During his first campaign, Donald Trump changed the tidal wave of victory of Hillary Clinton in his direction. This was achieved when he brought out the fact that a few thousand documents were unaccounted for from Hillary Clinton’s laptop.
Though an FBI investigation found no evidence of any misgiving, it was too late. Donald Trump had won the election. People ridiculed and judged Secretary Clinton. No one stood with her protecting her. Not even Pentagon.
Now, history repeated itself when top officials of the trump administration shared ultra-sensitive information on a messaging app called Signal. What sealed their fate was when the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to the chat. He bore witness to the debacle.
Jeffrey Goldberg is a journalist for The Atlantic. On March 24, he released the information regarding the group chat. He also said that this was his first-hand experience. By some mistake, he was admitted to a Signal group chat. The chat seemed to be composed of people from Donald Trump’s administration. The chat group had JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and other officials. The story included preparations to conduct airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Goldberg understood the chat wasn’t some kind of complex scam. The attack was actually carried out just hours after he received the communications.
Before Goldberg’s story was published, federal employees were alerted about Signal. According to a department-wide notice, a concern was raised about a “vulnerability” in the software.
For anyone reading this who hasn’t seen the leaked Signal chatroom logs in-question: pic.twitter.com/CY2Mz5bwr3
— 🪓 🇺🇸 Kab 📿 ☦️ (@user45blank) March 24, 2025
This month, Pentagon government employees were cautioned against using the communications software Signal. But it was too little late when it came to war plans.
Signal is an open-source, encrypted messaging app that functions similarly to WhatsApp. It enables phone, video, and instant chat.
Government officials may have believed they could rely on the service for more sensitive material. According to Goldberg, it could be because several journalists use this service. This chat service was popular amongst those who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering.
JUST IN: Pentagon email ordered staff not to use Signal week before bombshell war plans report. Pentagon warned of security vulnerabilities. Further, unmanaged apps such as Signal are prohibited from use for “non-public DoD information.”
Fox News personalities and amateurs. https://t.co/W5oNCv5zld pic.twitter.com/j4YTFvwbCK
— Bryan Dawson🇺🇸 (@BryanDawsonUSA) March 25, 2025
NPR was able to get the notice from the Pentagon. It stated that the Signal Messenger Application has been found to have a vulnerability. The ‘connected devices’ features are being used by Russian professional hacking outfits to eavesdrop on encrypted chats.
The memo also said that Google had discovered Russian hacker groups trying to hack the chat room. These hackers were targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest.
The email further states that employees should be aware of third-party messaging apps. These are allowed by policy for unclassified accountability. However these apps are NOT authorized to process or store nonpublic unclassified information.
Regretfully, the Pentagon email was sent on March 18. It was five days after Goldberg was initially added to the group chat and three days after the assault in Yemen.
Thankfully, Goldberg did not publish the whole chat that included the names and details of several service members.
Your understanding is incorrect. Goldberg did not release all of it. I guess the @CIADirector is giving Goldberg to the go-ahead to publish whatever is alluded to in this paragraph. https://t.co/4IboR9NMxF pic.twitter.com/IqGI5XISaa
— Emily A. The Spirit of Jezebel (@emzorbit) March 25, 2025
According to Goldberg’s piece, there was information in the messages that “conceivably could have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.” He decided not to make the details of those messages public.
However, a similar message was earlier sent in 2023 by Pentagon, too. There is little to no excuse for failing to take the memo seriously. Even after the warning was sent 2 years ago, governmental figures still used the app.
Is it because an earlier warning was sent by Biden’s administration? Is the Trump administration ever going to take responsibility for any of its actions?
