The Trump administration’s Signal chat leak represents the ‘profound’ risk of ‘uncontrolled communication,’ which could have implications on future operations, a former national intelligence official said Sunday.
Sue Gordon, the former principal deputy national intelligence director during President Donald Trump’s first term, reacted to the leak during an appearance on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’
‘I’m glad the operation was successful,’ Gordon said, referring to the U.S. military strikes on Houthi terrorist targets. ‘Now we need to deal with the fact that this should not have happened, there is consequence when it does and you can’t be sure that there’s no persistent risk that follows it.’
Gordon said that while there have been errors in the past concerning the protection of a partner’s information, this leak is different due to the Trump administration’s reaction of ‘there was nothing to see here.’
‘I don’t think we should rest on the fact that nothing bad happened this time,’ Gordon said. ‘We don’t know whether that communications path has been penetrated, so we don’t know whether state actors that have lots of resources are just sitting and lurking now knowing we do important things on [Signal].’
Signal, an encrypted messaging app, is now under the spotlight after it was revealed that top national security leaders had been in a group chat discussing plans to strike terrorists in Yemen, which also included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. The chat was made public by a first-hand account of the group chat published by Goldberg in an article Monday.
The Trump administration has maintained that no classified information was shared in the chat, doubling down on Wednesday that The Atlantic’s story was a ‘hoax’ after Goldberg published specific texts from the chat.
The messages included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth outlining that combat aircraft were set to take off and strike drones were ready for the operation, which were accompanied by timestamps.
Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie, former CENTCOM commander, also appeared on the program Sunday, saying that while he was ‘surprised’ at the communications leak, he believed the ‘larger story’ was how the U.S. had ‘finally begun to strike the Houthis hard,’ at a speed ‘that, frankly, eluded the previous administration.’
