The Consequences of the Signal Breach
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This week, The Atlantic reported that Trump officials shared military-attack plans in a Signal group chat and inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined him to discuss.
In the Trump administration’s insistence that the information in the “Houthi PC small group”—including the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—was not classified, “what these officials would have you believe is that all of this could be made public and there would be no consequence,” the Atlantic staff writer Shane Harris said. In reality, he continued, the breach was “replete with security and policy risks.”
“Had that information fallen into the hands of a U.S. adversary that had been in the group, or had [Goldberg] been a less scrupulous journalist and tweeted it, that information would then be known to the Houthis, who would be able to prepare defenses and a counterattack that absolutely would jeopardize the lives of U.S. forces,” Harris continued.
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times; Laura Barrón-López, a White House correspondent at PBS News Hour; Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker; and Shane Harris, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Watch the full episode here.