A Break Down About Signalgate with Bryan Strawser

[00:00:12] Welcome to The Break Down with Brodkorb and Becky, a weekly podcast that breaks down politics, policy, and current affairs. I'm Becky Scherr. And I'm Michael Brodkorb. Just when we thought the political arena could not get more wild, it has done just that. To help us break things down today, we are excited to be joined once again by Bryan Strawser. Bryan has 30 years of experience in crisis management, business continuity, crisis communications, and global corporate security. He is also the chair of the Minnesota Gun Caucus.

[00:00:38] Bryan is going to help us get into a situation that is still boggling my mind. The majority of our conversation is going to be surrounding the chaotic situations surrounding the recent Houthi attacks, how they were orchestrated via the Signal app, and how the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was inadvertently let in on the war plans. We will get into the response from the White House and Trump administration, potential issues with this communication, and what may happen next. Thank you for joining us and enjoy the show.

[00:01:06] Becky, before we get to the interview with Bryan Strawser, I want to make one important programming note. We have been streaming, video streaming our podcasts on a variety of channels, and I thought it would be good to set a set time. So for our listeners, we're going to continue to release our episodes as we produce them during the day, but we're going to be streaming them now on Fridays at 8 o'clock on Facebook, YouTube, and X. So Fridays at 8 o'clock, get your popcorn and watch the breakdown with Broadcombecky.

[00:01:30] There will be streamed episodes that we recorded or potentially some live ones that we'll do down the road, but Friday nights, 8 o'clock, video streams are the most recent episodes. Thanks so much for everyone for following along, subscribing to our YouTube page, following us on Facebook, and follow us along for more great content. We are excited to welcome Bryan Strawser back to the podcast. Welcome, Bryan. Thanks for being with us today to chat about all things SignalGate. SignalGate. Thanks for having me. Glad to be back.

[00:02:00] I just want to be clear that Bryan is here in a professional capacity today. Today's the first day of Major League Baseball season. Twins open today, and Bryan, of course, is not here in any sports capacity. We at the Breakdown with Broadcombecky don't wish to have any opinions about... from Mr. Strawser about anything sports-related ever. He knows a lot of stuff. We're not here to get his takes on anything sports-related. Do you understand that, Bryan? Yeah, Boston sports fan here. I understand. Yeah, okay.

[00:02:30] Wow. I did not know we were walking right into that, but shots fired and... Let's be honest. Bryan Strawser doesn't know it all about a lot of stuff, okay? Rightfully so, but I mean that in an entirely complimentary way. But he's from Boston, and I don't want to hear about all his New England sports teams. Because we suffer here in Minnesota. All right, another time. Another time we'll have that because I think it'd probably be a pretty interesting conversation.

[00:02:57] But today, we are going to get into what kind of sounds like an SNL skit. It is something that if it was on Saturday Night Live, it would be entertaining. Unfortunately, it is real life. So, on Monday of this week, we... I think the world was pretty much shocked. The United States, my office, my world was shocked with an article that came down from The Atlantic titled, The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans.

[00:03:24] Now you read this and you think, clickbait, right? Come on. That's nothing. It seems to be something. And it has been a week of revelations and a lot of stuff coming out. So this all... Before we get into all of the details and nitty gritties of what was discussed, who was involved, and what really happened, this all happened, a text chain that happened on Signal. Bryan, why don't you give us a little insight into what Signal is for those who may not be aware?

[00:03:52] Sure. So Signal is an app. It is a encrypted, relatively secure, open source messaging service that allows you to instant message. So kind of like texting. You could do voice calls and video calls using Signal. And because it's open source and all the code is out there for people to see, it's considered relatively secure. It's considered relatively secure because you can see all of that.

[00:04:21] But what's not secure about Signal is you're running it on a consumer-grade phone, on a consumer-grade telecommunications network, on consumer devices, on a consumer-grade network with consumer-grade security. So those are all challenges if you're doing classified communications. And so I have Signal. I use Signal. I have some text chains on Signal. It's something that I think people who have worked or do work in politics,

[00:04:51] I don't think it's... I would say I've used it more... We didn't use it when I was on the official side, but in the campaign world, it is used. And I think this is something that's often things that you get to set. If you want it to delete after an hour, four, 24, or whatever you want, there's different... It's kind of like Snapchat in that way of just opinion, hiding or disguising different records. And but to your point, government,

[00:05:19] there are different restrictions in government. When I worked in Congress, you have a government phone, certain apps you cannot have, certain things you cannot do, and certain security measures that are on that phone that are not on my personal phone that I have in front of me today. You cannot... An individual cannot secure a consumer-grade device against a state actor. If Russia wants to penetrate your phone, Becky, there is nothing you're going to do to be able to keep an intelligence agency

[00:05:49] from getting into your device. I just assume they're there. Yeah. Perfectly. You should. That's why companies... It's like companies like 3M. 3M has trade secrets to protect. If you're a 3M employee and you're traveling to China, you do not take your corporate... Your regular corporate device with you. You take a clean cell phone and laptop. You go on your trip. And when you come back, they wipe that device before it's used again. Brian, can you explain the difference between

[00:06:16] this security or encryption between, let's say, iMessage and Signal? What are the differences? Why would someone think that Signal is more secure than iMessage? I think... So Apple's messaging systems are relatively... I think probably... I don't know if I know the technical differences. I think they're relatively secured in a similar way. I think the difference is Apple's code is not available for security review by outside experts, whereas Signal is.

[00:06:45] And it's maintained by an independent foundation. So you can go look at their code and you can tell exactly what is going on with the app. And you really have no idea what's happening with iMessage. Do you... Apple needs to do so. And your professional opinion is Signal, then, more secure than iMessage? I'm definitely not an information security expert in that realm, but I would say Signal's more secure from my rudimentary understanding there. Okay.

[00:07:14] But would you also say, what would you differentiate an app on a consumer-based phone versus messaging on a government phone? The difference between a consumer device and what our military and intelligence community use for secure communications is night and day. Okay. Can you describe, without violating anything that will get us in trouble, can you maybe give some context behind that? Yeah.

[00:07:39] You can go to Wikipedia and learn a little bit about the kind of networks that our military and civilian leadership and the intelligence community use. But we've been using secured telecommunications since telecommunications was invented. There are different networks for top secret and secret communications. Those conversations happen in secure rooms called SCIFs, Secure Compartmentalized Information Facilities.

[00:08:07] Though that's where you have computer networks that are designed for those kind of email communications. And that's where you have secure telephone conversations. And then we have mobile devices and satellite communications that enable that. So there actually are, I don't have one, but there are mobile devices that don't look like an iPhone that are allowed that you can have these kinds of conversations on, even on the go.

[00:08:35] They just weren't using those because you can't. It's not as convenient as using signal on your iPhone. Signal. Also, if you're using signal, those records aren't being preserved under the various records acts that require government records to be preserved. We'll get to that point. I just wanted to understand that. Here's a question I'll throw back to you. Is there, would there have been a way, before we get into some of more of the specifics of this,

[00:09:03] would there have been a way to have this communication and to text and message on a device in this type of way with these people involved with secure devices? Yes. And these guys, the principals that we're talking about here, the director of the CIA, the national security advisor, the, I'll leave the VP out because it's a special case, the secretary of state, the director of national intelligence, everybody on this list.

[00:09:30] All of these folks have skiffs in their house because we put one in there when they take these offices. So even at home, they have the ability to go to a room in their basement or whatever, where we've constructed a temporary facility where they can have these conversations on a landline secure device or a mobile device that would allow them to have these conversations, just like if they were in the secure part of their office.

[00:09:58] So it's, I think this is just a matter of convenience that they weren't doing that. So let's get into this and how, what went down, how we found out about it. So again, we got this article on Monday. It was the editor of the Atlantic, Jeff, Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote it. And he, it all started by him getting an invite for a connection on Signal. And this was four days before the first bombing in Yemen.

[00:10:25] And so he gets this invite that's titled from an account called Michael Waltz. Now, he initially had some skepticism. He's a journalist figuring this is either some bad actors or somebody posing. He didn't think that this was actually the national security advisor, but also thought maybe it is. And he just wants to chat about something off the record or have a conversation setting up for later. So that happens. A couple of days go by, nothing else happens.

[00:10:52] And two days after that, he was added to a group chat called Houthi PC Small Group. In this, there was a question posed of asking who a point of contact for this conversation and further conversations were going to be. And all of these people started chiming in, naming pretty high up officials at all of these different departments. So I'm going to run through a list of some of these folks that were involved because it's not nobody's here.

[00:11:18] As some of them had titles, but with what they were saying and how they were being identified, their initials are pretty clear.

[00:11:25] So we have Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, J.D. Vance, Vice President, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, John Ratcliffe, Director of the CIA, Steve Witkoff, President Trump's Middle East and Ukraine negotiator, Susie Wiles, Trump's Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, Joe Kent, who is Trump's current nominee to run the National Counterterrorism Center.

[00:11:53] So this is quite the list. Again, I feel it makes sense that Goldberg would be a little skeptical when he saw this and wasn't quite believing that he was on a list with these actual people. But it turns out it was. Michael, chat with us about what those initial messages looked like coming in into this and where it started to go very quickly. Michael, chat with us.

[00:12:47] My country's wearing a uniform for my country. But I haven't. But, you know, I can read the English dictionary and understand what the difference between a war plan and an attack plan is. And to me, that is on a text exchange would meet my definition as a layman of an attack slash war plan. And it's substantive. And the fact that it was done. I deferred to the expert here, Mr. Strasser, to offer his analysis. But to me, that's as war plan-ish as you get.

[00:13:16] So there's under two guidances. I don't care if we call them war plans or attack plans. And I think the White House and the Secretary of Defense have been nitpicking over this. But the current directives that govern what is and isn't classified, the general guidance, is set by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard's office.

[00:13:35] The current guidance says that documentation and information about upcoming military attacks, including timing and action, is to be classified at the top secret, no foreign level. So this would be, in my opinion, top secret. U.S. Central Command, which had operational control of these attacks, it was in their theater of operations, has the same guidance that this would be classified top secret, no foreign.

[00:14:05] Meaning no foreign government access unless we were coordinating with a specific ally, which I'm sure we were, on these attacks. So I don't know, you can quibble over, is this a war plan, is this an attack plan? I think the arguments over that are BS. This information was classified, in my opinion. And you were putting people at risk by disclosing it in this way.

[00:14:28] And if anything that's at that classification level of top secret should not be shared in any type of what you would, if a commercial-grade device. No. Yeah. So we did have, in those kind of 24, 48 hours between the group chat starting, the names being thrown around, and the day of the bombing, there's some conversation. You can get into it a little bit more later.

[00:14:54] The vice president had a little skepticism on whether this was a good action of moving forward with this attack. Seemingly one of the first little forays, visions into a little bit of disagreement with the president that we are seeing. They've since walked it back. There was conversation about being upset about bailing out Europe and the European freeloaders, which I might not be the biggest expert in foreign affairs, but I'm pretty sure Europe is a pretty decent ally of ours. Most of the countries within it.

[00:15:24] But then it really went wild on the day of this Uthi attack in Yemen. Pete Hegseth wrote, Team Update. Now, Goldberg, in his article, said he didn't want to quote Team Update. Now, Cavalier, right? Goldberg stated he didn't want to quote them directly in his initial Atlantic article because he said, quote,

[00:15:58] So that right there seems like this is a step too far. When you have a reporter who's wanting to withhold this information that has been placed in front of him on a silver platter that he seemingly knows more than a lot of these folks was wild. But then he goes on to say,

[00:16:28] He goes on to then say this is how he really found out this text chain was fully legitimate. According to the Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence at 1.45 p.m. Eastern Time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. Just wild. If this signal chat was real, I reasoned Houthi targets would soon be bombed.

[00:16:52] At about 1.55, so 10 minutes after Hegseth said the attacks would happen, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across the capital city. Can you imagine what Jeffrey Goldberg to sit there? I mean, it literally chills me to the bone just having this conversation. But to be knowing that you knew about this and it happened is wild. And not to say we're not getting into a conversation about war, good, bad, this attack, good, bad. That's not what we're here for.

[00:17:22] But how bone chilling for this individual to realize that this text chain that he was inadvertently added to was real. Bonkers. The part that really stood out to me in that too, and I don't have the screenshots in front of me, but if I'm not mistaken, weren't they referencing a specific target and his girl, he was going to be at his girlfriend's house or with his girlfriend. And they were going to hit him with an MQ-9. Yeah. Which is a drone.

[00:17:52] At a certain time. So there's a couple things that discloses. One, if that chat got out, the target could leave the space that he was going to be in, we'd miss. Two, we had some kind of intelligence, signals intelligence that told us he was there, overhead intelligence that we were using to identify, or we had a human intelligence source on the ground.

[00:18:16] So that discloses sources and methods, tactics, and techniques that could lead the Houthis to identify how we were figuring out where this guy was. So none of that, like those are things I think people are not thinking about. It doesn't take much to unravel and pull on that string and get people on the ground heard, killed.

[00:18:40] If that, if it wasn't to get a human intelligence source that led to that, or let people figure out how it was that we identified that target. That's why we keep this stuff secret. The level of where my mind went when reading this story, it was initially, it went from SNL skit to, oh my God, this is real. Back to SNL skit. And again, I'm, as Becky's describing this and we're talking about it, I'm back to, my God, this is a real world situation. And it's just mind boggling.

[00:19:09] It literally is just mind boggling. The casual nature by which this information was being shared. And I'm all for efficiency and communication, but my goodness, there's some things that should be difficult to communicate. It should not be communicated on a commercial grade cellular device. And that is war slash attack plants. By the way, as someone who loves the movie, Dr. Strangelove, I would have thought that these movies, these kinds of conversations will be limited to the war room. Okay.

[00:19:38] That's where these conversations should be happening and there should be no type of mischief going on in the war room. And I think that's where we're going to talk about some of the issues in just a moment. But where I see the two main ones here is, one, that this was happening in general on Signal. And two, they added a freaking reporter. Like. That doesn't happen in secure communications because Jeffrey Goldberg doesn't have an account. Correct. In secure communications.

[00:20:05] Can I ask something, Brian, just to the degree which you can offer a perspective on this. Sure. Is this, is there a need for this type of information to be shared? It seems to me that we have a couple things going on. We have a misuse, I think, of security protocols as you laid out and we've since learned about. Number two, we just have a casual conversation going on.

[00:20:31] Does it diminish the significance of what's going on when you're discussing it in this type of casual way? And number two, if, is there, would there be a better, is there a need for this type of communication to even be happening? What I'm saying is, were they taking advantage of the fact that they had this quick and easy way to communicate to maybe overshare? Is this a conversation that independent of the platform that it was going happening on, it really didn't need to happen?

[00:20:59] I think if you, I think these conversations have always happened amongst senior officials. If you look at, I think probably the best chronicle or the best history of these in the modern era has been Woodward's books about the various conflicts we've had between. He wrote the book, The Commanders, about the first Gulf War and about the Panama and Grenada.

[00:21:24] And then he wrote the books, the 9-11 and post-9-11 books going into the second Gulf War. These kind of policy conversations definitely have happened in different ways. This was definitely, I would say the tone was more cavalier than the discussions that Colin Powell and George H.W. Bush and Scowcroft and Baker were having in the first Gulf War by far.

[00:21:49] Correct. And I would, I guess the point I was trying to say was because of the environment of this conversation happening over signal, unsecure and encrypted, but on a commercial grade phone, the conversation was more casual. Having read that book, I mean, you had operational meetings going on and I don't think Colin Powell ever stood up with an emoji or something during that meeting. The nature of the conversation was much more casual. It's a great, by the way, great book to reference. Yeah.

[00:22:17] A great example of, yes, conversations like this happen, but in the environment that they're happening, it enhanced, I think, the depth and scope of the conversation. And I think in this particular instance, the conversation that they're having with such speed, because it was on a commercial grade phone using a signal app, which was widely available, it degraded the quality of the conversation.

[00:22:39] Yeah, I think there's probably some truth to that, Michael. And I think, I think if you look at the participants in the call, the only that's Hegseth, that's Hegseth, right? That's he's a performative communicator and you look at his communication. That's what you see there, right? That was his Fox News persona. That's his political persona. And I think you see that with some of the other participants there, but that's half of this administration anyway.

[00:23:08] Yeah. Performative politics. So now we're going back to Goldberg in this situation. He then decides he's removing himself from this chat. Now, sometimes it happens, I believe, in just normal group chats on iMessage or whatever. But in Signal, there's a little line that would say like, JG or whatever he, I think that was what his name was, removed himself from the chat.

[00:23:34] So everybody on this would have been able to see that. And he was aware of that. He then emailed, I don't know, a day or two later, he emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his Signal account. He wrote an email to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tessly Gabbard, and other officials.

[00:23:50] And in that, he outlined some of these questions. Is the Houthi PC small group a genuine Signal thread? Did they know I was included in this group? Was I off chance included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was at it or when I removed myself? Going on, do they believe that this could endanger the American people? Now his reporter hat is on. How did this happen and what happened?

[00:24:19] So then we started getting, this article was then printed, and so we start getting some of these responses from the White House and the Trump administration. And I'm going to go through some of them because it ranges a whole gamut of responses here.

[00:24:32] The White House said, I think one of the first ones was Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, the first one I saw, responded about two hours later confirming that it was a valid Signal group and says this appears to be an authentic message chain and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to this chain. He then goes on to say this threat is a demonstration of a deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there was no threats to troop or national security. Thank God.

[00:25:02] We then go on. White House says nothing and it was classified. Put a pin in that. We're going to come back and chat about that. Trump said it was a witch hunt, but made it clear his preference is for his team to discuss such operation in person and in more secure settings. We had a spokesperson for Vance who, again, let's circle back to one of those earlier conversations that part of his statement said, Despite the impression created by the text, the vice president is fully aligned with the president.

[00:25:26] He was getting a little bit of trouble there for expressing some disagreement with the president's plans when it came to this situation. We had Marco Rubio acknowledging that having a journalist there was a big mistake, but said he was assured that the information chair did not threaten the operation or lives of service members. Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, she got pretty lit up during her press briefing, said it was a policy discussion, surely a sensitive policy discussion amongst high-level cabinet officials.

[00:25:56] But this was a coordinated campaign by the Democrats, too, so chaos. And then we have Minnesota's own Pete Hegseth, who said, You are talking about a deceitful and highly discredited journalist. He then put out an ex-post that said, No names, no targets, no locations, no units, no routes, no sources, no methods, and no classified information. It was admitted that it was real. And then we get all of this, but he sucks. He's discredited. He's a deceitful journalist.

[00:26:25] And this is the Democrats being Democrats. If you accept everything that they said disparaging about this individual, which I don't think was justified, why was he added to the chat? Why didn't they just admit that they screwed up and this story would be over already? Brian, I know. I know. I have some magic beans for you, too, Brian. I just go back to what my old boss at Target taught me a long time ago, which is when you're in a hole, stop digging. This would be over.

[00:26:54] Now, if there's one thing I can call myself an expert on, it's apologies for a number of reasons. And if someone has had to give a lot of them, yes, that is the general strategy, just to accept your responsibility and move on. This is like saying if I drove home and I parked my car in the driveway, I get credit for getting – I parked my car in the front lawn. I get credit because I still got home. The bottom line is I think it's fair to say, and please push back if you think this is wrong, that there wasn't any operational information that was compromised.

[00:27:25] But that doesn't mean everyone should get a gold star for how this went off. So much so that Goldberg decided if they say this isn't classified, who am I to protect? The text messages came out with a second article where he dumped them. And I think rightfully, if you're going to be told, hey, there was nothing sensitive in here, all of this. Again, he did withhold names. He withheld a name of a CIA operative who was active in the field, who was named in it.

[00:27:54] He withheld a lot of the specifics in his initial article. And he decided, well, if they're just going to sit here and bash me, who am I to protect them? They basically call Goldberg a liar. Yeah. He has screenshots. He had these screenshots. It was just, which, Brian, for those who may be not watching, you did a fist pump earlier. That did go viral. Michael Waltz post-bombing. One of his texts was a what?

[00:28:18] Fist pump, American flag, flame emoji, which has since gone viral and used all over. And I think that's the point I was trying to make earlier, is that these type of conversations need to happen. But there was just a casualness of this conversation that I think it and this is the thing I think the one of the messaging struggles that I think the White House in the response to this is that it's difficult to call this a substantive policy discussion when you're using emojis.

[00:28:45] Fist pump fist, American flag, and then something on fire. That's not a thoughtful policy discussion. That's something that I would text you. You tell me your son made a winning goal in a hockey game. And that would be a valid response. Not, hey, 53 people just, we just killed 53 people in this massive attack in a foreign country. And don't tell me there's no unit numbers when you mentioned there's F-18s. We only have one carrier in the Gulf. Yes. We know what unit it is.

[00:29:13] And was one of the questions I have for you, Brian, or to you, Becky, too, is if someone had picked up on this message, there was a lot of information that they could have identified and learned this pretty quickly. What was coming, correct? And the time.

[00:29:28] If a foreign, if there was surveillance going on and this information had fallen into the wrong hands, there was enough identifying, I think, strategic attack and war information in this message that it could have compromised the message, the mission severely, correct? I don't think there were specific targets mentioned. I don't remember. Okay. If you're a bad guy in Yemen. Brian Schrozer is suddenly a contractor for the Department of Defense.

[00:29:56] If I'm a bad guy in Yemen and I get alerted to what Jeffrey Goldberg got alerted to as 1.45 Eastern time, there's going to be a massive bombing in Yemen. I'm going to probably move locations where I was planning to spend the afternoon. Like, I'm probably just going to maybe go somewhere else than where I was originally planning to spend my have a picnic in the backyard. And I think that's a good question for Brian. What's the worst that could have happened had this information gotten out? I think they could have. It's the Houthis.

[00:30:26] They're not super high tech here, but sure. The targets could have scattered. I, if there was enough identifying information about whoever this particular high value target was, they could have shifted to where we wouldn't have been able to catch them. I think the bigger long-term issue would have been if they were smart enough to figure out how we had identified where this individual was at and pulled on that string. That could compromise some stuff.

[00:30:56] That happened a few times with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in that they figured out how we were identifying them. And then they quit doing those things like satellite phones and radios. And they just kept changing tactics and it made it harder for us to figure out where they were at. So, just those kind of things I think are more dangerous.

[00:31:16] If there was a state actor that wanted to interfere and they knew that we had squadrons of F-18s coming off the Truman and headed in for a bombing run, then they could certainly have done that. But that wasn't really at risk for us in this situation. But in a different battle, yes. So, when we look at some of the issues that have been raised or potential issues that come from this, we've chatted a little bit about the violation of classified information. White House says it wasn't classified.

[00:31:46] The Signal app is not approved by government for sharing classified information. Subsequently, we've seen some different notes coming out. I believe there was one from, I don't remember if it was the Army or the Air Force, that put out a kind of message to their active members saying, do not use this to communicate. Do not think that it's just valid and safe. But then we also have, and Brian, I'm interested, I'm going to put you on the spot and get your take on some of these. Was it a violation of the Espionage Act?

[00:32:15] Okay, so big questions. So, the Espionage Act, what the Espionage Act says is it describes very vaguely national defense information and then makes it a crime to disclose national defense information to a foreign actor. There has to be an element of willfulness in that. I don't know that really applies here, but I'm not a prosecutor. Those cases are difficult to prosecute.

[00:32:42] But Trump was charged under the Espionage Act, for example, for willful retention of classified information at Mar-a-Lago. But remember that he was basically told to give it back and then refused. Got it. And we all saw how all that kind of played out. You've got to go pretty far to get charged. Like, you've got to literally have to hand classified information over or you've got to refuse to give it back when you're told to give it back. So, I don't think there's really a criminal investigation there.

[00:33:11] If this was anybody other than senior officials, if this was like an army captain that was an intel officer and they were putting this kind of stuff on signal, they would have already had their clearance pulled. And there would be an investigation. They'd probably be in deep doo-doo. But these guys are senior defense officials. It's – I just don't think it's going to play out that way. To that – Oh, go ahead.

[00:33:34] I was just going to say, to that point, Republican Representative Don Bacon, who likes to be a little outspoken at times, he is a former Air Force Brigadier General. And he said this was a security violation. He said that he would have lost his security clearance if he did the same thing and someone should be held accountable. Yeah.

[00:33:51] The chair and ranking member of House Armed Services sent a referral to the acting DOD IG today, which I was a little surprised by, that the Republican chair went along with this, asking for an investigation of Pete Hegseth over this. Why were you surprised? And the disclosure of information. What was that? You were surprised because of partisan reasons? I was surprised that the Republican chair signed the letter.

[00:34:16] Honestly, I figured the way all the stuff has gone down in Congress this year that they would just have refused. I share the surprise because he made this known a couple of days ago that he intended to do. Yeah. And so the arm twisting that I'm sure happened between now and then and for him to still follow through, I think, is very significant. And I think it does warrant a hearing and a conversation and further information than what we've gotten so far.

[00:34:43] It's by, I think, just coincidence of timing. You probably saw there were hearings in both the House and Senate the last two days of our intelligence leadership. So John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. These were normally, these were the normal planned oversight hearings. They couldn't get out of them because they were already scheduled. So just bad timing for them. But they, those were not good performances.

[00:35:12] Also, because more information came out, this because the Atlantic published the second article. And so they had a hearing, the first hearing, and they had excuses. And then Goldberg drops the second article. And that didn't line up with answers they gave the day before. And now they got harder questions the second day. So again, I just don't know. I know how this administration operates, but I'm not sure why you wouldn't just apologize and admit you were wrong and move on with us.

[00:35:40] But that's not how we're going to do this. Is this a situation where it was, the mission was a success, but there's the, it's the operation of how it went on behind the scenes that there needs to be some examination on. And do you think just to be clear, just to put a fine point, you think anyone is going to lose their job or anyone is going to be impacted professionally anyway, because of this, because of this signal chat discussion?

[00:36:08] I think the person that's probably most impacted here, the two that are most impacted, I think are Waltz and Hegseth. I think everyone else comes out okay. The issue with Waltz is that he's the one that invited the reporter. So ultimately, he's the one that screwed up. I think it would behoove him to just accept responsibility for that, but he's not. And then Hegseth, the one that really disclosed the information that he shouldn't have. I think he's in the most hot water with Congress, to be honest. Okay.

[00:36:37] So we'll see where that goes. I think the challenge with anybody in the Trump administration is you never really know where you stand with the president and the president's opinion can change from day to day. Correct. Who knows? I would before we, I wanted just a couple more, one additional question I have for you if we have a little bit more time is I'd like to get your guys' perspective on the conduct of the reporter. I'd like to get your guys' take just on your professional perspective.

[00:37:02] I certainly have a perspective on it, but I wanted just to ask how you guys think the reporter handled this in general and any feedback or analysis on how they handled it. From my perspective, he does not owe them anything. He was essentially dropping on a conversation that was happening at a bar. It's their fault they were having it in a situation that or a scenario that was not confidential, not behind closed doors, not secure.

[00:37:32] And he simply let his eyes and ears hear and see what he was being privy to. I think that I do give him credit for withholding some of that information from the initial article. I think he certainly did not necessarily need to do that. I think that he showed a lot of restraint and, again, kind of support for the United States in doing so. But it was not his fault.

[00:37:57] He did not change his screen name or do anything to, as far as we know, he did not do anything to try to hide his identity and his phone number and who he was. Not that I think you really can. But I think that it is up to the officials who made this mistake in the first place to catch their mistake and measure twice, once, right? He, again, was let in and simply sat there and watched. He, again, did not live tweet this. He did not.

[00:38:26] There were a lot of other things that he could have done that he did not do. So I don't personally see an issue with how he conducted himself. I completely agree with that. I do respect the fact that he sat on the classified in what I think is classified information in the first story. And then after the White House said it wasn't classified and they were basically calling him a liar, went ahead and published it. It wasn't those attacks were over.

[00:38:54] So I think he responsibly published it in the second article, which also pointed out in doing so that they weren't being truthful in their statements. I thought that was responsible journalism. I know they've called him a Trump-hating journalist or whatever the phrase is that we're using. Look, as Becky said, he doesn't owe them anything. I would expect him to be as challenging in a Democratic administration doing the same thing.

[00:39:19] And we've well established in the Pentagon Papers case that classified information can be shared and published by the press. And there's not the ability of government to use prior restraint from stopping them from publishing it. And that's not really what happened here. But even if they had decided to publish it, I think that is still the role of journalists is to expose that kind of information. Tip of the cap to Brian for citing precedent and the Pentagon Papers, of course.

[00:39:50] Yes, I think the journalist acted professionally all throughout this process. My compliments to him and the discipline that he showed, the Atlantic showed, the maturity that they showed in showing restraint, providing it in a timely manner, publishing it in a timely manner, but yet balancing national security needs and holding some information back and letting it play out a bit. I think they showed tremendous restraint.

[00:40:13] The final question I have to ask is about one of the features of signal that is built in is which is destruction of the messages. There is some clear violations. As folks don't know, there's the Presidential Records Act, which has requirements about basically everything that's saved when you're involved. And these messages were set to self-destruct. Ryan, take it away on that last subject. Yeah, so there's a couple of things at play.

[00:40:42] Okay, Walt, as a White House staffer, Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles are subject to the Presidential Records Act. So there are some issues there. I'm not an expert on that law, but I would assume there are issues related to that. But Hegseth and Rubio, actually, I'm sorry, and J.D. Vance, of course, also subject to the act. Hegseth, Rubio, and the other Treasury Secretary, Ratcliffe, Gabbard,

[00:41:07] they're all subject to the FOIA laws that require retention of records. There is a suit that is having a hearing actually right now, started 15 minutes ago. Ironically, they drew the judge that they're fighting with over an immigration case, the chief judge in the D.C. district right now. For that case, they've had to go and do forensics examination of all of their phones in order to try to recover the messages. Oof.

[00:41:36] So that's unlike one of the one of the features. And there's other programs out there that people can use. Confide in dust with signal. Has it built in that you can set a self timer on the messages? And so I think these were set for a couple of days or four days for four days. And so they self-destructed. And so now they're going to have to get those messages. As Brian articulated, Becky, I think you have one last subject related to this we're going to hit on. If I can say one other thing before you do that.

[00:42:03] If they're handling this in an adult professional manner, which maybe they're not, the counterintelligence folks in the Intel community need to get their hands on all of those phones. And they need to purge them to ensure that there is no classified information on those phones, which would probably result in those phones being wiped and reset to factory settings. And a Stern lecture on sharing classified information on civilian insecure phones. But I'm sure that's not going to happen.

[00:42:34] Because it's very likely that if they're chatting about this stuff, there might be other things on this phone. Correct. Other than the 11 herbs and spices that KFC has. There's probably some things on there and the secret Coca-Cola recipe. Secret Coke formula. There's probably some things on there that shouldn't be on a government issued phone. A civilian issued phone. Yep. Last comment I have on this. I believe it just came out in the last 24 hours or so.

[00:42:58] Again, Minnesota's own Representative Ilhan Omar has proposed articles of impeachment against Hexath, Waltz, and Ratcliffe. So in addition to the Senate Armed Services Committee moving forward with their letter and likely hearing this, this certainly is not going to go away. There's going to be a lot of more conversation about how it happened, why it happened, and then likely some more action or hopefully some more action of how to prevent it from happening again.

[00:43:26] That'll love Omar Hexath. Who knew Minnesota was going to be so big in the first couple of months here of the new administration? I think the politicization of this is something that happens on both sides. And I defer to the oversight of the Congress to determine the merits of that or what. But it's certainly, I don't think the issue is going to go away anytime soon. Because I do think what Brian said very well, which is just to accept some responsibility in this.

[00:43:54] And that's something that I think has been lost recently in politics. It's just accepting responsibility for things. People are human. People make mistakes. This was a pretty substantive mistake. And I'd like to, I believe, in second, third, and four chances. It's why I'm here today because of the grace of others. But bottom line is you got to accept responsibility sometimes. And that's something that's lost a little bit in politics. As my mother always says, I don't want to hear it. I'm sorry. I just want to hear how it's not going to happen again.

[00:44:22] And hey, the White House could take a good look at that statement. Yeah. Ilhan Omar is, she's like some of the Republican. Congress people, it's all performative legislation. This is dead on arrival in a Republican-controlled Congress and doesn't go anywhere. But she can come back and tell everybody that she tried to impeach Pete Hickseth and she can raise another half a million dollars for re-election. Brian, as we're closing out here, would you want to take this opportunity to apologize for any of your sports takes?

[00:44:51] What sports take do I need to apologize for? My horrible New England Patriots performance the last couple years? It was gracious. I got nine Super Bowl of the United States and seven wins. I don't know why I walked into it. You just opened that door. That is all your fault, Michael. He is way too smart for me to think that's some type of boomerang effect or I'm going to trip him up in any type of way. But you got to realize I married a Minnesota Vikings. I'm going to marry a Minnesota sports fan because she's from here and she's had to watch this. Oh. Her house.

[00:45:19] I'm married to a Packers fan and so is Becky. Yeah. I was married to a Packers fan and misery does love company. She let one of my friends come out from Boston for the Super Bowl when the Super Bowl was here and stay in our house. Outrageous. I know. Plus, 100% of our heart. Brian, I want to thank you so much for joining us today and offering your informed perspective on this subject.

[00:45:44] We will make sure to link to your social media accounts and where people can learn more about best practices, about all things security, and a whole variety of subjects. All right, sir? Oh, anytime. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Becky, we just interviewed Brian Straser about SignalGate and his perspective. It's always good to talk about Brian Straser. He's an expert on so many subjects, non-sports related, and it was really good to have an informed discussion.

[00:46:13] Your take on the interview and your thoughts in closing on the subject. Brian was a perfect guest to have on. He's certainly an expert more than you and I in this field. Oh, I don't get that personally. Thanks. In all things like this. And I just think his insight was huge on kind of the differences between these devices and the security clearance levels, top secret and classified, and all of that, and how these senior officials are supposed to conduct themselves and how they clearly did not hear.

[00:46:41] I still can't believe this is real. Well, I'm glad that things turned out the way they were supposed to turn out and nothing was foiled and there were no issues or adversary members of the foreign community on this. But I think it does lend itself to needing to figure out, like, we can't, this cannot happen. This is absurd. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just, you said foiled like it was some Scooby-Doo mystery. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I just can't. It's a perfect word choice.

[00:47:10] I'm not laughing at you. It just, I can't. Foiled. They would have got away with it. Those meddling kids. Foiled. Yes. That's a perfect word. Perfect word choice. And I'm immature for watching Scooby-Doo and knowing and making that reference. But you're spot on. First of all, Brian Strausser coming on and talking about the subject. And what you detailed in the interview, very sobering, what you pulled from that Atlantic URL and Brian's perspective on that.

[00:47:33] The fact he was, knew this information was sitting in a grocery store parking lot and was able to follow along and verify that this was actually what it was on text message. I thought it was great. And then Brian's informed discussion about what shouldn't be on there and how these things are discussed. It was a great interview. He's a perfect resource for this on this type of subject. And I'm so glad he was able to come on. And we were to spend a few times talking about SignalGate. And just be smart about Signal if you're in the government. There's a lot of great apps out there.

[00:48:02] But just maybe don't manage war plans and attack plans. The one thing I'm frustrated with, aside from the breaches of potentially national security and other types of stuff, is just the lack of accountability. I'm continually frustrated by, I think people, I'll just preach this for just a second again. People make mistakes. They make mistakes all the time. I wish people would just come out and accept responsibility for stuff. I just would.

[00:48:27] And rather the little bit of gaslighting that's going on about, you don't know how this reporter was. It was added in these kind of mental and mental gymnastics that are going on. The bottom line is he was added by mistake. He shouldn't have been added. Thankfully, though, the person that was added by mistake handled it in a very responsible way. And this is an example of how we can get the best out of journalism and the First Amendment.

[00:48:54] And I think the journalists in this case handled it in an incredibly responsible way to the betterment of, I think, security of the United States going forward. And I think Republicans and conservatives who like to bash the media on a pretty regular basis to take a step back and say, the media did a good job here. And there's going to be hopefully some good reforms that come out of this because there was a responsible agent that was mistakenly added.

[00:49:21] And again, my compliments to the Atlantic and Jeffrey Lowe for the work that they did in their reporting on this because it was astonishing, groundbreaking, shocking, but yet incredibly responsible. And it represents the best in journalism. Completely agree. I think we'll have some updates on this in the coming weeks as we have more hearings and statements and conversations about it. But man, oh, man, is it wild? And I'm with you.

[00:49:48] Wish they would take some accountability, but we'll see what happens next. Thank you, Becky, for doing this. Thanks again to Brian. And we want to thank you all for listening to this episode of The Breakdown with Brodko and Becky. Before we go, show some love for your favorite podcast by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. We're the platform where you listen. You can also follow us across all social media platforms and on our website at BBBreakPod. The Breakdown with Brodko and Becky will return next week. Thank you so much for joining us. Bye.