Sen. Jack Reed calls for investigation into Pete Hegseth’s Signal chat

Transcript:

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Pete Hegseth spoke about those chats on “Fox & Friends.”

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “FOX AND FRIENDS”)

PETE HEGSETH: What was shared over Signal – then and now, however you characterize it – was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination – other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.

FADEL: For more on this, we turn to Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He’s calling for the inspector general to widen an existing investigation and determine whether classified intelligence was shared. Senator Reed, welcome back to the program.

JACK REED: Thanks very much, Leila.

FADEL: So as we just heard, the Trump administration denies any classified material was shared in either of the two Signal chats in which the defense secretary participated. But you aren’t taking the administration at its word. Why?

REED: Well, the information was highly sensitive about bombing runs, timing. Information that was shared with our adversaries would have been – put our pilots’ lives at risk. And it’s a very basic mistake that no one in the military of any senior rank should make. I was opposed to Hegseth’s nomination. That’s why I fought vigorously against it, and we almost defeated it. But he’s confirming now everything that we were saying. He does not have the experience to manage a major enterprise like the Pentagon. He does not operate according to the chain of command. In my view, he’s got a padre of old buddies around him, and ironically, this week, he fired a lot of his old buddies. So this is just a complete meltdown of common sense (ph), and it endangers our national security.

FADEL: Is the administration cooperating?

REED: Oh, the administration is not cooperating, I don’t think, yet. There are rumors that they’re looking for someone else. If that’s the case, they’d better send out someone who’s a real professional with experience, maturity, judgment, appropriate temperament and a profound commitment to the Constitution. Those are all things that are very suspect in Secretary Hegseth’s behavior.

FADEL: Do you have any clarity at this point on why Hegseth used Signal to communicate about these war plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen?

REED: I don’t have any particular insights. That’s why we’ve asked the inspector general to look at it. It would seem to me to be just, you know, convenience over national security, which is not the right priorities. To include his wife and his brothers and others in these conversations are absolutely inappropriate. To take his wife into meetings with senior officers from other nations – completely inappropriate. And it sends a very bad signal to all the men and women in uniform that he’s going to play around cavalierly with intelligence information, but they’re told that if they ever do something like that, they’d be put in prison. So this, you know, don’t do what I do but do what I say attitude is not good.

FADEL: Now, has the inspector general’s office given you an indication that they will incorporate this second Signal chat into their investigation of the first chat, the one in which the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was mistakenly added?

REED: No, not yet. We try to remove ourselves from this process because it has to be independent. We will try to clarify – probably by letter – the situation at this point. I would assume, though, that, you know, the IG operating in his – just his own individual capacity would see this as something else he has to look at since it’s virtually identical to the first incident.

FADEL: The Senate Armed Services chair, Republican Roger Wicker, joined you earlier this month in calling for the Defense Department watchdog to investigate. What are you hearing privately from your Republican colleagues on the Hill? Are they still confident about Pete Hegseth’s leadership?

REED: Oh, I think there’s a great deal of anxiety and nervousness because, you know, they’ve seen these displays. And they’ve – you know, we have an organization that is the largest organization in the United States, basically, being run by someone who’s – their previous experience running the veterans’ group virtually ended in bankruptcy. So, you know, they’re wondering – I think we’re all wondering – is this going to be the same situation? It seems he has a lack of attention on details, and that is a critical shortcoming with the secretary of defense.

FADEL: Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, thank you for your time.

REED: Thank you.

FADEL: And we’ll note, the CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher, also chairs the board of the nonprofit Signal Foundation.