Signaling Incompetence

Trying to keep up with the latest developments in the recent national security fuck-up for the ages is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose.  There are new revelations—or suspected revelations, at the very least—appearing at an alarming rate.

What we know at this point is troubling enough.  A host of the people who are charged with defending the country proved themselves to be not merely “not ready for the big leagues” (hey, baseball season is upon us; gotta show some respect), but probably not worthy of sitting on the bench for the high school JV team. 

We know that this collection of absurdly unqualified hacks defied Pentagon regulations and used a commercial product, Signal, to plan an imminent attack on Houtie forces in Yemen.  We know that somehow Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, got added to the group chat by Mike Waltz, the national security advisor (!). 

We know that there was concern, probably more than mere concern, that Russia and perhaps China could hack Signal virtually at will.  So why use it?  The most likely reason is that messages there disappear without a trace after 30 days.  Shades of the self-destructing tapes on the old “Mission: Impossible” series.  Alas, there was no Jim Phelps or Rollin Hand or Cinnamon Carter in this group: just a gaggle of boneheads getting off on causing the deaths of a few dozen people, a couple of whom might even be considered enemies.  Note: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not included.  Neither was POTUS.  Is Curmie the only one who thinks that’s odd?

There are other possibilities, of course, but all are ultimately worse than concluding that everyone included in that chat is an idiot.  What if this was a variation on a game of chicken: who can flout the laws and national security the most?  What if they wanted the allegedly top secret discussion to be hacked?  Curmie isn’t saying, as has been alleged, that President Trump and Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard are Russian assets, but as someone (Curmie regrets that he forgets who) wondered, what would they do differently if they were?

Mistakes do happen, so perhaps Mike Waltz is just sloppy, as opposed to utterly incompetent.  Curmie remembers asking a student why he hadn’t sent a required email.  The student responded that he had done so, and included a copy of his message… which had been sent to someone in a totally different part of campus.  Ah, but his name was pretty close to Curmie’s, and the student looked online instead of on the course syllabus for my e-address.  Thing is, though, matters of national security are of somewhat greater importance than asking for an extension on a due date or whatever it was.  And blunders of this magnitude are—or should be—firing offenses, irrespective of circumstances.

There’s one other possibility, and this would also account for why Goldberg was in on the chat: it was a clumsy attempt at a trap.  Bait him into releasing the information before the raid, and now he’s guilty of a serious federal crime.  Of course, Goldberg is neither an idiot nor a felon—a description that doesn’t apply to many of those we assume were the intended participants in that chat—so he waited until the strike was over before releasing his initial story. 

It’s also interesting to note that the various denials that the chat contained classified information work in some ways to Goldberg’s favor.  On the one hand, if that wasn’t classified information, it sure as hell should have been, so Hegseth et al. look like the inept buffoons they are.  But if that information really had been classified, then the government could claim that Goldberg released classified documents: a serious federal offense.  But all the players insist that there was nothing classified there, so they’re the first witnesses for the defense should a prosecution be threatened.

We also know that the chat included all sorts of details about the planned raid: times, places, ordinance, even the name of a covert CIA operative.  We therefore know that at least three of the members of that chat—Secretary of Defense Hegseth, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and Gabbard—have already lied to Congress about what was contained in those communications. 

Oh, and FBI Director Kash Patel wasn’t in on the group chat, but he couldn’t let other people have all the fun, so he lied to Congress, too.  These are facts, not opinions or even interpretations.  Those folks knowingly and intentionally lied, going all in on what turned out to be a losing hand: betting that Goldberg wouldn’t release a transcript. 

Interestingly, if the Trumpsters just acknowledged their mistake, apologized profusely, swore off Signal (and meant it), promised it wouldn’t happen again, etc., Goldberg might just have taken the journalistic win and called it good.  But, as egotistical bullies generally do, they accused him of lying.  So he felt compelled to prove that he wasn’t.  And… boom.

Of course, none of the insiders were quite as ostentatiously mendacious as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavett (a.k.a. Bullshit Barbie), but it’s her job to lie, and Curmie supposes that it’s ultimately a good thing that she’s so horrible at it that no one with an IQ above room temperature could possibly believe anything she says. 

The best she could come up with was proclaiming that The Atlantic had “admitted” that there weren’t “war plans” in the conversation.  That’s because the headline accompanying the release of some of the transcript referred to “attack plans.”  Seriously, that’s the argument.  When you’re desperate enough, you say some pretty strange things, especially if you’re a not terribly bright spokesperson for a narcissistic administration run by someone given to both delusions and prevarication.

Technically, it’s true that there weren’t “war plans,” as there’s no declaration of war.  There wasn’t for what we all refer to as the Vietnam War, either, but anyone who transmitted plans for a raid on Hanoi over an insecure line would have been court-martialed or worse.  But Curmie digresses.

What matters here is not the fuck-up itself, or, rather, not just the fuck-up itself, but the aftermath.  There is no doubt that literally everyone who participated in that chat prior to the attack (except Goldberg, of course) should be out of a job immediately: Vance impeached, the others fired.  Oh, and for the MAGA folks who are screaming about Hilary Clinton’s private server: yes, she should have been fired, too.  Willfully disobeying rules when lives are at stake: inexcusable.  End of discussion. 

Oh, and also on the probably-should-be-fired list is Katie Arrington, the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Cybersecurity and Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Defense.  (Good Lord, what a title!)  She is apparently responsible for not merely allowing Signal to be installed on government devices, but insisting on it.  To be fair, it appears that she may have been referring only to unclassified communications: hence the “probably” in the first sentence of this paragraph.  

There have been murmurs, but little more than that, by a handful of Republican pols that perhaps this level of incompetence (or worse) should not go unpunished.  Curmie awaits the chorus of these faux patriots demanding accountability.  He fears there will be a rather long wait.

(You will note, Gentle Reader, that Curmie has not followed his usual practice of providing links in the foregoing commentary.  Instead, he suggests a few suggestions for further reading (he warns you, it’s a rabbit hole): a précis of relevant DoD regulations, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News (!) outlining some of the semantics concerning terms like “war plans” and “classified,” Jeffrey Goldberg saying in a interview that the CIA Director (!) put the name of a covert agent into an insecure chat, a Google Threat Intelligence Group post from February describing Signal as a “high-value target for adversaries seeking to intercept sensitive information,” the NSA policy on the use of Signal, Fred Wellman on Arrington’s role in all this, a report in Der Spiegel that contact data including the mobile phone numbers and even passwords of Waltz, Gabbard, and Hegseth are freely available on the internet, 10-year veteran Andrew Mercado’s take on accountability, and one of the incomparable Heather Cox Richardson’s essays on this whole business.  There’s more, of course, but perhaps you might have a life to lead…)