The fallout from the Signal breach begins
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If you could boil down how Democrats versus Republicans are reacting to Monday's bombshell Atlantic magazine story into a single 15-second clip, it might be this one. Georgia Democratic Senator John Ossoff questioning CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Director Ratcliffe, this was a huge mistake, correct? No. No.

Okay, to back us up a bit, that Atlantic story was written by Jeffrey Goldberg, and in it, he details how he was included, apparently by accident, in a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal.

He spoke with me about what happened next. I look at the group. It's 18 people or so. And it includes what I take to be the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the national security advisor, the vice president, CIA director, and so on. Goldberg says he thinks it's a hoax at first. But he stays quiet and watches the conversation unfold.

Eventually, they begin discussing a potential U.S. strike on Houthi targets in Yemen. By Saturday the 15th, the text chain is filled up with what I would call operational military information of the sort that I'm not comfortable sharing. I'm not comfortable sharing, obviously. Well, but just to describe that, information about the targets, weapons that the U.S. would be using, and how the attacks would be sequenced, right? Yes. I'm sitting in my car in a parking lot in a supermarket.

at 11:44 a.m. Eastern, and I get this war plan from Pete Hegseth. And it basically says,

In two hours' time, you'll begin to see the effects of the bombing. The bombs fall, and Goldberg realizes this group chat is indeed very real. And eventually, he writes all about it in the article. All of this was, as Goldberg described it, a massive security breach. These are the most serious jobs in America. They are sending Americans into harm's way to carry out national security missions on behalf of the United States. They shouldn't be.

texting each other operational information. And they shouldn't know who they're... I mean, this is the universal problem. Know who you're texting. The National Security Council has acknowledged that the messages appear to be authentic. But 24 hours and counting since that article dropped, there are no signs yet that anyone involved will face any repercussions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegstead called Goldberg, quote, deceitful and...

and said this on Monday. Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that. The White House said that President Trump retains confidence in his national security team. On Tuesday, Trump defended his national security advisor, Mike Waltz. This was not classified. Now, if it's classified information, it's probably a little bit different. But I always say you have to learn from every experience. I think it was very unfair the way they attacked Michael. ♪♪

Consider this. The administration is trying to brush off any potential scandal over the leaked chats. But the fallout is still playing out in Congress and among U.S. allies. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.

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It's Consider This from NPR. That clip we heard at the very beginning of this episode came from a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. It was scheduled long before the story about the signal thread broke, but it happened to feature two of the group chat's participants, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

NPR's Ryan Lucas was following the hearing where the group chat fiasco was a major topic of discussion, at least on one side of the aisle. Republican senators actually didn't ask about it at all in the public hearing, but Democrats absolutely grilled Gabbard and Ratcliffe on this. Democratic lawmakers called the actions of Trump's national security team here dangerous, incompetent, reckless. And they said that it could have had serious real world consequences. Here's the top Democrat on the panel, Senator Mark Warner of Congress.

Virginia. This was not only sloppy, not only violated all procedures, but if this information had gotten out, American lives could have been lost. Now, Warner said that's because the Houthis could have moved their air defenses or repositioned them if they'd had this info and then threatened American aircraft. Absolutely. OK, well, what did Gabbard and Ratcliffe have to say for themselves?

Well, Gabbard at first wouldn't even acknowledge that she was in the group chat. Ratcliffe, for his part, did acknowledge that right away. He said that he was in the chat, but he tried to downplay the gravity of the situation. He said that government officials are allowed to use Signal to communicate and coordinate for work.

At the same time, I will say that our colleague, Tom Bowman, is reporting that the Pentagon warned a week ago against using Signal even for unclassified information. Now, Ratcliffe and Gabbard both repeatedly said at the hearing today that none of the information was classified in this group chat. But lawmakers were very, very skeptical of that. Here's Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine. And if that's the case...

Please release that whole tech stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. It's hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.

Now, questions about that specific information there, Ratcliffe directed actually to the Secretary of Defense, who was not at the hearing. But Ratcliffe did at one point acknowledge that those sorts of things should only be discussed on classified channels. And look, the government does have its own secure communication systems for these sorts of things. Now, the FBI Director Kash Patel was at this hearing as well. Democrats asked him whether the FBI is investigating this breach. And Patel said that he didn't have any update on that. OK, so what happens next at this point? Anything? Nothing.

Well, the administration is very much trying to say that this is all much ado about nothing. But I will say the information discussed in the chat is exactly the sort of intelligence a sophisticated adversary like Russia or China would want on the U.S. And the officials in the chat are all top of the target list of foreign intelligence services. Now, as for what's next, Democrats on the Intelligence Committee made this clear today that they want to get to the bottom of it, and they have very much vowed to get there.

to the end of this. That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. And we'll note that NPR's CEO, Catherine Marr, is chair of the board of Signal Foundation, which runs the Signal messaging app. Ryan mentioned that adversaries like China or Russia might be interested in the contents of the Signal chat. Well, U.S. allies might as well. Willem Marx in London has been following European reaction to the leaked texts. Yeah.

The UK is America's closest ally for intelligence sharing and has played a small, significant role in operations against Houthi forces in Yemen at the centre of the recent revelations from journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. So it was unsurprising British politicians fielded thorny inquiries about the security lapse, including UK Minister for the Armed Forces Luke Pollard, who faced repeated questions in Parliament.

One lawmaker asked what would happen to UK officials if they shared sensitive military details in a similar fashion. Here's Pollard's response. My general rule would be that if there's operational decisions that are being taken, we should all, regardless of our role within defence, take our information sharing seriously and there would be a clear consequence and disciplinary process for anyone that wouldn't be following those procedures. It's not acceptable, is it?

The UK's Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, avoided any undiplomatic language when she was repeatedly pressed on the topic in a BBC interview. We've been sharing intelligence and information for many decades and we continue to do that through our secure networks. It is for the US and the US President and the government to explain and decide what they're doing in regards to their security and that signal messaging group.

Across Europe, the focus has been on the Trump administration's sometimes scornful attitude towards European defence capabilities, as Germany's most-read newspaper, Das Bild, reported in its audio version. Aside from the laxity with which the world's most powerful politicians share top-secret military strikes in an unsecured chat group, a reporter from Das Bild wrote, the unfriendly words towards Europe from the Americans are further proof that the US no longer considers us a vital ally.

But Europe should not be surprised, said Pierre Aski, an editorial writer speaking on French public radio. For Europeans, there's a sense of a broken relationship in discovering the extent of American hostility, Aski said. But like in love, there is life after a breakup and it's important to make the most of your new life.

There was some satisfaction at the laps too, including in the audio version of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. We can't have someone in the Oval Office who doesn't understand the meaning of the word classified, the newspaper quoted President Trump as saying during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

Then it showcased his opponent in that race, Hillary Clinton, reacting this week on social media, you've got to be kidding. The breakdown in transatlantic ties, the messages reveal, is troubling though, says Ian Lesser, a distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank. It's really unprecedented. And these are not challenges the European institutions are well set up to deal with. Perhaps individual leaders in Europe will react, you know, in different ways to it. But Brussels itself, the European Union...

NATO, certainly with the US as part of it, is simply not well set up to address this multifaceted challenge. As European governments step up the defence spending, many in Europe say their militaries must soon be more ready to operate without US help. That was Willem Marx in London.

This episode was produced by Connor Donovan, Mia Venkat, and Michelle Aslam. It was edited by Christopher Intaliata, Anna Yukunonoff, and Nick Spicer. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. ♪

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