Watch: U.S. intelligence leaders testify in House after Signal flap
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and other top U.S. intelligence officials will testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday — in a session that’s expected to be dominated by discussion of an extraordinary breach of security.
Gabbard, who as DNI is the head of the U.S. intelligence community, was part of a high-level group chat on Signal, an open-source messaging app, where officials discussed detailed plans for a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen earlier this month.
The use of civilian software to discuss sensitive military and government matters came to light after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said the Signal account of national security adviser Michael Waltz had added him to the Principals Committee group chat.
It’s the second trip to Capitol Hill in two days for Gabbard and Ratcliffe, who were grilled about the gaffe on Tuesday by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The leaders told senators that they had not shared any classified information in an improper or unlawful way — prompting a challenge from the ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.
“If there was no classified material, share it with the committee,” Warner said. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Goldberg reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent detailed war plans in a message well before the U.S. attack began. Hegseth is not among the officials testifying on Capitol Hill.
With the officials insisting they did nothing wrong and had not shared classified information, The Atlantic has now published Signal messages that were inadvertently shared with Goldberg, in a story titled Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.
The story states, “The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions.”
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