Trudy Rubin: Signalgate leak reveals a worse intelligence disaster than most Americans realize

You think the Signalgate debacle is a national security disaster? You may not realize the half of it. This Pentagon blunder (don’t call it a mistake) lays bare the security risks posed by President Donald Trump’s unqualified and ill-prepared national security team.

The incompetence on display is the real scandal — one which goes deeper than the astonishing decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to discuss highly sensitive military details on an unsecured commercial chat app called Signal, and on phones Russia and China could penetrate.

The fiasco stretches far beyond national security adviser Mike Waltz’s inadvertent invitation to the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to join the chat. (If not for this highly reputable journalist, the Trump team’s indifference to basic operational security might have remained hidden. Until it led to disaster.)

At its root, Signalgate reflects the failure of Trump’s foreign policy, so far based on his benighted belief he is so brilliant he can do great deals with dictators on his own — without briefings and without help from his intelligence agencies. It also underlines how Trump picked his national security team for their loyalty, not because they might inform or challenge him — or were knowledgeable or trustworthy.

America’s security at home and abroad now rests on a bumbling bunch of sycophants who are more interested in pandering to their boss than keeping the country safe. Call them the Gang Who Can’t See Straight. They won’t take responsibility for their mistakes, and the president won’t hold them responsible.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The president disdains his intelligence agencies because they investigated his Russia ties and role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He wants to use them to pursue immigrants and punish his political enemies, not keep tabs on Russia, China, or potential terrorist threats at home. He has appointed intelligence chiefs willing to bend their agencies to his agenda.

Rather than order the FBI or the U.S. Justice Department to investigate this dangerous intelligence screwup, Trump is brushing off the scandal and branding criticism as yet another “witch hunt.” He has praised one of the chief culprits, insisting Hegseth “is doing a great job.”

Nothing illustrates Trump’s blindness more clearly than his support for Hegseth, who recklessly disclosed the timing, weapons, and targets of a forthcoming strike on Yemen’s Houthi militia in the hours before the attack began. The defense boss spewed details with the eagerness of a boy playing war games.

Hegseth and the other chat group members now claim this material wasn’t classified, which is unbelievable — unless the defense chief declassified it (which he has the power to do) when the scandal broke.

Still, U.S. Department of Defense rules and those of Tulsi Gabbard’s national intelligence services specify that sensitive material, whether or not it’s classified, must only be shared via secure communication channels.

Thank luck (or the grace of God, if you prefer) no U.S. pilots were killed due to Hegseth’s fecklessness. Who knows about next time?

In the military, the secretary would have been court-martialed for such recklessness. In Trump World, he gets a pass and the president’s praise.

What’s so scary is that no one in the chat group — which also included Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Vice President JD Vance — suggested using Signal was a bad idea. Surely, they knew that.

Surely, our top intel officials know their agencies’ rules, or do they? Ratcliffe looked squirmy when asked about this and parroted Gabbard’s prevarications. The uncharitable might call them the Gang Who Can’t Lie Straight.

Were they afraid to criticize Hegseth, a Fox News talking head who only secured Senate approval by one vote after immense pressure from the White House? Or were they just fearful of upsetting Trump, who only wants his team to brag about victories?

Either way, the danger is apparent. Our top national security and intelligence team are more eager to please Trump than to protect you, your family, or our troops from our enemies. Meanwhile, Trump is focused more on berating allies and making “great deals” with despots than on replacing incompetents whose carelessness could get Americans killed.

Who knows how much other top-secret info Hegseth has dispersed via Signal? Ignore White House gaslighting about the supposed security of the app — again, sensitive material, whether or not classified, must only be shared via secure communication channels. And the material Hegseth dumped was definitely sensitive.

Gabbard refused to answer at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing when asked directly if she was using a private phone (as apparently did others). Imagine the top U.S. intelligence officer, tasked as the president’s intel briefer, committing such a basic breach of security protocol.

The notoriously pro-Vladimir Putin intelligence chief did admit she retweeted a well-known pro-Russian commentator who appears on Russian state media. She said that was OK because the retweet was on her private phone. Again, this is the woman tasked with preparing Trump’s top-level intelligence briefings.

This indifference to security protocols reflects the degradation of security agencies under Trump (as well as Gabbard’s dangerous pro-Putin slant). As for FBI Director Kash Patel, who should be investigating Signalgate, he is instead redirecting his agency to investigate migrants and his lengthy list of Trump’s enemies. And he is planning to gut the FBI’s counterintelligence capabilities by dispersing its headquarters staff around the country.

This could leave the U.S. vulnerable to domestic terror attacks, I was told by former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, who was ranking head of the House Intelligence Committee after 9/11. “Spreading the FBI into pieces,” she said, “makes it much less able to connect the dots and share intel with the CIA.” These were the exact failures that caused the FBI to miss warnings about the twin towers attack.

“I’ve seen firsthand how intelligence failures lead to disaster,” Harman said. She added that foreign intelligence agencies are now likely to be far less willing to share information with their careless counterparts in the U.S.

The lack of serious intel briefings for Trump (and doubts he would even listen) are painfully apparent. His promises to quickly end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine have gone nowhere because he doesn’t understand the ground situation.

This disdain for intel is apparently shared by Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy, real estate dealer Steve Witkoff, who, in a meeting with Putin, was gulled into believing Ukraine’s Russian speakers were eager to live under Russian rule. Witkoff even gushed about Putin’s gift portrait of the president, and the Russian dictator’s prayers for Trump when he was shot — both blatant KGB ploys to win over “useful idiots.” Well, it worked — as Witkoff now echoes Russian positions.

Signalgate reveals the utter mess our intelligence collecting has become under a president who says he trusts Putin more than his intel agencies. Trump doesn’t seem to care if these agencies collapse on his watch.

Unless there is a full investigation into this rot, and those who permit it — which, to their credit, some GOP senators are calling for — America should brace for the results of an ignorant, uninformed White House blundering about in a violent world.

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