givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      28•7 days ago

      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.

      • Flic
        8•7 days ago

        Would people do what Vance told them to do though?

        • @givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9•7 days ago

          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.

          • @tempest@lemmy.ca
            5•7 days ago

            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.

            • @givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8•7 days ago

              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?

            • 100_kg_90_de_belin
              2•7 days ago

              I mean, Berlusconi’s populism morphed into Salvini’s own spin, but such a development doesn’t translate well into American politics

      • @merc@sh.itjust.works
        0•7 days ago

        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.