Barb Caffrey's Blog

Folks, I feel I must blog on this.

If you do not know what Signalgate is yet, here’s a quick definition. The United States was about to send military planes to strike the Houthis in Yemen. There was a text chain and/or a group chat going on through the Signal app — which, while encrypted, is not a secure thing compared to, say, going into a SCIF (secure place, where you do not bring cell phones, Apple watches, or anything save maybe a pen and paper and that’s it) — that featured the head of the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and quite a few members of the 47th President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Other prominent people on this text chain were Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who should’ve known better), Department of National Intelligence head Tulsi Gabbard (who also should’ve known better), National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Trump aide Steven Miller, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy (why was he included?), Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles (who also should’ve known better), and worst of all, JD Vance, the Vice President. (Wikipedia has a precis available here that’s pretty good.)

Really, people? This is the best you could do? We’d not know about this if they hadn’t added a journalist to the call inadvertently (Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic). And because of that, along with pointing out that doing all this was not secure and was not safe and shouldn’t happen, Goldberg is getting vilified by many on the right for reasons I do not understand.

There’s a reason you go into the SCIF, people!

What’s that reason? Operational Security, AKA “OpSec.” Something Hegseth said was fine on this text chain or group chat or whatever the Hell it was.

Um, no. It wasn’t.

Look. I am only a former military wife. My ex-husband was in the active-duty Army for almost five years when we were married. If he had done anything remotely like this, he would’ve been sent to Fort Leavenworth so fast his head would’ve spun.

For those of you who don’t know why this is, let me put it to you this way. If you’re in the military, you are supposed to remember something along these lines: Loose lips sink ships. That applies in the Army, though they don’t have ships. It also applies to the Navy, where my late husband Michael served, as well as my father.

In fact, Dad was a radio technician. He knew a lot about OpSec. I think if he were still alive, he’d have burst a blood vessel in his head or something, as what Hegseth, et. al, just did is not something anyone should be doing.

Dad was a non-com. He wasn’t an officer. But he knew what you could say and what you couldn’t. He also knew what mediums you could use if something was not classified, and what you shouldn’t use under any circumstances.

While cell phones were not something that Dad had to deal with in the 1950s when he served, they did have extensive radio traffic. Possibly more than we do now, because we have computers. Anyway, Dad knew that you do not say something out in the open that anyone could possibly listen to or break into/hack into, and you most certainly would not do this from anywhere other than a secure place.

This could’ve killed members of the US military if the Houthis had been tipped off this attack was coming. Only by the grace of God did that not happen.

I mean, one of these people on the chat/text thing was in Moscow. Russia, despite what the current President believes, is not a typical ally of the United States.

So, what the Hell was this guy in Russia doing on an unsecured line texting back and forth about the air strikes that were about to hit Yemen?

Seriously? What the Hell?

I’m particularly disappointed in Gabbard and Rubio. They are career politicians, yes, but Gabbard was an Army Major at one time. She’s not a fool. Rubio was at one time quite canny, and understood what “OpSec” really is a few years ago. But he obviously doesn’t now.

The excuses of “well, we didn’t know” or “these weren’t really war plans” (which go to hundreds of pages) do not fly with me. At all.

My view of this is very simple. If a noncom like my Dad could’ve been sent to jail for less, and trust me, he could’ve, these people have no excuse — zero — for what they did.

Do I want them in jail? No. But I do want them fired, or to resign, effective immediately. Not just Waltz, the NSA. All of them, including the Vice President.

They’ve all shown they can’t be trusted, they have no common sense, and they don’t know what the Hell they’re doing. The current President deserves better from these people, and he’s not likely to get it, so he should ask them all to submit their resignations ASAP. (If not, they should be fired, and if Mr. Trump refuses to fire them, they should be impeached and removed. Every single last one of them.)

Or as Rachel Maddow put it — I hope I get it right — “These aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. They’re quite dull tools. But this is who we have in charge of our national security.”

Unsaid, but very obvious, was the subtext of this: God help us all.