Law&Crime Sidebar - Signal Group Chat Scandal — Everything We Know

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

A journalist with The Atlantic was evidently added to a group chat on the app Signal just as the US government was planning an attack against Houthis in Yemen. What are the implications of what was revealed in the chat and what will happen to those involved in use of the app? Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber breaks it all down with global affairs journalist Kevin Baron.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/sidebar to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Did you participate in the group chat with Secretary of Defense and other Trump senior officials discussing the Yemen war plans? I'm not going to get into the specifics of the delivery. So you refuse to acknowledge whether you are on this group chat? Senator, I'm not going to get into this specifics. Why are you going to get into specifics? Is it because it's all classified?

It's the group chat message heard around the world, as it's still trying to be figured out how a journalist was added to a secret message chain with high-level officials in the U.S. government about an upcoming military attack. The legal and national security questions mount. Was this legal? Did someone commit perjury?

Will charges follow? What are the repercussions? We separate the politics and really focus on the law and regulations surrounding this whole signal scandal. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. All right, before we get into this, something exciting.

I've got to tell you about happening here at Law and Crime. We officially launched our brand new channel Scandal, which is dedicated to exposing the dark side of fame. Every single day, we're going to be covering the wildest celebrity crimes and lawsuits, along with the disturbing claims and rumors that float around celebrity circles. The channel's live, there's already some great videos published. So go subscribe to the channel now to stay up on all of the latest scandals in Hollywood. That channel link is in the description.

So we're going to go from that scandal to the scandal we're talking about right now. Signal. Have you heard about this? Oh, I'm sure you have in the last few days. What a wild roller coaster of adventure this has been. So this intersection of law, national security, testimony, I mean, we are dealing with potential issues of violation of federal law, perjury, classified information. and we're going to keep the politics out of this, okay?

Not really our thing that we do here on sidebar. But what we really want to focus upon is the law, the regulations, national security. So let me lay this out for you and the issues. And then we have a great guest who's going to talk all about it. So at the beginning of the week, editor-in-chief at the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, published a piece entitled The Trump Administration accidentally texted me its war plans. You know the thing about that title? Turns out that's seemingly what actually happened.

Goldberg was reportedly added to a secret group chat on the encrypted messaging app signal. It was titled Houthi PC Small Group happened back on March 13th when he was added. And apparently he was a part of this group chat for four days. Who was in this group? The reported list includes Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Special Envoy to the Middle East in Russia,

Steve Whitkoff, and National Security Advisor Mike Walts. And here's the thing. On this chat, there was a discussion apparently about an upcoming military strike against the Houthis, this Iran-back group in Yemen that has attacked Israel. And reportedly, two hours after this discussion, the U.S. launched a serious. of air offenses against the Houthis. In fact, on March 15th, it was confirmed that a top Houthi commander was in fact killed. And you can see why this is an issue, right? Having a journalist, a civilian privy to these concentrated private conversations about an upcoming military strike involving U.S. personnel. Think about if that information got out, right,

to the wrong people, the wrong person was added to this chat. Potentially, U.S. lives could have been at risk. No? Now, how did Goldberg get invited to this chat? Why was it? he noticed on there? Why were they even on signal to begin with? These are great questions. Now, it seems based on the reporting, that Goldberg was inadvertently added to this group chat by Mr. Walts. More to come on that. By the way, as we're doing these multiple sidebars a day, I am so busy. I am always running around, but I will tell you what, our amazing sponsor Upside makes at least buying my daily essentials as I go about my day, an actual treat. I say that because upside is a free app that gets you cash back when you buy these things. Yeah, so I pump

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of gas. But here's the thing about Signal. It's controversial. According to CBS News, it is an encrypted messaging app that services text, but also phone and video calls. And in fact, it's about 70 million users in 2024. And it claims it doesn't store or collect sensitive information, which keep that in mind because there are federal laws that will talk about that deal with preserving and storing records or communications. But it apparently, Signal has been used by government officials in the past. And according to the AP, it's been used for things like scheduling and even the Biden administration had used it. However, there was reportedly an instruction that the app should only be used occasionally. You see, as reported by outlets like Fox News and

NPR, you have this Department of Defense memo from 2023 that says Signal can't be used to, quote, access, transmit, process, non-public DOD information, Department of Defense information. In fact, in 2021, according to ABC, an internal report concluded that the use of signal by a former Pentagon official violated the department's policies because this is not an authorized messaging service. However, CIA director John Ratcliffe defended the use of signal when testifying this week in front of the Senate Committee on Intelligence after news of this whole issue came out. The use of signal message and encryption applications is permissible and was, in this case, used permissibly, at least to my understanding, and in a lawful manner. Actually, I want to talk about this hearing for a moment.

You see, when the piece from Jeffrey Goldberg came out when it was published, there was arguably a downplaying of what this conversation was about. Heggseth, tall reporters, nobody's texting war plants. President Trump told reporters on Tuesday that there was, quote, no classified information as I understand it. And he would go on to criticize Goldberg, called him a total sleaze bag, how the Atlantic is a failed magazine. So during the hearing on Tuesday, both Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, faced a lot of questioning about this group chat.

And they seemed to suggest that there was no classified information. discussed as far as they knew and couldn't really recall key details of what was on there. Director Gabbert, you are the security executive and set access guidelines for classified information. Did you contact the defense secretary or others after this specific military planning was put out and say, hey, we should be doing this in a skiff? There was no classified material that was shared in that signal. So then if there was no classified in material, share. it with the committee. You can't have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national

security. Was there any mention, Ms. Gabbard, of a weapon or weapons system? I don't recall specific weapons systems being named. I'm not talking about specific any weapon or weapon system. I don't recall specific names of systems or weapons being used. Mr. Rackleff, same question. I don't recall. How about anything about time? Timing. Ms. Gabbard. I don't recall specific timing. Was there any mention?

I won't get into the detail of the conversation, but obviously there was a significant amount of planning and internal discussions that had occurred prior to and outside of this signal chat. Any mention of any military unit whatsoever? Mr. Rackleff. Not that I recall. But here's the issue with all that. After Goldberg was essentially getting trashed by the Trump administration, he made the rounds on the media. In fact, he went on CNN and said, that's a lie. He was texting war plans.

He was texting attack plans. I didn't publish this. And I continue not to publish it because it felt like it was too confidential, too technical. And I worry, honestly, that sharing that kind of information in public could endanger American military personnel. But no, they were, they were plans for the attack. And lo and behold, what happens Wednesday morning? The Atlantic published what appears to be actual excerpts from that group chat, like this apparent message from Secretary of Defense, Pete Heggseth.

Team Update. Time now. 1144 Eastern. Weather is favorable. Just confirmed with Centcom, we are a go for mission launch. 1215 Eastern, F-18's launch, first strike package, 1345, trigger-based F-18's first strike window starts, Target terrorist is at his known location, so should be on. Also, strike drones launch MQ-9s, 14-10, more F-18's launch, second-strike package. 14-15, strike drones on target. This is when the first bombs will definitely drop pending earlier trigger-based targets. 1536, F-18's second strike starts.

Also, first-sea-based Tomahawks launched. More to follow per timeline. We are currently clean on OPSEC. Or how about this from Mr. Walts? Typing too fast, the first target, their top missile guy, we had positive idea of him walking into his girlfriend's building, and it's now collapsed. So it certainly made it interesting when Gabbard and Ratcliffe said that, and then this comes out, and then they were back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday after the publication of these

excerpts, and again, after their testimony the day before. So this time they testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee. My answer yesterday was based on my recollection or the lack thereof on the details that were posted there. I was not, and what was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the signal chat and replied at the end reflecting the effects, the very brief effects that the National Security Advisor had shared. So it's your testimony that less than two weeks ago, you were on a signal chat that had all of this information about F-18s and MQ9 reapers and targets on strike, and you in that two-week period simply forgot that that was there. That's your testimony? My testimony is I did not recall the exact details of what was included there.

And Gabbard also emphasized that there are no sources, methods, locations, or war plans that were shared and how the material in this chat was actually shared with regional allies, saying, the decision to conduct this operation had been made long before that conversation took place. So, the question becomes, was it confidential? Was her testimony in Ratcliffe's completely 100% honest the day before? And that raises another important legal question, aside from the potential issue of false testimony under oath, was, was this a violation of the Espionage Act regarding the handling or the mishandling of confidential information? Okay, so for all that, now I want to bring on global affairs journalist Kevin Barron, who has worked in foreign policy and national securities, the founder and president of Elevation Global Strategies. Thanks so much for coming here on sidebar. I appreciate it.

Yeah, my pleasure. So let me ask you straight up, was this classified information? And if so, what makes it classified? I mean, if this isn't classified information, I'm not sure what is. You know, I try to answer this question more diplomatically and legally saying, that's not for me to do. determine, but there's so much commentary out there. And in all of my experience covering the Pentagon, and I was in the Pentagon Press Corps for about 15 years, certainly this is classified. What makes it classified is, especially these are operational plans, anything that could put the people doing this at risk. That's pretty, that's how simple it is. So revealing over an unclass network,

which is what signal is, no matter how secure you may think it is, it is an unclass network. It is not the Sipternet. So revealing things like timings, just start with that. 100% is something that you would expect to be classified. And even I've seen now Senator Wicker saying he thinks this all should have been classified. And if you know, if you know, can someone just say, oh, this is classified? This is declassified. This is classified. Is there a protocol put in place by whether or not we can categorize certain information as classified? Or is it the very nature in which these conversations were happening, even though Signal is, we'll talk about it, not the most secure of platforms, and obviously you could see why, is it the very nature of the

conversations themselves and who's having these conversations and where they're being conducted, that that's what makes it classified. The best, you can answer that. Well, I mean, the answer is this is what I would hope, you know, lawyers will parse out and we'll do it in front of congressional hearings and cameras for the world to see. I think both the things you said are true. There are people who decide this is a classified document and stamp it in the old-fashioned way. But then there are just, you know, behaviors and discussions that inherently are presumed or supposed to be classified. And I've heard even, for example, Senator Laskolkin from Michigan saying just discussing the possibility of a strike.

It's not even the strike details. The discussions about the strike are something that would be classified. Now, we've heard for a long time for people saying the president can instantly declassify something. The president has that authority. The secretary has some authorities, too. I don't know the exact details, and I'm not going to, you know, yes. But it goes to the point of the feedback you're hearing or the pushback you're hearing from the White House and from Heggseth and others. And Gabbert all saying, these are not classified war plans.

And they're banking on the fact that they said they're not classified to count retroactively. that those information, the informational details that have been revealed were not. That all needs to be parsed at. Let me, let me ask about that. When you hear the testimony from two days, do you think it's problematic? And what do I mean by that? There are people who are saying, oh, this is perjury. There are others are saying, not so fast.

I mean, was it couched enough to suggest I'm only revealing what I know right now and what my understanding was? But here's the problem. I played this before. What was said on one day, the relationship. of excerpts of the transcript, and then what was said the other day, when you hear Tulsi Gabbard say no sources, methods, locations, or war plans were shared, and that this was material in this chat was actually shared with regional allies saying the decision to conduct this operation had been made long before that conversation took place. What do you make of those explanations?

What do you make of what was said on Capitol Hill? Well, two parts of that also. I think one, you know, this is why you hear, you're heard those officials using the good old phrase, I don't recall. That should get out of jail free card for anything, right? That if you don't recall it, you just don't recall that you're not saying it didn't exist or it did exist, even when it's presented to you. Since then, in that day two hearing, you heard the Democrats come out of blazing just using the word lie and every one of them. It was a nice coordinated attack saying, this is a lie, this is a lie, this is a lie. They're trying to push that perjury case. The lie being them saying, the Trump administration

officials saying, like you said, there were no details, no war plans, no information. They are hoping that whoever is going to judge this will agree with them that because they're not actually reading off of a booklet that says, this is classified, or they're not actually giving the coordinates, that that's good enough to say, this isn't detailed enough. Now, before our very plain eyes, we can all see timestamps. We can see weapon systems being named. We can even see time over target being named, which is extremely risky to reveal on any kind of unclass system. That's probably the most risky of all. So weather reports even. We heard there's tons of detail that, of course, all amount up to an attack plan. Is it a war plan? Is it a

war plan? Of course it is. I mean, look, who cares? What's the difference? I've talked about this too. Thank you for asking, letting me say it. This drives me nuts. I'm an editor. I'm not a lawyer. I'm an editor. I'm a letter. So I've spent many years with reporters who will come to me with information and usually just kind of by habit when you type something up, you could say, I've received this document with some convoluted crazy tile and tied on it. And you would say to the reporter, this is too much detail, what is it? So use your plain English. Tell me what this is that you have. And in this case, it's war plans. Now, I guess you could have been more, more, a little less hypey and a little more accurate and called it attack plans, mission plans, sortie plans. I mean, who cares? I don't

care. All I care about is the ridiculous use of signal and the information that was divulged. So I think people are getting sucked into the White House's pushback. And, you know, the Atlantic kind of asked for it by changing the headline. But it doesn't matter. The reporter gets to describe this in any way they want. The government doesn't get to tell the reporter what to do. To me, it's a plan. Talk to me about why this matters. You know, people say, okay, you know, you had a reporter on there. They were using a communication system. Nothing got out. The attack happened as it was supposed to. But talk to me about why this is important, why this matters. As an expert in this area, do you believe that U.S. troops' lives could have been put in danger?

Absolutely, they could have. Like I said before, especially when it comes to details like time over target. That's literally when aircraft will be in the region preparing to strike. and as others, other members of Congress, they even said publicly, the air defenses that the Houthis possess, just knowing that their aircraft over targeted, they could have been turned on, they could have been activated, and found those targets possibly. The Houthis member have already shot down a Reaper drone before.

So there's precedent for worry. These aren't, you know, these aren't ground fighters with rickety AK-47s and ditches in the middle of Afghanistan. They have sophisticated air defenses at their avail. Part of the two is, I mean, what do you call it in crime where just the planning of the crime is the crime also, not just whether it was carried out or not? And intention matters, too. So there's a lot we can get into with, you know, espionage acts and other things like that for intention. But just using the platform is already problem number one.

It doesn't matter that the mission was successfully carried out. Thank God it was. Using that platform causes all sorts of problems. It hides from the Records Act, communications that are supposed to be kept for posterity, for legal reasons, by law. It hides the President's the Records Act and the Federal Records Act. And it's ridiculously sloppy and stupid to try to think that you can coordinate this stuff on signal. There's no, it just blows everyone's mouth. Let me just, let me just push back.

I just have a question about that. If you are going to have a top secret conversation about upcoming military plans, do you have to have it in a format? where it will be recorded or is the whole purpose of it it should never be recorded? Good question. I don't know the should or the shouldn't for that, but they are just because their top secret doesn't mean that there's nothing turned off. That means it just means you're in a compartmentalized facility. That's what skiffs are or you're using, you know, top secret phones, whatever it might be. And there's lots of ways that this happens, right? I've described this in the Pentagon, you know, even within the Pentagon, which is itself equipped with a whole lot

of signal jamming capabilities once you walk in that building. Within that, there are layers of secrecy. There are rooms that are more secret than others all the way to the tank, which is itself a skiff, the most, you know, the most secure communication spot where the joint chiefs and military leaders can communicate, you know, around the world. Even in aircraft, I've been in plenty, you know, this is not the secret when you, when you are a reporter and you travel with a, like the chairman of the joint chief, the secretary defense, a combatant commander, if you're on a military cargo plane, Within that cargo plane, there will be an old-fashioned airstream trailer, which is itself becomes a communication pod. You know, these are senior authorities who have the capabilities wherever they go,

especially someone like the Secretary of Defense, who is involved in all the way up to coordination of nuclear strikes, right? The plane that he flies in is hardened famously to fly around the world and be protected from electronic signal jamming and spying for that reason alone. Right. So, yeah, there's a lot there. So it actually brings me back to, and I'm going to get to the Espionage Act in a second, but it brings me back to Signal. What are the reservations of Signal? I mean, I mentioned it before when I was doing the intro, how it has been used before, maybe to schedule some sort of meetings, it has been used by government officials,

but is it more susceptible to hacking? I mean, clearly, it's a platform that allowed a civilian, a reporter to come on and seemingly nobody knew about it until after the fact. But talk to me about the dangers of using Signal. Has it been hacked before? Is there a danger of being hacked? Because again, the idea is the information could have gotten into the wrong hands. I think we're all learning a lot about Signal real fast more than we realize. I mean, I've used Signal as a reporter for many years. I also used to use Wicker. That was a real popular one for a while that's kind of fallen out of favor. And the idea was, you know, this is how a lot of reporters have it in their profile. If you want to communicate to me secret information or you're concerned about it, you can contact me this way. It's not my email. It's not my phone. This is how we can communicate securely. It's like using protons. for as a secure version of Dropbox, you know, for documents as well.

That's different than U.S. government officials, and again, there are laws on the books dictating how you are supposed to communicate. What we've, a lot of this did not know, I think, was what's been revealed in that first hearing with Tulsi Gabbard and Ratcliffe saying, Ratcliffe saying, hey, I got to the CIA and they put signal on my computer. So if CIA thinks it's okay, it's fine. Now, there are immediately a ton of questions. Intelligence reporters are putting out there saying, well, which computer?

was it? Was it your normal one? Was it your one you travel with? Is it your high side? Real secure one? Because that's a whole different computer. Who knows? But what it definitely revealed was that this group of national security leaders was using Signal. They were using it willfully and easily, and it seemed like they'd been using it for a long time. Nobody was new to this system. And now we're hearing reports that my administration officials also were using signal. We don't know to what extent. We don't know whether they talked about things like war plans and attacks or if they were just using it to talk about, you know, where to go next, you know, what they wanted to eat for lunch. You know, lots of people use signal as their

primary texting platform. They just don't want to be on the main text. They don't trust the system. Who knows? So we're learning a lot about it. I do know in the last couple months, the National Security Council put out a specific warning that signal was hackable. The Defense Department put out warnings to the duty personnel troops saying that these encrypted messaging apps are hackable. Do not put them on your phones, your government phones, especially. You're not allowed to do that. So warnings have been put out within the last few weeks about this app being, you know, not being secure for any reason, much less, again, a strike. And this now brings me to something that you mentioned before. You said willfully, intentionally.

So now it goes back to the Espionage Act and a lot of conversation about the espionage act. And as part of the statute, other than intentional wrongs, there is the following section. Whoever being entrusted, I'm reading in part, whoever being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document or plan or information relating to the national defense through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust. Do you think that this current situation falls into this? Because that becomes a prime conversation.

With the major caveat, again, if I'm not a lawyer or a judge, I understand, I understand. Boy, it sounds, it sure sounds like it. You know, I've also been catching up like everyone on the Espionage Act. The best part of being a Pentagon reporter is, you know, tomorrow we'll be reporting about China, and the next day we'll be reporting about Ukraine. And today, it's the Espionage Act. And, you know, there are a lot of experts that are telling the world right now, the use of the expeonage usually requires intent because it's so broad. And Josh Gerstein, that Politico is a great legal reporter to follow. about this, is saying it's so broad that it actually potentially creeps into free speech.

Now, in this case, I don't think anybody would argue based on those texts that anybody was intentionally trying to reveal this information. Correct. But that's fine. There's no intent. Is it sloppy? Of course it's sloppy. Is it doing things like not protecting the last part of the phrase you wrote?

100%. Now, this is where you go back to the parsing of was, you know, we're Tulsi and again, Radcliffe, lying before by saying they're not plans or they're not war plans so they're trying to say these aren't plans this isn't classified information but according to the phrase you're reading it doesn't say that it just says information about national security so that's where you know you're giving up to get really in the weeds to say what kind of information was this and how was it you know if it wasn't protected then you know who did it what should happen now the the main text in that in the chain that we've seen copied from, you know, when Jeff Goldberg released, is the one from Pete Hegset that includes

all the timestamps. It looks like a cut and paste. And if it is, plenty of folks who have Pentagon experience, you know, and former officials and workers, I've been putting out all over the social media saying that looks like it's copied directly from a top secret or some kind of SCI document, the way that it's formatted, the way it looked, right? It looks like an itinerary. He doesn't like typing it up. Does it even matter if he was looking at it and typing it or if he was copying and pasting it, he's sharing it, he's spreading it, and he's doing it in a way that's on, you know, that's not classified. By the way, two things that.

Number one, yeah, I think it's just the more the use of the signal system where it created a situation where you could have a civilian have access to it is more problematic than somebody inadvertently being added to the group. Let me just ask you real quick. As a journalist, it's interesting Jeffrey Goldberg had first said, you know, I'm going to try to do the responsible thing. I'm not going to publish this. And yet was his hand forced where he felt like.

He had no choice because he was being accused of making something up because between Monday and then Wednesday, the national security concerns he would have had didn't really change. Do you think by releasing this information in the end that is problematic for our country, problematic to our military? I mean, do you think it was the release of information that shouldn't have been released in the end? I don't. I understand, I question why he held it all back to me.

begin with, like eventually other than the one thing that they've kept secret is the name of the chief of staff of CIA director Ratcliffe because you don't reveal that's just typical practice is not to, you know, most of what's cover and reveal someone like that, put them at risk. But even reading like the timestamped, you know, text from Hegset, nothing there's surprising, like it was F-18s. And, you know, the living missing was like the name of the carrier, I think, you know, it was where these things came from. And if it's after the fact and the mission is done and the mission is over, I mean. Okay. I don't know. Yes, it's worth hiding that because you know there are going to be more strikes and that's the way they're going to come. So you don't want to reveal that as well. It gets pretty technical. What I have set up to this is I appreciate a lot of the world saying credit to Jeffrey Goldberg for withholding this information and not just dropping it all out and endangering people. My response is, yes, I'm glad Jeff did that. But that's kind of what defense reporters and national security intelligence reporters do every day. Every day, reporters like us like me when I was doing it more would get and would be involved in secret.

service classified or sensitive information of all kinds. When you're a reporter and you're asked to travel with the Secretary of Defense on a trip, the entire itinerary is sensitive. You're not, you don't reveal it ahead of time. You don't say where you're going. You certainly don't like put it on a text to your wife back home, especially during the war years when we were all going in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq and going going into four deployed bases. There's plenty of information shared with journalists. It's kind of an unwritten pact that you're going to keep the secrets because we're all doing our jobs. And real quick, you know, Caroline Leavitt, who is the White House Press Secretary, she announced that the National Security Council, the White House Council's

office, Elon Musk team, they're all going to be investigating this. What do you anticipate will come from this? I wish I could say I trust that that investigation and in any other presidency, I would. The National Security Council is not all political appointees. These are career officials from lots of agencies tasked together. And you would hope, that there is a fair investigation. At the same time, like in anything else, we appreciate the internal investigation. We want an external investigation, especially Congress. It's their job to conduct oversight for these functions. And so a lot of us are really eyeballing, number one, the Center Armed Services Committee, where Wicker has said they want to investigate. They've now

sent an official letter calling on the NSC, or calling on DOD to investigate, but we need more. We need more than just that. So I appreciate the NSC doing their due diligence, and I hope they will give us a full report that has zero redactions in it or as little as possible. I don't know what Elon Musk has to do with this at all. I don't understand why his name is even brought up, but there's a lot of reasons why he's, you know, why his name is brought up with the Trump administration these days. But, you know, and the FBI should be involved, the Justice Department should be involved. They're the ones who grant secrecy and classified, you know, status and have that kind of

preview as well. So I welcome every and all possible investigations to explain how this happened. Kevin, before I let you go real quick about the content of the communications, the content of how the strike was planned, how Heggseth was communicating about it. I thought it was a really interesting back and forth between him and Vice President J.D. Vance about what the effect of this could be on Europe and using that as a consideration. Real quick, before I let you go, what were your takeaways from the actual content of these communications that were released by the Atlantic. Well, that part was really interesting because it was the political part.

It was a little weird to see in a string of information being shared saying that there are strikes are imminent within two hours, that the vice president at the second to last hour, raising a red flag about the politics of it. And even to the point of saying, this might go against the president's own policy with the president wants. So lots of folks have pointed that out that this reveals that the team is not on the same page necessarily. At least they weren't on the same page long before this mission was greenlit as you would expect a team like that should be. So that's one thing. The other part was at the end

of that thread was the notes that came from SM, which is believed to be Stephen Miller, saying, we need to make sure that we're getting something in return from the Europeans basically for doing their job for them. And the others on that call having to correct him saying, well, the appearance can't do this capability, which has become like a hit on the Europeans, but you can put a pin on that. No other country can do these capabilities, mainly because the United States is the one that has things like aircraft carriers and refueling air tankers who can refuel the, you know, the strikes that happen, even if there are like French planes that do it, they need American refuelers. That's just kind of, that's the way that Europe and the United States and NATO have

designed their joint capability or combined capabilities. So I think it just shows a lot of the amateur hour of these officials who have no experience at the executive senior level of national security being put through an early test and failing it in so many ways. Kevin Barron, Thank you so much for taking the time. I really, really appreciate your expertise on the subject matter. I think it was very illuminating for me, for our audience, about what to make sense of this. Really, thank you so much. And thank you for the work that you do.

You're welcome. Appreciate it. All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.

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