Today I will share some thoughts on national security in the United States.
There were a few developments in the Venezuelan
deportation case I discussed last week (March 17-19). Yesterday (March 24) a
federal appeals court heard the Trump administration’s request to reverse Judge
Boasberg’s order to halt the deportations to El Salvador. The court met for 2
hours but has not yet issued a ruling. If the court sides with the government,
the deportations can continue.
Then last night the DOJ told Boasberg that they would
not obey his order to provide him with the exact times the planes took off,
citing national security. Specifically they said doing so would “undermine or impede future counterterrorism
operations.” This is patent nonsense. In such cases the judge is privately shown,
in a secure situation, documents or other evidence showing how that national
security would be compromised. It’s also nonsense in that a film crew was
invited to make videos of the men being arrested and loaded onto planes and
widely shown on television. This was obviously a PR stunt, which the government
approved, but they won’t give the judge the time of takeoff?
By the way, did you notice on the videos that the ICE
officers wore masks to hide their identity? Yet in the list of requirements for
Columbia University to get back their $400 million funding was one that
protesters on campus not be allowed to wear masks.
A DOJ filing said “the
court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it”.
This may be more true than they thought. The ACLU has filed a sworn affidavit from
a Venezuelan woman who was on one of the flights to El Salvador, testifying
that in mid-flight she heard the ICE officers discussing the judge’s order to turn
the plane around. So now they can’t pretend that they didn’t know.
One of the judges in the Appeals hearing observed that
German Nazis got better treatment when they were arrested in America during
WWII.
The plea for national security is especially rich coming from thius administration because of the biggest news story from yesterday.
The Atlantic broke the story about the breach of
security in the Trump cabinet Monday noon. A text chain, given the name Houthi PC Small Group, of cabinet
ministers and top officials (V.P. JD Vance, Pete Hesgeth, Secretary of State Marco
Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff, and 12 others) discussed secret
military plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. Two problems with this – first that
the texting was done on a commercial chat app called Signal which is not approved
by the government for sharing sensitive information. Secondly, that Jeffrey
Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic magazine,
was accidentally invited to join the group. Goldberg reported on the
conversation and the breach of security in an article Monday in his magazine.
He was careful to redact sensitive information such as the identity of a CIA
agent.
A possible reason for using Signal rather than
government approved program is that Signal offers the option of self-deletion
after a set time. Federal records laws requires all government correspondence to be preserved
and archived, something that this administration has frequently ignored. Think
of Trump’s hours long conversations with Putin with no witnesses and certainly
no recording.
It turns out that Witkoff was in Moscow while participating in this meeting-by-text – not a smart place to be while discussing secret
military plans on an insecure program.
The invitation of Goldberg is being investigated. Mike Waltz has taken responsibility for admitting Goldberg to the group but has not explaned how it happened.
One thing that came out in Goldberg’s report is the
contempt that this cabinet feels for Europe. Vance texted “I just hate bailing Europe out again” and Hesgeth replied “I fully share your loathing of European
free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the
planet who can do this”. Here the men are referring to their belief that Europe
will benefit more than America from opening the Red Sea shipping lane, and they resented that
America had to pay for this operation. Then it turns out that the Red Sea is an
important shipping route for the Tesla factory in Europe which had to be shut down for a
period due to parts not getting through on time. Hmmm.
Ironically one of the texts sent by Hesgeth guaranteed
“100 percent OPSEC – operations security”.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called this “one of the most stunning breaches of
military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time”. That was maybe an understatement. A more accurate description was "a national security crisis of catastrophic proportion". Someone exclaimed "The gob - it has been smacked". Others
are calling for a full Congressional hearing.
That's what you get when you appoint rank amateurs for jobs requiring serious professionals. These cabinet ministers and other agency leaders were chosed not for their experience, competence and knowledge but for their unswerving allegiance to Donald Trump. This is just another example of the folly of doing so.
The White House is of course covering it up best they can. Hegseth denied that any war plans were texted and attempted to smear Goldberg as a hoax peddler. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that Signal had been approved for government use by the Biden Administration but two days before the meeting, on March 18, the Pentagon had released a statement warning not to use Signal even for unclassified messages because it had been comprimised by Russian hackers. A similar memo had been issued in 2023.
Trump said he was unaware of the [security breach] incident, which if
he is telling the truth brings up a different issue – why his cabinet didn’t immediately
inform him.
In normal administrations, including under Republican presidents like the Bushes or Reagan, a security breach of this magnitude would result in firings and possibly prison time for those responsible. in 2016 Hillary Clinton's email scandal was nothing to this but Trump's followers chanted "Lock her up!".
But then again this isn’t a normal administration.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt released a statement
saying “President Trump continues to have
the utmost confidence in his national security team.”
Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-trump-yemen-war-chat
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/democrats-war-plans-signal-chat
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339801/pentagon-email-signal-vulnerability
https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-on-the-ninth-tuesday
Trump confused Signal with signal ie a message. He could not find his ass with both hsnds in daylight never mind dark
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