The Opinions - The Worst Part of Pete Hegseth’s Group Chat Debacle

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

In this episode, the New York Times Opinion columnist David French breaks down the security concerns behind the Trump administration’s military discussions on the Signal app and the consequences such a security breach could have on American safety and military strategy.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm David French. I'm a columnist at the New York Times, and I'm a former JAG officer, an army lawyer. Earlier this week, we found out that Jeffrey Goldberg, who's the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, received an invitation from the National Security Advisor to join a signal group chat. He was put on a group chat with several high-ranking White House officials, and he received several messages discussing plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. He was texting attack plans.

When targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targets, when the next sequence of attacks were happening. So this is an absolutely stunning breach of security. I've helped investigate numerous allegations of class. information, spillages, and I've never heard of anything this egregious. This is extraordinary. There are so many ways in which sharing war plans is among the most egregious forms of security breach.

It's hard to think of a form of security breach that is worse than this. But even aside from that, there is now public insight into conversations that were meant to be private. You have the vice president questioning the judgment of the president. you have the vice president laying into our allies. Now, I know that's something that they do publicly as well, but there's a difference between a public communication and private communication. The private communication was never intended for the allies.

So all of these things are damaging diplomatically. They're damaging politically. They're damaging militarily. And in the worst scenario, they could be catastrophically dangerous for American lives. Now, this should be obvious to people that sharing plans for an attack, hours before an attack, could create problems. But let's get a little bit more specific. So the Houthis could move some of their weapons away from targeted locations. They could move senior officials away from targeted locations so that the strikes are less effective.

They could choose to, for example, launch missiles themselves to attack before they, are attacked, an action that could be incredibly costly in lives and in ships. There have been ships damaged and sunk by the Houthis, so they could launch their missiles. They could move their senior leaders. Now, the administration is saying that there was nothing classified in the chat, that they weren't really war plans, in many ways casting aspersions on Jeffrey Goldberg's integrity. In fact, when Pete Hegseth was confronted with these facts that Goldberg was in the signal chat, that he had put information into the signal chat about military plans, he attacked Goldberg and did not acknowledge his own wrongdoing. But there is not an officer

alive whose career would survive a security breach like this. This is something you know from the very first week that you're a member of the military. You start learning about operational security. officers, this is drilled into them and drilled into them and drilled into them. And those consequences would be instant. Instant relief from command, for example. I have seen this with my own eyes. I have been a part of this process. You would have a relief from command followed by a comprehensive investigation and potentially

criminal charges. In the military, you would be advising an officer to seek counsel, to get a lawyer instantly because the criminal investigation would be equally as instant. In the civilian context, and Pete Hexeth is a civilian, this should be an immediate Department of Justice investigation into how this happened, why there was the use of this signal app, which the Pentagon has warned members of the military against using for DOD business. Why were they using the app?

Who was on the chat? were they posting in it directly? Were they posting through subordinates? How often is a sensitive business being conducted on signal? There are so many questions that arise that the Department of Justice should be answering. And I mentioned criminal charges. Federal law makes it a crime when a person, through gross negligence, removes information relating to the national defense from its proper place of custody

and is delivered to anyone in violation of trust or is law stolen abstract. or destroyed. Now, it's way too soon to say whether Hex's incompetence is also criminal, but I raised that possibility to demonstrate the sheer magnitude of the mistake. A security breach, this significant requires thorough investigation. I can assure you that a signal chat is not the right place to share sensitive information about upcoming American strikes. The White House's spin is laughable. It's weak. Now, they have claimed that there were no actual war plans shared. The attack was totally successful.

It was, I guess, from what I understand, took place during, and it wasn't classified information. So this was not classified. Pete Higgseth has attacked Jeffrey Goldberg, who has behaved incredibly responsibly in all of this. He did not share the national security information that came into his possession. He still has not shared it. This is a very responsible thing for a journalist. to do, but he's been attacked mercilessly. And then they minimize the information. They say it wasn't real war plans. Well, you know, if this is no big deal, if these weren't real war plans, there's move

along nothing to see here, well, they could release what was on the chat so that Americans could see for themselves if this was significant. But so far they're not doing that. The way to handle security breach like this is to immediately, especially in the case of Pete Hexeth, suspend him from his duties pending investigation. I would say the same with the National Security Advisor, who inadvertently brought Jeffrey Goldberg into the chat. You know, the only thing that bars me from saying suspend everyone who's on that chat is you would be hollowing out the administration in a time of real crisis globally. And let's just talk a little bit about credibility and standards. Nothing destroys a leader's credibility with soldiers more thoroughly than hypocrisy or double

standards. When leaders break the rules that they impose on soldiers, they break the bond of trust between soldiers and commanders. So what example has Hegeseth set? That he's politically loyal, but also that he's careless. And when you're careless in the military, people can die. And that's why I say, if he has any honor at all, he will resign. The implications for our national security are grave. And the reason why I say that is I would urge listeners not to look at this incident in isolation. If the present course of action holds, which is the administration tries to brush it off and holds no one to account, then what you've had is a further reaffirmation that the American military is becoming a political military. So you had chairman of the joint chiefs,

leading attorneys in the military, the JAG officers, JAG generals in the military, relieved for political reasons. Then you have the Secretary of Defense retained in spite of the fact that he violated every standard of operational security in a way that would lead any other soldier to face dramatic consequences. He's still in office. And as of the moment of this recording, there seems to be no indication that he's either going to step down or be fired. So what does that say? It says that we're replacing standards of professionalism with standards of political loyalty. I have seen far greater consequences applied to service members for far lesser security breaches than the kind of hand-waving that we're seeing now from the administration where it's minimizing what occurred,

denying that it's significant. This is not the way any other soldier would be treated under similar circumstances. But the rule is there's one standard for MAGA, especially the MAGA loyalists, and there's other standards for everybody else. And if you do that, if you make the American military more political, than professional, then you make the American military more like the Russian military. You make the American military more like the military of totalitarian states. And as fearsome as many of those militaries can look on paper, I guarantee you, political

militaries, pound for pound, are much less effective, much less effective than professional militaries. And that's what some of these stakes are. The stakes are, what are we doing to the very culture of the United States military? Are we telling it that the days of professionalism, are over and the days for political loyalty have begun. and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota.

The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Lacher, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuilowski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.