Tuesday, March 25, 2025. Is Pete Hegseth drunk? That's really the first question. But it's not the only one as the US government carries out a massive security breach.
8 minutes and four seconds into the video below is a line that kept haunting me last night. It's from season five, episode ten of 30 ROCK ("Christmas Attack Zone" written by Tracey Wigfield) and Colleen (Elaine Stritch) asks it for her son Jack (Alec Baldwin) regarding Avery (Elizabeth Banks) and Avery's pregnancy.
"Is she drunk, Jack? Because you know when you're pregnant, one bottle of wine a day and that's it."
Is he drunk?
That's what I kept wondering.
We all know Pete Hegseth has a drinking problem -- one so significant that, to secure the post of Secretary of Defense, he had to publicly swear that he wouldn't drink anymore.
Is he drunk?
When Convicted Felon Doanld Chump started making his nominees for various cabinet posts, we all knew, in this country and around the world, that thses unqualified people were a danger to the country. They didn't know their jobs, they didn't have any experience. Hosting a weekend TV show on FOX "NEWS," for example, doesn't make you qualified to be Secretary of Defense.
Senior Trump administration officials, including the vice
president and secretary of defense, used the encrypted commercial
messaging app Signal to debate the pros and cons of launching military
strikes against the Houthis in Yemen.
Amna Nawaz:
And they accidentally invited the editor in chief of "The
Atlantic" and "Washington Week" moderator Jeffrey Goldberg to be part
of that chat group.
Goldberg revealed the details today in a report published for "The Atlantic," and he joins me now.
Jeff, welcome to the "News Hour." Thanks for joining us.
Jeffrey Goldberg:
Thanks for having me.
Amna Nawaz:
So, you're added to this group chat. You see some 18 or
so other people on it. Among them appear to be senior national security
and Cabinet officials like Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, John
Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff, Michael Waltz.
How did you end up on this chat? And when do you realize it looks like you were added by mistake?
Jeffrey Goldberg:
I was invited a couple of weeks ago to connect with
Michael Waltz, the national security adviser. That didn't strike me as
particularly strange, given my job and his job.
A little while
later, I'm added to a group chat with the people you just named. That
seemed strange. But I kind of just ignored it a little bit. And then it
really became a very bizarre situation on Saturday the 15th of March,
when I was shared on a text in this group from somebody purporting to be
Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense.
And this text contained
operational military information, including the time that bombs were
supposed to start dropping on Yemen. And this was two hours before that
time. So I simply waited and stared at my phone.
And, sure enough,
the attack, the American attack on Yemen began to be felt at about 1:30
Eastern or so, 1:50 Eastern. And that's when I realized that the chain
was real. Until that point, I really had a deep suspicion that I was
being spoofed or hoaxed or being led astray on a disinformation
campaign, the rationale for which I can't figure out.
But this all seemed so improbable that I simply assumed that it couldn't be real.
Amna Nawaz:
And I want to point out you share some details. You report some details of what unfolds on that text chain.
When
it comes to these operational details, though, you're very careful with
your language. You write in your piece what appears to be from the
account of Pete Hegseth posts — quote — "operational details of
forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets,
weapons the U.S. would be deploying and attack sequencing."
This gets posted two hours later. The bombings begin. And then what do you see unfold on the group chat?
Jeffrey Goldberg:
A lot of happiness and virtual high-fiving. There's some
reporting, again, material that I didn't feel comfortable reporting
because it contained tactical operational information, about the effects
of the bombing on various places in Yemen.
Mainly, it was the
participants in this group chat, which, as you note, contained most of
the national security leadership of the United States congratulating
each other and sending emojis, flag emojis, muscle emojis, fire emojis
to each other in celebration of a successful mission.
Amna Nawaz:
We did hear from Brian Hughes. I know you did as well,
the spokesman for the National Security Council, who sent a statement in
response when you did reach out. He said that it appears the message
thread was authentic, that they're reviewing how an inadvertent number,
presumably yours, was added.
He also says — quote — "The thread is
a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between
senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation
demonstrates that there were no threats to our service members or our
national security."
Jeff, you have reported on national security
for decades. That this is being held up as an example of a deep and
thoughtful policy coordination, had you ever seen anything like this
before?
Jeffrey Goldberg:
I don't disagree with something that he said.
If
you look at the story on TheAtlantic.com, you will see that they are
having a live debate, including the vice president of the United States,
about the utility of attacking Yemen and the European component of this
and various other things. There's interesting discourse going on.
But,
according to everything I understand, they're not supposed to be doing
this on commercial messaging apps. They got quite lucky that they
included my phone number in the — if they're going to pick an errant
phone number, I mean, at least it wasn't somebody who supported the
Houthis, because they were actually handing out information that I
believe could have endangered the lives of American servicepeople who
were involved in that operation.
On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow covered the story.
Yesterday, Senator Chris Coons' office issued the following:
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ranking
Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, issued the
following statement today in response to today’s article in The Atlantic entitled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans:”
“Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting in The Atlantic calls for a
prompt and thorough investigation. If senior advisors to President Trump
in fact used non-secure, non-government systems to discuss and convey
detailed war plans, it’s a shocking breach of the standards for sharing
classified information that could have put American servicemembers at
risk. There needs to be an oversight hearing and accountability for
these actions.”
Senator Adam Schiff's office issued the following about his discussion of this huge breach of security with MSNBC's Jen Psaki:
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki to
blast the irresponsible planning of sensitive military operations over
text chat and call out the utterly incompetent handling of national
security interests following The Atlantic’s reporting.
On the incompetence and arrogance of Trump’s national security advisors:
It is stunning. I can understand Jeffrey’s disbelief, or thought that
is, this somehow contrived, because it is so stunning and so
incompetent and so dangerous in terms of the planning for this operation
and who might have been on this text chain. But what really leaps out
at me is that you have the Director of National Intelligence, you have
the head of the CIA, and no one it appears bothered to say, “Hey, folks,
should we really be talking about this here? Should we really be using
an unclassified channel to talk about an operation, a detailed military
operation, that’s going to take place in a few hours?” That
is just so striking to me, and it shows both the level of incompetence,
but also a certain kind of arrogance that some of the folks on that had
to know that they should never be discussing these things on a Signal
chat. But there is a feeling that they’re beyond accountability. I mean,
who’s going to hold them accountable? They can break whatever
rules. They’re stopping the FBI from doing background checks on people.
They can deal with national security however they see fit.
[…] Just staggeringly irresponsible. And it’s not just that they had a
reporter by accident on this chat. They should have never been doing
this on a chat to begin with. And what’s more, who knows what phones
they were using? Who knows the safety and security of those phones,
whether a foreign government had already penetrated some of those
communications? So, the dangers are real. There
should be a real accounting over this. But you could expect more of the
reaction you saw from Hegseth, which is to attack the reporter rather
than acknowledging their own dangerous incompetence here. It put pilots
at risk potentially. But also it meant that the success of the
operations could have been dramatically reduced if, for example,
word got out to not just the Houthis, but allies of the Houthis, like
Iran, that could have tipped them off – “Hey, here’s when these attacks
are going to start. Here’s when you’ll know that the next target is upon
you.” It’s just staggeringly irresponsible.
On the shocking lack of concern over the communication of national security interests:
There certainly could be a criminal offense here. This is information
that in a normal world would be highly classified. And so someone could
have very plainly violated laws in terms of the handling of sensitive
national security of information, even if it isn’t classified. But I
think to your point, also, my guess is that this is probably the tip of
the iceberg. This was probably
not the first time that the people on this chat used Signal to
communicate information that – if not highly classified – was highly
sensitive national security information. So, who else is doing this?
Apparently, it certainly appears to be widespread, because no one on
that chat seems to have objected to it or even raised the issue.
Now, I know we don’t know the full conversation, because Jeffrey was
careful to limit what he made public to protect the legitimate national
security interests of the country, even if the participants in the chat
weren’t protecting it. But if
nobody was objecting, that means that there was a certain routine
already in this administration to use such poor trade craft.
###
Possibly the most important voice weighing in is Leon Panetta. As Elaine noted last night, "Leon's done everything in government that anyone can do. (Disclosure, I
know Leon through C.I.) He's been a member of the House of
Representatives, a US senator, OMB director, White House Chief of Staff,
Secretary of Defense and CIA Director. So he's someone to listen to
and he discusses this outrageous breach with PBS in the video below."
Geoff Bennett:
How does
this lapse strike you from an operational security perspective, that the
country's top national security officials shared information about an
imminent strike, an imminent attack on a commercial messaging app?
Leon
Panetta, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense: Well, look, this is a
serious security breach, particularly when it comes to war plans.
Look,
war plans, attack plans are among the most sensitive and classified
information that you can have. And it has to be handled with care. I
think it was a mistake to have a conversation a Signal app that is not
approved for sharing classified information. So, I'm not sure why they
even placed any of this information on Signal.
But, nevertheless,
the fact that it included somebody who was not cleared for that
information, and as a matter of fact was a member of the press, is a
serious breach and one that needs to be fully investigated.
Geoff Bennett:
What are the traditional secure channels for this type of discussion? How would this normally unfold?
Leon Panetta:
Well, when I was both director of the CIA and secretary
of defense, when it came to attack plans, the discussion was reserved
for the Situation Room in the National Security Council, which is highly
protected and is a place where you can have that kind of discussion
without having to worry whether or not any of that information would
leak.
So I'm a little bit taken aback that they would have this
kind of conversation a commercial messaging network. That just strikes
me as being pretty careless.
Geoff Bennett:
How might a foreign intelligence service, a foreign
country trying to do the U.S. harm, how might they use this kind of
information or how might they exploit what appear to be lax security
practices?
Leon Panetta:
Well, there are very serious consequences to leaking information about a potential military attack.
If
that information is leaked to an adversary, not only does it jeopardize
very important intelligence resources that are being used to be able to
determine military plans, but, in addition to that, that kind of leak
would give a potential adversary an advantage of being able to strike
first and going after whatever weapons, whatever naval vessels were
going to be used for the attack.
So it could cost lives of our men
and women in uniform if that information was leaked. That's the danger
here. And, furthermore, it weakens our national security, very frankly,
if we cannot protect that kind of sensitive information.
Geoff Bennett:
President Trump, when he was asked about this today by
reporters, he said he didn't know anything about it, and then he quickly
pivoted to criticizing "The Atlantic." It doesn't appear that he's
focused on taking accountability.
And, of course, he faced a
criminal trial, criminal charges from his handling of classified
information. That aside, in your view, what should the consequences be?
Leon Panetta:
Well, I don't think there's any question that somebody
made a serious blunder here, a serious mistake, of including somebody
that should not have been part of a national security group discussing
war plans.
So, who added that name? And why did that happen? That
really does have to be investigated, because it could involve a breach
of our espionage laws, because that kind of breach simply cannot happen
when the security of the United States is on the line. That is the
danger of having that kind of information leak.
This is not minor. This is a huge issue. Senator Tammy Duckworth was among those addressing it last night (she did so on MSNBC) and we'd note her comments but MSNBC hasn't posted that video. (Or if they have, they've posted it with other things and not identified the segment as involving her.)
So much concern was rightly raised ahead of the confirmation hearings about Donald Chump's security nominees. This incident demonstrates that we were all correct to be concerned. In a segment of her show last night, Rachel Maddow talked about the effects of this in terms of intelligence sharing among countries. And she's right that it makes it that much more difficult for allies to share confidential information with us when we've just had a huge security breach that never, ever should have happened. (Some are saying that the exchange exposed a CIA officer, for example.)
This is why you don't use THE JOE ROGAN PODCAST as though it was Indeed, Inc. when you're looking for people to fill security positions.
This is a nightmare and people need to be fired, people in that text conversation need to be fired. There is no excuse for it. They have demonstrated what we all knew: They didn't know the first thing about national security. They're nitwits playing fast and loose with the rules and putting the entire country at risk.
This is not minor, this is huge and people should lose their jobs over this.
Was Pete Hegseth drunk? That would explain it. Wouldn't excuse it. But it would explain it.
This is very important and it is a warning sign that we need to heed. We have a huge problem and it has to be addressed immediately. That's why we've focused on this so much in today's snapshot.
We've got one more topic we really need to do. If I could find Rachel's segment on all the protests, I'd note that. Maybe it's up and I'm just missing it. But I'll look for it and we'll note it tomorrow if I can find -- all the protests that took place over the weekend throughout te country.
But I need to update from yesterday's snapshot, American dentist Noor Abdalla.'s husband Mahmoud
Khalil is being threatened with deportation. To where? Who knows. He
was born in Syria so possible there or to Argentia where he holds
citizenship. When I dictated the snapshot the story below was already
published, I was not aware of that. Daniel Trotta (REUTERS) reported:
The
U.S. government has alleged that Columbia University student and
pro-Palestinian demonstrator Mahmoud Khalil withheld that he worked for a
United Nations Palestinian relief agency in his visa application,
saying that should be grounds for deportation.
The
U.N. agency known as UNRWA provides food and healthcare to Palestinian
refugees and has become a flashpoint in the Israeli war in Gaza. Israel
contends that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas' attack on
Israel on October 7, 2023, leading the U.S. to halt funding of the
group.
[. . .]
The brief also says Khalil "withheld membership in certain organizations" which should be grounds for his deportation.
It
references a March 17 document in his deportation case that informed
Khalil he could be removed because he failed to disclose that he was a
political officer of UNRWA in 2023.
Yesterday,
I stated it was most likely not going to be a First Amendment case.
For those who think, "Well I bet you knew about this story!" -- I said
that last week as well -- in fact, you can go back to March 14th when I first addressed this. I said that the idiots on TV pontificating
endlessly didn't know a damn thing despite being presented as
'experts.' They might have been that . . . on the First Amendment.
They are not experts on immigration. If they had been they wouldn't
have (a) acted so shocked -- green cards and student visas are revoked
all the time and (b) they would have zoomed in -- as I did -- on the
reality that most deportations from green cards and student visas result
from what the government calls or identifies as a lie.
That's
very easy to do because you're filling out paperwork and most of us --
as I noted last week -- will shorthand something and that something is
what they will get you on.
I
said it was a mistake to argue this as a First Amendment case because
no charges had been brought and it was most likely that they would go
after the paperwork.
So what we've had is two weeks of people like Chris Hayes wasting our time, wasting Noor's time and wasting her husband's time.
That's not saying that she can't save her husband from deportation. She still can, she still has that chance.
But
you've let liars and idiots speak for over a week and they were wrong.
Chris and company didn't present their statements as possibilities.
No, they presented it as what it was.
And now it isn't. It isn't what they just knew it was.
Which means you re-educate and start over.
The media and Noor's attorneys have wasted time.
It's
now up to them to actually do their job and that's going to require
dealing with what actually is and not with the fantasy case that they've
had in their deluded heads. I don't know how you get to be a
practicing attorney and be as stupid as some of these people are.
Noor
is now everything in this case. Her husband is not getting out to make
his case over the airwaves, not any time soon. I wouldn't be surprised
if the administration kept him behind bars to keep him away from the
press.
The first thing
her attorneys need to do is get her on every program they can so that
she can talk about her husband and the family they're trying to raise
(she's pregnant and due shortly). As I noted yesterday, none of that
"his people" crap. He's an adult male (30) in a sexist country (the US)
and most Americans hearing about him wanting to help "his people" will
have the attitude of, "Then go help them. Why are you being a coward
over here if your people need you."
So
don't waste your time on that. If she's asked about UNRWA -- and he
was working there or working with them -- the answer is he was helping
children.
With
UNRWA, one thing I'd want to know is when did he work with them (if he did) and when did he fill out the
paperwork. As the government is explaining the charges, which may not
be correct, he did not note this. If REUTERS is accurate in what
they're reporting (they generally are) and if the information they
obtained was accurate (government sources aren't always reliable nor are
governments), it reads as though Noor's husband did not note UNRWA
employment (if it exists, that's the government's claim) in 2023. That
would be the green card paperwork ('permanent' resident), not the
student visa.
January 26 of
last year, then-President Joe Biden put a hold on funds to UNRWA. That
was all that was done. It was not designated a terrorist
organization. UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, for any who don't know. The
Netanyahu government made baseless charges against UNRWA that most of us
knew were baseless. A lot of rhetoric in the US but all (too much)
that was done was the US paused funding.
If
he worked for UNRWA (as the government alleges), did he do so when he
applied for a student visa? If so, is that on that application?
If
it was, I would argue that the form was confusing and he thought he
didn't need to carry it over. The forms are confusing -- again, that's
how the US government deports a lot of people -- a lot -- every year.
They
need to see what was written on what forms and figure out a timeline
and they need to start arguing that -- 'they' would be the attorneys.
They also need to immediately move for Noor's husband to be released.
There is no reason to hold him.
Why do you hold someone? Because they're a flight risk.
How is Mahmoud
Khalil a flight risk? The government wants him gone. You argue he
needs to be out on bail immediately and you argue that his American wife
is pregnant and he's not going anywhere, but even if he did, your
honor, even if he left the country tomorrow, isn't that what the
government wants? If he did jump bail, which he's not going to do, all
that would mean is that the government was spared the cost of deporting
him.
Right now, they're covering housing fees for him and the cost to feed him, let him out so he can see his child born.
There is no reason to keep him behind bars.
Again,
Chris Hayes and others wasted weeks of time. Wasted. They have tired
to make this a First Amendment issue and anyone familiar at all with
basic immigration laws could have
REUTERS also notes, "The
U.N. said in August an investigation found nine of the agency's 32,000
staff members may have been involved in the October 7 attacks. The
U.S. court notice also accuses Khalil of leaving off his visa
application that he worked for the Syria office in the British embassy
in Beirut and that he was a member of the group Columbia University
Apartheid Divest."
Noor
is an American citizen. She's a dentist and has a profession. That
needs to be stressed. She needs to tell how she fell in love with him.
And this isn't THE WAY WE WERE, we don't need to hear about politics.
We need to hear about an American woman falling in love with a man on a
student visa who then became a permanent resident because he wanted to
do the right thing and build a life with her. He could have, as many
do, just stay in the country on the student visa even though it was
lapsed. But he tried to do the right thing and maybe he forgot to
declare this or that but those were honest mistakes. She and their baby
need him and they are a family. She should stress that she will be
going back to work after the birth of their child. That needs to be
stressed to silence those whose attitude would be, "Oh, more mouths on
welfare." No, she can earn a solid living immediately as a dentist. If
her dream is to stay home with the child, she needs to stress that that
will happen when her husband gets employment.
These are two adults wanting to raise a family and not trying to game the system.
That's
the argument she needs to be making. She loves her husband, she loves
her unborn baby and she loves her country and she is begging her
country to help her right now by not deporting her husband. That's all
she's asking. Not for any special favors, not for any public
assistance. Just let them live and thrive and raise their child in this
country to demonstrate to their child how great this country is.
If
voices bring up Gaza, her husband was concerned about the children.
He's still concerned but the focus now is on their child, that's what he
wants to live for and focus on.
To
that, all the government can really say (unless there are documents or
recordings no one knows of at this point) is, "Not true!"
A judge will have to look at it in terms of could honest mistakes have been made in the paperwork?
That's your best shot at this point.
REUTERS ends their article with this garbage (REUTERS is citing the garbage, they didn't creat it):
One
attorney, Ramie Kassem, a co-director of the legal clinic CLEAR, was
quoted in the New York Times as saying the new deportation grounds were
"patently weak and pretextual."
"That the
government scrambled to add them at the 11th hour only highlights how
its motivation from the start was to retaliate against Mr. Khalil for
his protected speech in support of Palestinian rights and lives," Kassem
said, according to the Times.
He
clearly needs to go. First up, he doesn't know when to shut the f**k
up. That's not an argument that anyone's going to be sympathetic to. It's also got nothing to do with the charges the government is making. This isn't an episode of PERRY MASON. It will be an immigration hearing. Those usually are pretty much rote and no one's going to indulge an attorney bringing in theories and claims that have noting to do with the charges that have been filed.
That's for starters.
Next?
George
Soros. Really? No. He's too controversial and an attorney with no
connections to some fright-wing bogey man needs to take over the case as
lead attorney and Ramie needs to sit down and shut his mouth.
And
before some idiot -- well meaning or otherwise -- e-mails to say I
don't know what I'm talking about that this attorney is "Ramie" not
"Ramzie." It's the same person and when an attorney isn't using their
legal name they look even more suspect. His name is not Ramie, it's
Ramzie.
Ramzi Kassem
Email: ramzi.kassem@law.cuny.edu
Phone: [...]
Ramzi
Kassem is the founding director of CLEAR. He is a Professor of Law at
the City University of New York. His writing, teaching, and legal
practice all aim to contest the expressions and excesses of the
sprawling U.S. security state, both domestically and abroad.
In
support of clients, communities, and social movements, Ramzi has
litigated civil rights, constitutional, criminal, immigration, national
security, wartime detention, and war crime cases at all levels of the
U.S. federal judiciary, before military commissions and international
tribunals, and in various administrative proceedings.
His
work with his students, colleagues, and co-counsel has resulted in
groundbreaking civil rights litigation challenging the U.S. security
state and has led to the exoneration or liberation of clients
incarcerated, often for years, at Guantánamo Bay and in federal and
immigration prisons. Ramzi has long worked with and within various
coalitions and movements, including Communities United for Police Reform
(CPR) and Movement for Black Lives (M4BL).
Before joining the
CUNY faculty, Ramzi taught law at Yale and Fordham. He is a proud
immigrant, an incorrigible New Yorker, and a Paul & Daisy Soros New
American Fellow. He is a graduate of Columbia College and holds law
degrees from Columbia Law School, where he was a Senior Editor for the
Columbia Law Review, and from the Sorbonne.
