The TOI Correspondent from Washington: President Trump and top US intelligence officials raced on Tuesday to stem a growing scandal after a journalist was accidentally added to a group chat about air strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels in a security breach.
Trump brushed off the leak as a “glitch,” while the CIA director and the White House intelligence chief both claimed during a Senate hearing that no classified information was divulged in the conversation on the Signal messaging app. The president also defended his NSA Mike Waltz, who added Atlantic’s magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat by mistake ahead of the air strikes.
Goldberg, subsequently wrote an account revealing how shocked he was to be included in the group chat, an inadvertent flub when Waltz likely intended to loop in US trade representative Jamieson Lee Greer, who has similar initials.
Amid growing questions about why Trump principals were using a commercial app to discuss national security issues and why Waltz would have Goldberg, a journalist from a publication loathed by Trump among his contacts, the US president stood by his NSA, telling NBC News the breach was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one. Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
As much as the security breach, the big takeaway for the rest of the world and the region was the Trump administration’s expectation that Washington would be reimbursed for its bombing of Houthis, ostensibly aimed at keeping the sea lanes open and secure. In the exchange, Trump aides disparaged European allies, suggesting they were freeloaders and discussed extracting reimbursement for the bombing.
Vice-President JD Vance, who was among the 18 principals in the discussion, expressed reservations about the bombing and its fallout, but went along with the consensus, telling defence secretary Pete Hegseth, “If you think we should do it, let go ahead. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” Hegseth replied: “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC.”
At this point, a person going by the initials SM (likely Trump aide Stephen Miller) intervenes to say the President has been clear that the US has to be reimbursed for the bombing. “Green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return,” he says, adding, “We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement.”
“If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost, there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return,” SM adds. There is no mention of India, a major player in the region which also shares with Washington the goal of keeping shipping lanes safe and secure.
The exchange was in line with Trump’s view that European Nato partners are not spending enough money on defence, which, in turn, discounts the fact that a victorious US pressured its allies to largely disarm in return for a security umbrella it would provide. A shocked Europe is now on track to re-militarise and not depend on US security guarantees under the Trump regime.
Trump’s director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe — who were both reported to be in the chat — endured a stormy Senate Intelligence Committee hearing over the leak. “There was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard told the committee. She refused however to comment on whether Signal had been installed on her personal phone. Ratcliffe confirmed he was involved in the Signal group and had the app installed on his work computer, but said the communications were “entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
Democrats and national security pundits, however, jumped on the security flub, relishing the White House’s discomfiture and demanding Waltz and Hegseth resign. Brutal memes, including one showing Putin looking at his cell phone and telling his colleagues, “Wait guys…P.Hegseth is typing…” and “Txt STOP to opt out of update on war plans” followed. Hillary Clinton, who was crucified by Trump and his aides, including Hegseth and Waltz, for her alleged mishandling of classified info and threatened with jail time, had the last laugh on the breach. She posted on X: “You’ve got to be kidding me”.
(With input from agencies)
