Summary
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied allegations that he texted classified war plans to a Signal group chat that mistakenly included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.
The National Security Council confirmed the chat’s authenticity but called the inclusion of Goldberg an inadvertent mistake.
Lawmakers from both parties demanded investigations, with former CIA Director Leon Panetta warning of potential espionage violations.
Hegseth dismissed Goldberg as a “deceitful” journalist. Trump denied knowledge of the incident.
Sooo Pete didn’t do it, but trump also says that Pete learned his lesson?
US is a joke. A very dangerous joke.
Admit it but say it isn’t a big deal, but also deny that it ever happened. Let your followers pick whichever version they prefer. Profit!
Disgusting comments about Europe in the group chat. The USA is a pariah state; the sooner we disentangle from it, the better.
where can one see the actual comments?
It’s deny, deflect, and then what? Let’s see I didn’t do, I did it but her emails, I did it so what? An I missing a step?
I demand consequences
He must have been drunk and had a blackout.
Oh sure, now he wants to wash his hands of something.
LOL, you know what, sure. yeah. pete didn’t add anybody to the chat. it’s fine. the journalist got in there on his own. by eating carrots or something.
Pete didn’t add him, Mike Waltz did. But that’s neither here nor there, they all were in the wrong.
In past times, resignations would have been required over something like this.
Except the journalist
no, it was the carrots. the atlantic journalist just ate lots of carrots. it’s a known vulnerability in signal; I’ve run into it a bunch. when I eat too many carrots, sometimes I just end up in random signal chats. I actually met two girlfriends that way. I don’t even need to try, just happens by accident sometimes when you set me down next to like a ten pound bag a couple times in the same month. it’s nobody’s fault, nobody should be punished, nothing needs to be done about this issue.
Yeah, I think this is right. I don’t even have the signal app on my phone but carrots got me in to a meeting of the board of Coca Cola. It’s definitely carrots.
pete hegseth was a DUI hire.
He’s in a really unique position in that he can claim to not remember doing something awful, and most likely be telling the truth.
These fucking guys only ever lie and deny.
Are we really too stupid and weak as a country to be able to do anything about this?
Roy Cohn’s second rule: Deny everything, admit nothing.
It would seem the case - the US is impotent while the sitting president twiddles his thumbs and denies knowing his upper eschelon staff are using unsecure comms. Makes me laugh about the tough-guy image they want versus the limp-dick energy the display.
Lmfao
The editor in chief of The Atlantic wrote an op-ed on the whole episode, and they have corroborated and confirmed from multiple sources that he was, indeed, inadvertently shown data that is considered SCI in a Signal group chat that was likely conducted through the personal devices of administration officials.
There is no debate here. That happened. This is like rear ending someone in your car and totaling both vehicles and just refusing to even acknowledge that you even felt anything.
It’s like the “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this” skit with the guy in the hotdog suit and the hotdog car.
I agree with your position, but think it’s even worse than the situation depicted in your analogy because of the security implications and the accountability implications. I don’t know how to represent those in your analogy, though. Lol
Why is nobody talking about the fact that we are bombing Yemen? Yes, including a random person in a text channel talking classified information is a problem. But, why are we just brushing off the actual chat contents?
Every president since Carter has bombed Yemen (I think).
So it’s like hazing now?
That doesn’t make it a good thing. Should we just accept that the U.S. military industrial complex is what it is, and shrug it off? Bcz that’s what you’re suggesting.
This is the real waste fraud and abuse. Lockheed Martin testing out it’s ww3 tech on Houthi
I’m just saying it’s unremarkable.
Im sure the people being bombed in Yemen feel the same way…
CENTCOM shit. If Trump and Elon were genuine, they’d get rid of this true waste of tax payer $s.
Because pointing out that America is bombing Yemen is like pointing out that water is wet.
That’s not an excuse. There were huge ass protests over the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War. Putting pressure on officials to end this bullshit os worthwhile. Shrugging, and saying meh, it is what it is is super unhelpful.
You can protest the bombing of yemen and you will be doing a noble thing and get zero attention and have zero impact.
If you clown on them for inviting a journalist into their secret consequence free war chat - you will recieve lots of attention and potentially play a part in forcing some of these gouls to resign.
There’s a couple reasons -
- It wasn’t so much “bombing Yemen” as it was, bombing a terrorist organization within Yemen’s borders. This is something every American administration has done for decades. That makes it poor political fodder, you can’t “one up” the competition with it.
- Most Americans would agree that the Houthis, once it is explained to them who they are, need to be bombed. The actual action would be reprehensible to some, but acceptable to most. You can’t put pressure on an admin to change their tactics when they feel they have a plurality of support.
- The sad and undeniable fact is that in American politics - American lives are simply more important than foreign ones. That’s not really unique to American culture, it’s not meant as a criticism, it’s just a sad reality. Bombing Yemen is pretty low risk for American lives - but sloppy OPSEC put American lives at huge risk so that’s where the focus is.
In a perfect world, the fact that America is committing violence in other nations and is not realistically reigned in by International Laws or Treaties would be a point worth getting upset about. But that fact is over 100 years old and has been successfully normalized. The idea of incompetent buffoons operating the Department of Defense like a bunch of frat boys trying to organize a kegger is marginally newer and more impactful on the national psyche.
I can’t believe I’ve found an actual adult on a lemmy thread.
I don’t think we’re ignoring that, so much as there is an overwhelming amount of bad shit to talk about stemming from this single incident.
And to be honest the bigger issue revealed here isn’t the failure to protect classified information or that they’re bombing Yemen (In a vacuum at least) right now but the fact that they are violating the law also by using an app that destroys documentation of their conversations. This has implications not only legally or militaristically but also that they know they want to do shit that would be illegal and evil enough that they don’t even want to use standard classified channels, not just bombing of Yemen but probably more future evil shit.
They’re bombing the Houthis rebels who are (were?) fucking with the red sea shipping route to protest Israel, but I’m not sure how much they’re still fucking with it today. The Yemen government isn’t fully in control of Yemen.
You’re right Pete. It wasn’t texting.
It was RCS through an untraceable encrypted messaging app named Signal
Which is WORSE since records are destroyed
About the technical part, Signal uses the Signal Protocol instead of RCS. (Google also uses the Signal Protocol to encrypt some RCS messages in Google Messages, but the Signal Protocol and RCS are not the same thing.)
Well shit you know what I mean …messaging with data. But thanks for the specifics I knew it wasn’t RCS but that’s all I could think of
Fuck you Pete ‘DUI Hire’ Hegseth.
You used a non-approved communication application and caused a massive data leak with you and your incompetent morons in office using OpSec that my junior engineers know better and if any one else did what you did, that’s be fired and be facing charges.
Fucking pathetic children who can’t take any accountability.
inadvertent mistake.
Lets give the benefit of the doubt and say it was a mistake. Is that a matter and a position, where such a mistake is tolerable? Or is it something that disqualifies for any position in that domain and demands immediate resignation?
Because if you seriously make a mistake, and you realize the gravity of it, you take responsibility for it. If you instead remain in position, you either don’t recognize the gravity of it, which is an even bigger reason to resign, or you indeed acted with intent.
But in this case it did not start with inviting Goldberg. It started with making a chat group on an unauthorized app, likely using unauthorized devices to discuss matters that are explicitly forbidden to be taken out of specific permitted official channels.
inadvertent mistake
…as opposed to the other kind of mistake.
I mean you can do something intentionally and then later realize that it was wrong to do so.
That’s most mistakes. They’re still inadvertantly mistakes.
Working the playbook. Step 1: Deny
