Global News Podcast - Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

The White House reacts furiously after The Atlantic magazine published all messages about Yemen airstrikes in a Signal app chat between senior security officials. Also: Valerie, the disappearing dog on Kangaroo Island.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Good Bad Billionaire is back. Yes, the podcast uncovering the lives and livelihoods of some of the world's richest people is back for a new season. I'm Simon Jack. And I'm Zing Zing. Join us each week for a closer look at the lives of some of the world's billionaires from Minecraft creator Marcus Person to basketball star LeBron James.

Zing and I have more intriguing billionaires lined up for a new season. Good, bad billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Thursday 27 March these are our main stories. Senior officials in the Trump administration have been grilled in Congress over how planned US airstrikes on Yemen were discussed in a group chat that accidentally included a prominent journalist.

The military leader of Sudan says the army has regained full control of the capital Khartoum after nearly two years of fighting against the rival RSF group. Brazil's Supreme Court says there's enough evidence for the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro to stand trial for allegedly plotting a coup. Also in this podcast, the dog that went missing on Australia's Kangaroo Island. She is definitely alive. You don't get too many little dachshunds running around with pink collars on over here. We begin in Washington with the continuing row over what some are calling Signal Gate,

in which sensitive texts discussing planned airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen were accidentally shared on the Signal messaging app with a journalist. The Trump administration has dismissed the revelation of the leak as a hoax and insisted the chat didn't include any classified information. In response, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, who received the texts, has now published the whole lot, including discussions of specific operational details. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, for a second day, the US House Select Committee on Intelligence grilled top security officials about the leak. The Democratic representative Jason Crowe demanded accountability.

It is completely outrageous to me, completely outrageous to me that administration officials come before us today with impunity, no acceptance of responsibility, excuse after excuse after excuse while we send our men and women downrange to do incredibly difficult, incredibly dangerous things on our behalf. And yet, nobody is willing to come to us and say this was wrong. This was a breach of security and we won't do it again. But the head of US national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, continued to maintain that the messages that had been shared were not classified. The conversation was candid and sensitive, but as the President National Security Advisor

stated no classified information was shared. There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared. This was a standard update to the National Security Cabinet that was provided alongside updates that were given to foreign partners in the region. The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio now says inviting a journalist into the Signal chat room was a big mistake, but the White House has continued to push back. Here's press secretary Caroline Levitt. I would defer you to the Secretary of Defense's statement he put out this morning. There were various reasons he listed things that were not included in that messaging thread that were not classified.

And again, going back to the American public, do you trust the Secretary of Defense, who was nominated for this role, voted by the United States Senate into this role, who has served in combat, honorably served our nation in uniform? Or do you trust Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a registered Democrat and an anti-Trump sensationalist reporter? This president and this national security team are putting our national security and the American people first. We are restoring American strength around the world and the results of this operation speak for themselves. I spoke to our senior North America correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue, who was in that briefing room. There's been a huge pushback. The press Caroline Leavitt in the briefing earlier really going after the

journalist at the centre of this Jeffrey Goldberg talking about him as a Trump hater, as a sensationalist, as a Democrat really trying to do as much as possible to smear him in effect and that's been coming from some of the others involved in this as well. Some of those in the intelligence community were on that chat. JD Vance, the Vice President, he's been saying things like that, as has Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, who is also at the centre of this because in those messages that were published by the Atlantic, he is the one who's giving a lot of the detail which they still

maintain wasn't classified but was about the weapons being used giving a lot of the detail, which they still maintain wasn't classified, but was about the weapons being used, the times of strikes, giving some updates on what was happening in a pretty live situation. So they are fighting hard on this one. And I think there's a reason for that in particular, which is that if they give some ground on one of these individuals, then the questions will keep coming on the others and you simply can't afford to lose a whole swathe of senior national security figures like this. And how did they come out of the grilling that they got at the House committee, some of these security chiefs?

I mean it was a bit of a rerun of yesterday with the equivalent Senate committee, although Tulsi Gamber, the director of national intelligence, had to sort of slightly sort of alter her approach because these messages clearly mention different kinds of weapons and that's something she was a little bit ambiguous on yesterday whether or not she'd seen this detail. Again, she, much like John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, really sort of deflecting many of the questions towards the defence department and Pete Hickseth, very much driving in their own lanes, if you like, which may be a sign that they're not sure that his case is as strong as theirs, but this is a battle of wills, if you like, now, and it will depend, you know, what the

president's view is. It always depends what the president's view is. To this point in time, he has stood by these individuals, but he doesn't like bad publicity. That's one more thing we know, and particularly when it detracts from his agenda and his feeling that these first two months have been enormously successful in terms of dominating the news cycle, flooding the zone, as they put it, and

this stuff does distract from that. And what's your sense? How damaging is it, do you think, for the Trump administration? It doesn't look good. It doesn't look particularly competent. It looks a bit sensationalist, if I can use that word. It looked like, you know, boys and their toys a little bit in that chat. You know, if you look at the detail of it, it wasn't terribly sober, was it? There were lots of sort of people sending emojis back and forth. We're talking about, you know, bombs and missiles flying here.

The other risk, of course, for them is that in terms of morale in the armed services, you know, there have been plenty of people, plenty of ex-military types in the last few days saying if I had done this when I was in uniform I would have been court-martialed. So there's a danger that this does undermine discipline in the military and may make some people think well if they can do it why can't I. Gary O'Donoghue. Now let's get a Yemeni perspective on the incident. Ferea Al-Maslimi is a Yemeni research fellow at Chatham House, the foreign policy think tank in London. Just before the latest comments from Washington on Wednesday, James Menendez asked him what he thought when he saw the first batch of leaked messages about US airstrikes

on Yemen. If you are a political analyst who covers the Trump administration or the Middle East, you never really trust weekends or holidays. You never know when BBC World News will call you because a new war just broke out. But I must say this was a whole another level the minute I read that in a Twitter and I thought at the beginning it was a spam. They didn't open it until I saw so many people and the reason is because it was a scandalous in so many ways.

It's scandalous obviously in the security failure of it. You don't really wish that even for an enemy. You know, I have covered a lot of failed states, but this was a parody state more or even worse than that. But beyond that what shocked me also as a Yemeni, but also as a human being is the language being used to describe a war and the bombing that has people in the ground, ultimately dying civilians.

It's a criminal. Does that include the use of emojis? I mean, I'm just looking at some of them now. There's a sort of there's a fist pump. There's the flame emoji. What did he make of that? It's a criminal to say the least. And it's just a telling of how inhuman wars have became in a way.

You have boys with toys celebrating in a way, you have boys with doys celebrating in a way that you cannot believe it actually exists. And the other part about this is it also, especially today, 26th of March, is it comes 10 years of a terribly failed Saudi-Emerati military airstrikes on Yemen actually. So you have also totally blind boys giving each other a thumbs up and on a signal celebrating in almost a very inhuman way a bombing. And at the same time, clearly, not even you wouldn't assume reading history, but clearly didn't read the Twitter for the last 10 years to see how bad it went for others before them in Yemen. Well, that brings me on to my next question. Have they got reason to celebrate? Has the bombing campaign in this these strikes weren't the first? I mean, there's been there's

been quite a few in recent months. Has this series of a strikes had any major impact on the Houthis and their ability to carry out attacks? I mean, obviously, first of all, this is one this is even if it had any military success. Ultimately, this is one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world bombing one of the poorest and most vulnerable and hungriest country in the world. So in a larger scheme of things, despite any military significance it has, it's somehow a big failure. But it's problematic for two other reasons. First, the Houthis as a group overall thrive over a war. This actually answers to their best wishes somehow in being

in a direct war with the US. But also because... Does it boost their popularity? Obviously. I mean, the Yemenis did not welcome UAE and Saudi airstrikes, let alone the Americans or the Israelis. So of course it's not something popular, but it's also a failure because Yemen is, and the Houthis, is a mountain country in most of where they control. So air strikes doesn't work and overall the Americans don't know how to fight a war in the mountains. They didn't know it in Vietnam, they didn't know it in Afghanistan and they will never know it in Yemen. It's a very significantly a self-tilling of a failed military calculation

in a very different ways. Fariha Al-Muslimi from Chatham House in London. Next to Sudan and the country's military leader says the army has regained full control of the capital from its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. General Fatah al-Burhan landed at the newly recaptured airport in Khartoum and made the announcement from the Presidential Palace. This marks the military's latest territorial gain in the brutal two-year civil war. Our Africa correspondent Barbara Pettasher spoke to us from Port Sudan.

It's been quite a day. The army had been making advances into Khartoum since seizing the Presidential Palace late last week, but things have moved very swiftly. They secured the international airport, which is in the centre of the city, after a battling of RSF holdouts there. And then they took control of other areas where there was still an RSF footprint and released footage which they said was RSF fighters leaving Khartoum at their last available exit. And then, later in the day, the military leader, General Fatah al-Burhan, suddenly flew into this newly reclaimed airport and made an announcement from the historic Republican Palace saying Khartoum is free, this palace being a potent symbol of sovereignty, political power.

So it is a major victory for the army and they will probably be consolidating further as the days go on and the capital's been hugely damaged, so there's a lot of work to do, but it will give the army a strategic advantage in the war going forward. But the RSF still holds, doesn't it, almost all the Darfur region in western Sudan? That's right. The RSF has control of that vast region, almost all of it, and it's expected that the focus of the fighting will probably shift there. One of the big battlegrounds

there has been the city of Alfasher, which is the last capital, the last state capital still in the army's control that the RSF still doesn't have. Just this week, the army was accused of, or the Air Force was accused of killing dozens if not hundreds of civilians when it bombed a market in North Darfur. So that is very much still an active battle zone. The war has taken a new turn with what's happened with Khartoum, but it's definitely not over. And tell us more about civilians, because the UN says this war, which has gone on now for two years, that it's created the world's largest humanitarian crisis?

Yes, more than 12 million people displaced, about millions and millions of people facing an acute hunger crisis, the famine declared in certain parts of the country. Most of this acute humanitarian situation is in areas controlled by the RSF. The army has been reluctant to let aid go through into these areas, by the RSF. The army has been reluctant to let aid go through into these areas and the RSF itself has also placed restrictions on it. So this has created a really big humanitarian crisis. Some of those areas that have said to be having famine conditions are in displaced people's camps around the city of Al-Fasher and certainly in Khartoum. Khartoum was one of the areas that the UN had said

would be facing famine conditions soon, given the fighting there, given the siege and the restrictions. So at least in Khartoum it seems that that will be eased now and there will be relief for the people who were either unable or unwilling to leave during the war. Barbara Pletasha in Sudan. Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro is to go on trial for allegedly plotting a military coup. The Supreme Court has ruled there's enough evidence for the case against Mr Bolsonaro and seven of his allies to go ahead.

He denies trying to block the inauguration of his successor, President Lula, and says he's the victim of political persecution. I hope to put an end to this today. It seems like there's something personal against me and the accusations are very serious. They are baseless. Mr Bolsonaro never publicly acknowledged losing the election back in 2022 and thousands of his supporters stormed government buildings after Lula took office. I heard more about what the panel of five judges in Brazil's Supreme Court said from the BBC's Leandro Prezérez, who's in the capital, Brasilia.

Overall, the judges have said that there is preliminary evidence that Mr. Bolsonaro was not just part of the conspiracy, but he was the leader of this criminal organization, and that's keeping him in power, despite his defeat in the 2022 elections. At some point, one of the judges, Alexandre de Moraes, who leads the case, he said that there will be credible evidence that Mr. Bolsonaro had discussed details of a decree intended to overturn the results of the elections and that he was also aware of an alleged plan to kill

the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. So when is the trial likely to take place? There is no indication so far about when the proper trial will take place but experts and analysts here in Brazil have been saying that it's very likely that this trial will start to take place this year especially because there is this feeling that this trial should not contaminate the environment of next year's election in Brazil. If found guilty what sentence could he face? Some law experts have been saying that if found guilty, Mr Bolsonaro could face up to

40 years in prison. They have also been saying that despite the result of the trial, what happened today is already politically symbolic as this is the first time a former president and also high ranking generals will be facing trial for an alleged coup attempt. Leandro Prezeres. The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says he hopes the US will stay strong in the face of Russian demands to lift sanctions as a condition for a ceasefire in the Black Sea. Mr Zelensky is in the French capital Paris ahead of a Ukraine summit on Thursday of some 30 leaders. He answered questions from a panel of European journalists, among them our international editor Jeremy Bowen. Jeremy filed this report on Wednesday evening from Paris as he stood

in front of the Eiffel Tower. First of all, I think he feels among friends when he comes to Paris, when he speaks to European leaders. They've been lighting up the Eiffel Tower in the colors of the Ukrainian national flag, yellow and blue. Clear, deliberate gesture to contrast with the the verbal dressing down he got when he was in Washington from President Trump and from his Vice President, JD Vance. Now in this panel discussion I had with President Zelensky, we covered the whole gamut of the things which will be talked about here in Paris tomorrow at a European summit, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, trying to work out what it

is they can do. And so one question I asked President Zelensky was about the fact that Europe, its defense capacity, especially compared to the United States, is really not right now up to it. Steve Witkoff, the envoy of President Trump, gave a very illuminating interview the other day and it seemed to suggest very strongly that they don't take the Americans don't take seriously the efforts that the British and the French are doing to trying to put together a force to give you some security guarantees. Witkoff said he ridiculed it he said it was a posture it was a pose there was simplistic desire to sound like Winston Churchill, but bearing in mind the

realities of European military weakness compared to the US. Actually, do you think he's right? Look, Europe, in the course of this war, Europe has strengthened itself significantly, definitely as has undergone the audit of what has, what it had with the view of defense. Now in Europe you will see the production will be increasing in Europe very quickly. Europe from the point of view of weapons and defense and cyber defence intelligence, I think over the course of three and five years would be on par with the United States.

And he actually went on to speak somewhat disparagingly of Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff's grasp of the facts of what the war is going on in Ukraine in general. He said that the Americans were parroting, he didn't use that word, but certainly repeating Kremlin talking points far too easily. But he said that Steve Witkoff actually was an expert at setting real estate. He was not an expert at trying to work out the way that the war went there. Now considering that he is Trump's lead envoy not just on Ukraine but on the Middle East as well, it is a sign that Zelensky, while he's saying the kinds of things the Americans

want to hear and Trump wants to hear, he's not trying to disguise the fact that actually, as everybody knows, right now from a European perspective, and particularly from a Ukrainian perspective, the United States under Donald Trump is not a reliable ally and it might not even be an ally at all. Jeremy Bowen in France. Still to come. The vendors are offering various discounts and deals such as buying one bottle and getting another bottle free.

What's happening at alcohol shops in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh? is back. Yes, the podcast uncovering the lives and livelihoods of some of the world's richest people is back for a new season. I'm Simon Jack and I'm Zing Sing. Join us each week for a closer look at the lives of some of the world's billionaires. From Minecraft creator Marcus Person to basketball star LeBron James. Zing and I have more intriguing billionaires lined up for a new season. Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. The local government in Istanbul has elected an intramayor to serve in place of Ekrem Imamolu, whose detention a week ago triggered huge protests. Nuriazlan is from Mr. Imamoglu's centre-left party, the CHP, which serves as the main opposition

to President Erdogan's AKP. Yalcin Karatepi is one of the CHP's members of parliament. The political atmosphere in Turkey has unmistakably reached a tipping point, a moment where the long-simmering erosion of democratic infrastructure has now erupted into full public consciousness. The arbitrary annulment of Mr. Imamoglu's university diploma, a bureaucratic manoeuvre devoid of legal merit or procedural integrity, was not merely a clerical decision. It was the opening act of a calculated political drama. For more on the appointment of Istanbul's interim mayor, the BBC's Emily Wither sent us this report on Wednesday from the city. There had been concerns that the government would nominate an appointee.

The head of the opposition, along with City Hall staff, have been sleeping in the building since Mr. Imomolu's detention last Wednesday. With tonight being the holiest of Ramadan, it's expected that protests will be more muted after seven days of large anti-government demonstrations. The CHP are calling for a large rally in Istanbul on Saturday for Turks to show their support for Mr. Imomolu and call for early elections. The US President Donald Trump has announced tariffs on car imports in a move set to fuel tensions with trading partners ahead of further promised levies next week.

Since his return to the White House two months ago, Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on imports from major US trading partners Canada, Mexico and China, as well as a 25% duty on steel and aluminium imports. But he previously offered car manufacturers a temporary reprieve from the levies affecting North America. Speaking from the White House, this is what President Trump had to say about car tariffs. What we're going to be doing is a 25% tariff on all cars that are not made in the United States. If they're made in the United States, there's absolutely no tariff. We started off with a 2.5 percent base, which is what we were at. And we go to 25 percent.

And basically, as you know and as you've been seeing, not reporting as accurately as it should be reported because it's a massive story. Business is coming back to the United States so that they don't have to pay tariffs and I think also because of November 5th, the election, they're very happy. Against this background, could President Trump's trade war provide an unexpected opportunity for Chile? After Norway, the South American country is the biggest producer and exporter of farmed salmon in the world. From Chile, Jane Chambers reports. The salmon farming industry has transformed southern Chile, providing jobs for around 86,000

people, indirectly and directly. This is Multiex's processing plant in the coastal town of Puerto Montt, 11 hours drive down south from Chile's capital Santiago. They process fresh and smoked salmon. My name is Javier Soto, I am the manager of the smoking plant. Piles of salt in front of us, the salt from the Atacama desert. This is our recipe, we use it, this is salty, we combine with brown sugar, it depends on the recipe or what market we are selling the products. We use a different amount of salt and sugar. So this factory can produce 300 tons of final product per month. The largest export markets are the United States and Japan.

We have six smokers for doing the recipes. The recipes can have 13 minutes or until six hours. It depends what market you are saying. For example, Japan, they love the smell of the smoke. In case of the US, they prefer more the salty, and so they shorten the recipe. Now the threat of 25% tariffs on Canadian salmon exports to the US and trade tensions between the US and Europe could help boost the already strong US market for Chilean businesses. Around half of US salmon imports came from Chile in 2022. Chile has a free trade agreement with the United States so in theory there's no tariffs. Matt Craze is the founder of Spherec Research, an independent research house which specialises in global seafood markets.

Canada has been historically the smaller but still quite significant seller of salmon to the US market. But there's a deep concern among the Canadian sellers that they've lost the US market or they become less competitive in that US market. But Chile may need more than just weaker competition. Arturo Clement, president of trade body Salmon Chile, says the industry needs more support to encourage investment. Well, for us, it's been very difficult to grow because we have too many regulations. So what we need is we need to define a long-term strategy regarding salmon farming. Arturo is referring to unresolved issues about where the industry is allowed to farm and

a plan new agriculture law which he thinks will be restrictive. There are also concerns over the use of antibiotics to tackle a bacterial disease. The industry stresses antibiotics are used within the law and there's no trace of them when the fish are exported. Back at Javier Soto's smoking plant, his colleague Armando Baudon says they have the capacity to meet more demand. Today there are around 480 people working here and when we are at our busiest time we can have more than 900 people working here.

There could be an opportunity for Chile's salmon industry with the current global trade tensions, but it faces its own challenges. That report by Jane Chambers in Chile and Outer India. And the sound you can hear is of scenes replicated across Atta Pradesh where long queues of people have been gathering outside liquor or alcohol stores. To find out why, Andrew Peach spoke to the BBC's Sameda Pal in Delhi, who explained more about people being primarily attracted by the two-for-one deals and other massive discounts. It is primarily to also sell off the remaining stocks before the financial year ends, so that any unsold liquor, if it exists,

it is not seized by excise officials. And to avoid these losses, the vendors are offering various discounts and deals, such as buying one bottle and getting another bottle free. And a lot of price reductions are also happening. It is being triggered by a policy change, which is that in the last six years, licenses for alcohol were renewed through the vendors very easily. But this year, the state government has introduced something new. They're doing an online lottery system to allocate those liquor vendors. And as a result of these changes, as I understand it, you're going to end up with people who've been running liquor stalls for many years suddenly unable to carry on. Yes, there is a bit of a fear among the vendors. There are concerns among vendors that it's

not so much that they'd not be able to continue the business, but it also pertains to the stocks that they have that they'd not be able to sell those stocks post the 31st of March. And they will have to then destroy the remaining stocks if the government does not take it back. So that is a major concern among traders and among vendors. This has fueled these kind of exciting discounts and long queues that we're seeing in several cities. In addition to this, the Liquor Association has also filed a petition against the government. They were demanding that the government take back the remaining stock of alcohol. However, the government has not issued any direction on it yet, which is why the

vendors are also trying to sort of sell their stocks and make a quick buck before the new policy kicks in. Now, in most parts of the world, if you were suddenly doing a buy one, get one free deal on alcohol, you'd certainly have big queues of people trying to buy it. And it sounds like India is no different. Absolutely. And big posters have been put out, a lot of exciting offers. It is looking like you know absolute chaos but a lot of people who consume alcohol they're rejoiced because of this decision and they're quite happy

because they are queuing up to buy alcohol for as cheap as possible. So it is quite exciting for those. There are fewer people at ration shops and more people at the liquor stores today. Simedapal in India. Kangaroo Island off southern Australia is best known for its nature reserve featuring native wildlife such as sea lions, koalas, penguins and the island's very own kangaroo species. But it now seems there's a small dog with a pink collar to add to that mix. Sixty months ago, a miniature dachshund called Valerie ran off from its owners who were on

holiday. A search began and for months there was no sign of the dog. But reports of sightings did start to come in and it appears the miniature dachshund has been thriving. Jared Caron is director of the charity Kangala Wildlife Rescue who's trying to capture her. So is he sure it really is Valerie? She is definitely alive. 100% sure it's definitely her. You don't get too many little Dachshunds running around with pink collars on over here. When she first went missing and the owners called us, I was walking around with them and looking up in the sky and there was about three or four Eagles in the sky and I remember saying to them at the time, look I don't really want to say this but that little dog's you know

it's not, I haven't got a good chance. I'd say an Eagles probably already got it. Then time went on and months and months later, this dog starts turning up. Where she is, she has an area where she can go to dams and get water. We have a fair bit of wildlife as road kills, the dead sheep and things like that. Obviously the fact that she's kept out of trouble,

she certainly looks well fed when I saw her, but as soon as she sees a car or a person, poof, she's just gone. So it's not like you can just sort of chase her down, you'd never catch her. We're in the process of establishing points where she comes into feed. We've got an array of camera setups to sort of make sure that we're getting her in there at a regular, you know, sort of pattern and then after that we'll be able to progress to actually getting her into the trap. You must have been in contact with with the owners, I mean what was it like when you when you broke the news to them? Look, they're very excited, they absolutely loved that dog, they were heartbroken when

they left here and had to leave without her. It's like their child. If it comes off, it'll be a magical moment. Jared Karan, director of the charity Kangalore Wildlife Rescue, speaking there to the BBC's James Menendez about Valerie the Dachshund. And that's it from this Valerie, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Sid Dundon. The producer was Liam McShepard. The editor is

Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye bye. The powerful Lebanese militia group has been battered by its war with Israel. Now even some supporters are questioning its purpose. So is this a turning point? Join me, Hugo Bachega, as I travel to the heartland of the movement to find out. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.