Good day all. Recently, there has been a bruhaha regarding the use of the encrypted chat app Signal by White House staffers during an air strike on the Iranian backed Houthi terrorists. Somehow, Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeff Goldberg was included on the group chat and received all the messages.
Once it became clear that this had happened, the Trump administration accepted the responsibility of the screw up. However, the Democrats, being Democrats, have decided to try and use this to “Get Trump!” or at least some of his critical people. They have claimed that “Secret War Plans” had been leaked. From what I’ve seen, this didn’t happen. It was a discussion in real time regarding the mission.
There is a lot of back and forth on using Signal for official purposes. Apparently, it was authorized during the Biden Maladministration. The app is open source so anyone can download and compiles the code as well as review it for security purposes. The phones that had Signal installed were issued to the recipients by the appropriate agencies. As to whether or not they should be using this? That’s another story.
Since the news broke, the entirety of the message stream has been released to the public by the Atlantic. They did contact the Trump Administration about this, asking if they would object to it. (Not that this would matter to that pack of leftards) The response was basically, we would prefer that you didn’t, which indicates that the administration knew it would be a complete waste of time to argue with the Atlantic.
With the message stream released, it should that no actual military plans were released, just a back and forth about the ongoing operation. If you do a search, you will find the entirety of the messages. What isn’t being discussed is the elephant in the room. How did Jeff Goldberg get added to the group, and why didn’t he announce himself and ask to be removed?
That is what the internal investigation is looking into. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz has accepted the responsibility for Goldberg’s addition to the group, but he is also saying he doesn’t know how his number got onto his phone. He doesn’t know Goldberg and has never spoken to him. If the number was preloaded on the phone provided to him, then whoever set up the phone needs to be talked with.
Then there is Jeff Goldberg himself. As I mentioned above, when Goldberg realized what he was seeing, why didn’t he announce himself and ask to be removed? I think we can guess the answer to that. Goldberg and the Atlantic are not what you would consider Trump supporting, Make America Great Again types. Just the opposite in fact. Goldberg probably thought this would be a great scoop and a chance to “Get Trump!”
The issue with this is simple. Goldberg was intercepting communications that he had no right to have. Now he might have thought that the Pentagon Papers case would protect him. If someone had dumped the communications on his desk, and he had done nothing to interfere, he might have been able to use the New York Times Co. v. United States case as a defense.
That case revolved around documents that had been stolen and provided to news organizations. The documents had been classified and the government tried to block publication of them. The court said no to any prior restraint and the documents were published. However, the case was about the 1st Amendment and prior restraint. I don’t recall anything being said regarding the actual possession of classified information.
Which brings us to this fiasco. I don’t know what level of classification, if any was involved in the communications. What I do know is that Goldberg was accidentally added to the chat group, (How to be determined) and was essentially sitting in on a confidential and potentially classified meeting. That isn’t someone saying “Here, look at this” and dropping a thumb drive with the messages on his desk. He knew that he wasn’t meant to be there.
Now some people are wondering why Jeff Goldberg isn’t being investigated and indicted for espionage? The relevant statute is 18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information. This is the same charge that could, (And should), have been brought against Felonia von Pantsuit, aka Hillary Clinton. Granted, in Felonia’s case, her actions were pretty blatant. Still, there are those who think a case could be made against Jeff Goldberg.
There are a lot of moving parts to this story, including that corrupt jackass of a Federal Judge, James Boasberg, getting his greasy hooks into a case someone, I’m not clear on who brought the case, brought regarding the use of Signal and the federal laws on records keeping. The claim is that Signal can be set to erase messages after a set period of time.
This is correct. Signal can be configured that way. The question is, was it? I suspect that it wasn’t. As to exporting the messages? That can be configured in the app as well. In any case, Goldberg had the messages and cheerfully published them. Judge Jackass has ordered that all records be preserved, and the response was “We’re already doing that Jackass.” (Only they responded in a much more judicial manner)
Frankly, this is a big nothing burger. Despite what the Progressive Liberals Democrats are screeching about, no actual secret plans were transmitted via Signal. There should be an investigation into how Goldberg was added to the group and if it was due to his number being put on Waltz’s phone without his knowledge, then something needs to be done. Otherwise, since no real damage was done other then to people’s egos, it’s time to move on.
Thatisall
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...
~The Angry Webmaster~
Signal’s actually a highly secure messaging app. Its comms are end-to-end encrypted, and it’s designed such that no one can enter a chat without having been added by someone else that’s already in it. So that really brings what Waltz was doing on his phone into question. Did he really not know he had Goldberg’s number? If that’s the case, who did he think he was adding to that chat conversation?
I read something, and like an idiot, didn’t save the url, that it wasn’t Walz but an underling who added Goldberg to the group. Take that with salt of course.