“Let’s just make sure our messaging is tight here.”
Those are Vice President J.D. Vance’s words in the “bombshell” “war plans” Signal chat of doom that definitely wasn’t a bombshell nor contained detailed war plans. But I’ll give the administration one thing now that we’ve seen the full conversation: Vance definitely got his messaging out, and quite tightly.
First, Europe is “free-loading” on American military might, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it. (“I just hate bailing out Europe again,” Vance said in the chat.)
Second, of course the media is going to exaggerate, if not actively lie. Case in point: Consider how Jeffrey Goldberg, the guy who broke the story, characterized it at the beginning and is characterizing it now.
Just in case you need a bit of catching up: On Monday, Goldberg — a high-profile critic of President Donald Trump and his administration — published a piece titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
Goldberg was very specific about how he got into the chat, which looks like a pretty big oversight; nobody disagrees on this. Basically, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz connected with him on encrypted chat app Signal, then accidentally invited him to a White House small group discussing strikes against Iran-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen. (These are the same folks disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, hence the reason why this is bailing out Europe, which has faced inordinate disruption compared to the United States due to Houthi activity.)
Once the faux shock and horror faded, the particulars of the story — especially the verbiage — came into question. The first is whether this was indeed “war plans.” We’re not at war, strictly speaking, with the Yemenis or Houthis — the latter essentially an insurgent terrorist group which isn’t recognized as the legitimate controller of any land by virtually any major government in the world.
Then, Goldberg said that what he witnessed in the chat “included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.” As the kids like to say, “big if true,” but extraordinary allegations require extraordinary evidence to back them up, and descriptions of how precise this information was — if Goldberg was going to omit the information itself — was decidedly lacking.
Finally, there was the claim that, when each major department was designating a point-person for the strike, CIA Director John Ratcliffe included the name of a covert “active intelligence officer,” which would make the information classified.
Is there anyone left in the establishment media who can be trusted?
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Goldberg doubled down on this in an interview after the article was published:
Jeffrey Goldberg says there was a covert CIA operative named in the thread.
“I withheld her name… I didn’t put it in the story because she’s under cover. But, I mean, the CIA Director put it into the chat.”pic.twitter.com/132HO1YnX7
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) March 25, 2025
As we now know, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, in response, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, meanwhile, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “there was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group.”
All right, then, it was time for Goldberg to put up or shut up. And he put up most of the Signal messages in a new piece titled “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.”
Emphasis mine, obviously; see what he did there? It’s not “war plans” anymore, merely downgraded to “attack plans.” As for the “precise” nature of what was included, please note that it included the type of aircraft, some mention of weapons, timetables, and the city in which most of the strikes took place: Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, where roughly 10 percent of the country’s population lives. Oh, that narrows it down.
But here’s where it really gets ridiculous, as Vance pointed out:
WARNING: The following posts contain vulgar language that some readers may find offensive.
It’s very clear Goldberg oversold what he had. But one thing in particular really stands out.
Remember when he was attacking Ratcliffe for blowing the cover for a CIA agent? Turns out Ratcliffe was simply naming his chief of staff. https://t.co/BUGbX6gZDZ
— JD Vance (@JDVance) March 26, 2025
Yes, apparently, that super-secret “active intelligence officer” was just … Ratcliffe’s chief of staff. It wasn’t included in the message drop, but considering that Ratcliffe seemed to confirm it in testimony before Congress under oath, he’s either in a world of trouble or Goldberg made a boo-boo.
“With regard to that article, I also would appreciate the opportunity to relay the fact that yesterday I spent four hours answering questions from senators as a result of that article that were intimating that I transmitted classified information because there were hidden messages,” Ratcliffe told the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, according to Fox News.
“Those messages were revealed today and revealed that I did not transmit classified information, and that the reporter who I don’t know, I think intentionally intended it to indicate that,” he added.
“That reporter also indicated that I had released the name of an undercover CIA operative in that Signal chat. In fact, I had released the name of my chief of staff who was not operating undercover. That was deliberately false and misleading.”
“I used an appropriate channel to communicate sensitive information. It was permissible to do so. I didn’t transfer any classified information. And at the end of the day, what is most important is that the mission was a remarkable success is what everyone should be focused on here, because that’s what did happen, not what possibly could have happened.”
But there’s no story once you remove the what-ifs from this equation. And what’s the fun in that?
The message we’ve all heard, loud and clear, is that this is hardly the blockbuster we were promised early in the week. The story was published shortly after noon Eastern on Monday. By Monday evening, we were calling it “Signalgate.” By Tuesday, many of the principals were appearing before Congress. By Wednesday, it was clear that, when it comes to making mountains out of molehills, this is almost a bit insulting to the epic, soaring majesty of the molehill peak.
At this juncture, let me be clear, because folks like the intellectual goons at Media Matters for America seem to jump all over any attempt to treat this as anything but an unmitigated debacle that should end careers and invite prosecution is Trumpist sycophancy and tacit praise. Is this in any way good? No. It was really bad — for, like, 48 hours. I’m sure it’s going to be a terrible week around the office for Waltz, Hegseth, and a few others involved in this mess, as well.
But a “precise” discussion of “war plans” on Signal that an Atlantic journalist was accidentally invited to — who, if he were an enemy journalist, might be able to disrupt military operations by revealing classified information? Also no.
We have the receipts at this point, and they don’t quite cover the amount of the rhetorical check Goldberg was trying to cash. This is a man whose anti-Trump oeuvre usually relies on overheated rhetoric from anonymous sources — and when he has actual evidence in the form of screenshots, he still manages to mislead about just what he found out.
It was a good 48-hour run, though. Shame that the inability to fact-check that whole covert “active intelligence officer” thingy ended up tightening Vance’s “messaging” on how much you can trust the media quite adequately.
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