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After the White House argued, repeatedly, that there was no classified information in the now-infamous group chat of national security officials, The Atlantic published it.
CNN reporters annotated the entire chat, which included Hegseth’s description of F-18s and drones preparing to strike targets, which anybody listening in would have known were to occur in Yemen since the name of the chat included the word “Houthi.”
The White House and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth continued to argue, even after release of the chat, that the information wasn’t classified, but only sensitive.
Multiple experts advised on CNN Wednesday that people should not get sidetracked by whether or not the information was classified.
What’s below are the assessments of:
Retired Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmitt, who during his military career worked as deputy director for strategy and plans for US Central Command, and then worked in the State Department as assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs during the George W. Bush administration
and Beth Sanner, a CNN National Security analyst who was deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration during portions of both the first Trump and Joe Biden administrations.
Kimmitt and Sanner both appeared on CNN Wednesday, and I subsequently followed up with Sanner on the phone.
CNN has reported that sources within the Pentagon believe that the information shared by Hegseth, which detailed when, to the minute, US fighters and drones would strike Houthi targets, was clearly classified.
Whether it was technically classified is beside the point, according to Kimmitt.
“I think everybody’s missing the relevant issue,” he said, noting that Hegseth has the authority to declassify Pentagon information.
“If he says it’s not classified, it’s not classified,” Kimmit said. But “the fundamental question that we should be asking is, ‘Should it have been classified?’ And the answer, of course, is yes.”
“I think we’re watching a lot of bob and weave, instead of just making this simple,” said Sanner, who added that the rule of thumb is that anything that shouldn’t be put into an unclassified email should be treated as classified material.
“Another really easy way to look at this is, ‘If I’m sitting in Moscow or Beijing, would I be happy to get this information and think that I’ve gotten something really interesting?’” she said. Obviously yes.
First, the military portions of what was shared clearly should not have been shared.
“If there are planes, trains automobiles, whatever, heading toward an attack, it is classified,” Sanner said.
And if Hegseth wants to declassify something, there is a process of documentation that should be followed, she said.
Sanner said that the simple existence of the group chat on Signal likely did not violate any protocol, but when Vance and Hegseth got into a debate, that is the type of information that enemies would be particularly interested in.
“They have learned so much about how policymaking is being done in the US government, and, in fact, how it’s not being done,” she said.
“The president has made a decision to go to war, but clearly that has been without complete deliberations, and that’s something we should get our heads around,” she said.
Vance raised concerns about the strike in the group chat, but there’s no evidence those concerns were conveyed to the president.
What’s the difference between a war plan and an attack plan?
The White House and Hegseth have argued that what Hegseth shared in the chat was not, technically speaking, a “war plan” even though it included some details about timing, targets and method of attack.
Asked if this was a semantic distinction between a war plan and a plan of attack, Kimmitt said no.
“There’s a distinction with a difference,” he argued.
“War plans are preparatory plans that come in excruciating detail that are ready to conduct an operation in the future. They are plans. They’re not operations,” he said.
When something becomes operational, like the Yemen attack, it might become even more sensitive than a war plan.
“War plans are probably less sensitive because they are speculative in nature. Operations plans, which we saw released as part of these texts, clearly are less speculative, more active, and put more soldiers and sailors and airmen at risk.”
But when Kimmitt was asked about the argument made by Democratic members of Congress that this Signal chat actively put US service members in harm’s way, he said that is probably a “somewhat inflammatory” view. Signal is a relatively secure app, and the operation was in fact successful, he said.
“I came up in an Army that was somewhat forgiving of mistakes that were made unintentionally and did not create any harm,” he said.
Own it and move on
The White House and Hegseth have gone to great lengths to argue there was no classified material in the Signal chat. Kimmitt argued that is making the problem worse.
“The coverup, or the pushing back on this, I think it’s probably something that doesn’t show a lot of maturity, and people ought to think very hard about it. Just admit the screw-up. Fix it. Don’t do it again,” he said.
The cavalier attitude of using an app like Signal for these kinds of deliberations needs to change, Sanner said.
Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were both in foreign countries during portions of the group chat, and Sanner said the administration needs to tighten things up as it deals with countries like Russia, China and Iran.
The app may be encrypted, but the phone being used – and we don’t know if these were personal or government phones – might be compromised, particularly in a foreign country.
The issue should not be a partisan one, Sanner said, but rather an opportunity for change.
“We have to understand that all the politicization of this issue is making it harder for everyone to do the right thing, which is to fix their comms so that our adversaries cannot know what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” she said.
