ArcaMax

A hard-won Senate confirmation was not enough to keep the aroma of scandal away from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for long.

As labels like “Signalgate” or, as I call it, “the Big Ooops” struggled for dominance in headlines, Hegseth’s fellow Republicans struggled to ignore calls, mostly from Democrats, for him to resign.

One point that appears to be universally recognized: using Signal, an open-source encrypted messaging service, to detail plans for air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen was not a great idea.

That chat, as the world knows by now, mistakenly included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, who received an unexpected invitation from Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who later said Goldberg was invited by mistake.

While the White House tried to diminish the seriousness of the security breach, the war-planning group chat, which included all of the highest-ranking defense Cabinet members and Vice President JD Vance, the snafu is alarming on multiple levels.

For one, it makes the newly installed Trump White House sound like amateur hour. The conversation took place outside the channels that normally would be used for classified and highly sensitive war planning.

President Trump’s slow response – expressing ignorance at first, then tentatively shifting blame to Waltz, who set up the group chat, and away from Hegseth – raised echoes of the historic Watergate-era question: What did the president know and when did he know it?

More importantly, what have our country’s rivals learned from the blunder?

The unsecured Signal group chat may have violated the law and Department of Defense regulations, including a warning a week earlier about security vulnerabilities within the Signal app that were being targeted by nosy Russian hacking groups.

Yet, the Trump White House and leading Republicans in Congress have tried mightily to put a positive spin on the colossal blunder, even as Democrats pounced on it.

Perhaps the most poignantly passionate reactions came from Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who lost both legs as a Black Hawk Army helicopter pilot shot down by Iraqi insurgents.

In a blistering put-down, she called Hegseth a “f—ing liar” and demanded his resignation after he repeatedly insisted he did not share classified information and war plans in an unsecured Signal text message, a move that could have put the lives of American service members in danger.

Her fellow Illinoisian, Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate Democratic Whip and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, similarly called the allegations a serious national security risk and called for a Justice Department investigation. He also accused intelligence officials of misleading Congress and called for the Department of Justice to investigate the matter.

“We are talking about an attack on another country and the possible endangerment of the men and women in the United States’ military. This is a serious life-and-death matter and should be treated as such,” Durbin said.

And, even in politically polarized Washington, some concerned Republicans began to speak up with their own expressions of indignation. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a retired Air Force brigadier general who specialized in intelligence, said the White House was “in denial that this was not classified or sensitive data. They should just own up to it and preserve credibility.”

Indeed. After releasing his initial heavily edited account, Goldberg said he decided to release a more complete account after Hegseth claimed repeatedly and incorrectly that “nobody was texting war plans.” Similar denials came from CIA director John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, and the president himself.

But, the blame game offers little reassurance to our military pilots, among other service members, that their superiors have their backs.

As a Vietnam-era Army veteran, I enthusiastically agree. Even for a low-ranking draftee like me, little is more valuable than the assurances that your commanders have your backs.

“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect,” Lt. Johns Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, told the New York Times. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”

I recall similar advice from my own Army training days. Hegseth probably does, too. It’s worth remembering. Sometimes a big ego can be your worst enemy.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)

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