The Situation: Release the 'Houthi PC Small Group' Thread

The Situation yesterday contemplated the modality of Trumpian repression. 

Today, we’re talking “Houthi PC Small Group.” And specifically, I am calling on the Atlantic magazine to do something reckless and irresponsible: Release highly sensitive war plans. 

As you undoubtedly know by now, the magazine’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal group in which senior government officials were planning a military operation in Yemen. Signal is a commercial service not appropriate for classified communications. It’s a wild story, and I’m not going to rehash the whole thing here. The story got even wilder this morning when several people on the thread gave congressional testimony that simply can’t be reconciled with what Goldberg wrote.

Let me make clear that I am not criticizing the Atlantic, or Goldberg, here. The magazine has behaved in an exemplary fashion over the past several days. As Goldberg describes in the piece, he removed himself from the group after it became clear that the group was real and was exchanging highly sensitive material—including information about targeting, weapons, timing of specific attacks against the Houthis, and the name of at least one intelligence officer whose identity is protected. The magazine also withheld such details in Goldberg’s story. (Full disclosure: I was informally interviewed for the story by national security reporter Shane Harris on legal matters, though I was not privy to the story’s details until it was published.)

And what has the administration done in response to the story? First, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth maligned Goldberg, branded him a hoaxer, and declared that “nobody was texting war plans.” Then, the White House declared that “No classified material was sent to this thread.” And today, in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, both Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe—the director of national intelligence and the CIA director, respectively, and both members of the Signal group—insisted repeatedly that no classified material had been shared. (Both later hedged and adopted the fallback position that no classified intelligence information had been shared on the thread but that only Hegseth could speak for military equities.) In other words, the entire national security establishment that Goldberg and the Atlantic had taken pains to protect took the position that there was nothing wrong with sharing this material on Signal—though obviously, it was a mistake to have included Goldberg on the Signal thread. And they took the position that there was nothing wrong with sharing the highly sensitive information distributed on this channel with uncleared persons by non-secure means.

Let me be clear: I believe Goldberg. And I believe Harris, who participated in the reporting underlying the story and whom I interviewed at length about the matter after the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today: 

And I thus believe that the administration officials are all lying. 

That said, national security equities here are not defined by what I believe. They are defined by the officials who hold certain positions, who by virtue of those positions get to define which information the United States will and will not protect. If the secretary of defense (whose nomination I vigorously opposed), the DNI (whose nomination I vigorously opposed), and the CIA director (whose nomination I passively opposed) all take the view that there is nothing sensitive or classified in that material, the Atlantic should not be more Catholic than the Pope. 

The administration is playing a dirty game of chicken here. They are betting that Goldberg and the Atlantic’s staff are sufficiently responsible that the administration officials can lie with impunity to the Senate Intelligence Committee knowing that Goldberg is sitting on the documents that will prove it, and that he will not release the material because he knows it should be protected from public view. 

But that’s not how classified information works. And it’s not how the relationship between government and the press should work either. 

The Atlantic should thus release the full text thread, rather than put itself in the position of protecting the administration from its own lies and reckless mishandling of sensitive material. For better or for worse, the public voted to put these people in charge of managing American military operations. That means that they, not any journalists, get to decide what is so sensitive that it’s not appropriate to share on Signal with a magazine editor. And once they have stood by that decision, accidental though it may have been, it is they—not the Atlantic and not Jeff Goldberg and not me—that is responsible for the disclosure that results.

I would feel entirely differently about this matter if the intelligence leadership or Hegseth had taken responsibility for it—admitting that it was a grievous error and commending the Atlantic for its discretion in handling it. Then I would take the view that the Atlantic should, as it has, help contain the mess. Because, you know, patriotism. Instead, the administration is taking the view that they get to lie, and that the Atlantic’s sense of responsibility will conveniently help them cover things up. That’s unacceptable. And it would be very wrong for the Atlantic to play along with it. 

Will the result be a grievous disclosure of military planning information of precisely the type that should never become public? Not according to the people duly appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to make such judgments.

If you, or I, or Jeffrey Goldberg suspects otherwise, we should take it up with them or run for office.

The Situation continues tomorrow.