Name: Decoding “Signalgate”: US War Plans Leak | Geeta's World, Ep 121
Uploaded: 2025-05-23T15:20:18.000Z
Duration: 22 min 31 s
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To-infinitive

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who was included, who was, a request was sent to him by none other than Mike Walsh, the National Security Advisor himself, to join a Signal group.

This can't be true, that you have Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Ratcliffe, all of them on this chat.

And then the conversation went on to talk about a war plan, an attack plan.

It had an entire spreadsheet of the kind of weapons that they're going to use.

Hello, and welcome back to Geeta's World.

I'm your host, Shashank Matthew, sitting down as we try to do every week with Geeta Mohan, the foreign affairs editor of India Today.

It's the podcast where we sit down, reflect on the biggest news story of the week, and try to break down what it all means.

And of course, it had to be the story, Signalgate, the big, of course, intelligence scandal that's broken out in the United States, where a journalist, a editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, which is an American newspaper, was added to a secret messaging chat with very, very senior members of the Trump administration, including the Vice President, the Defense Secretary, the Secretary of State.

And this journalist was privy to war plans, including American attempts to strike Yemen and the Houthi rebels.

There are lots of questions about national security, intelligence, and incompetence, perhaps most starkly on behalf of the Trump administration.

So I'm going to start by asking Geeta Mohan to perhaps explain to us, what is Signalgate?

Well, for now, I think everybody who tracks and looks at foreign policy, international stories, knows what's happening over here in the United States of America in terms of the signal controversy.

It was, like you said, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who was included, a request was sent to him by none other than Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor himself, to join a signal group.

And then he sees that there are all these names, which are initials, and you know, some are initials, some are names.

And you know that, okay, these are the names.

And he actually thought that somebody was just trying to play a fast one on them.

And this can't be true, that you have Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Ratcliffe, all of them on this chat.

And then the conversation went on to talk about an attack plan attacking Yemen.

It had an entire spreadsheet of the kind of weapons that they're going to use, and the time, all of that.

But I like how Jeffrey himself has sort of explained the story in two very important words.

He says, you know, the cavalier attitude of the officials, because you just added someone, nobody bothered to check this JG initials are meant to be for.

And then, when he saw all this, and the chat stopped, he quietly removed himself.

And then he says, the other way of defining the entire bunch of people is absolutely, he said, to put it politely, incurious, that you added me, and nobody noticed is one thing.

The gentleman just left the group, you're seeing the some JG has left the group, and nobody followed up.

He said he was waiting outside a mall to see what's happening.

But to confirm his story, he then wrote to every individual on the group separately.

And while they're all denying it, and they're saying that thing confidential, he himself says that the Department of Defense were they were quite professional about it, because they did write back saying that no, this is this was an official group.

And we are trying to figure out how you added to it.

And of course, the questions and incurious and curious.

But then the big question is, what does that mean for United States national security?

The reporter, of course, the journalist in question, removes himself from the group, of course, has all this information, all of those chats have many of the chats have come out.

Some of those chats are, of course, being held by Jeffrey Goldberg himself, because they may include classified information.

But lots of questions now being asked about the fact that look, this is Signal, this is a commercially available chat app, it may be secure, but it's not as secure as a government secure communications website, which is how some of these meetings are supposed to happen.

You're supposed to if you're discussing sensitive intelligence matters, you're supposed to meet in the situation room of the White House and have these conversations.

And a lot of people are saying that, look, everyone knows that there are signals intelligence officers, including Republicans, Republican representatives, I was reading one who's been in the army, who's a signals intelligence officer, and was saying that, we know for a fact that Russia and China are going to be surveilling or trying to hack apps like Signal, and they could have...

And they could have serious information about the devices that these top American officials are going to be using.

So there are a few important security issues over here, Shashank, but we will talk about that.

First, what we should be doing is listening into what the Senate hearing...

They tore into everybody, but what comes out of it are a few very important things.

Two things, they said that, one, how are you on a signals group?

Secondly, are you allowed to have a signals group for confidential conversations, especially operational information or plans?

To which Tulsi Gabbard and the CIA director said that, well, signals is allowed.

And then the second thing they've said, this is at the Senate hearing, that no classified information was shared on the group.

So let's just listen to what happened, and then we'll come back.

There was no classified material that was shared in that signal.

So then if there was no classified material, share it with the committee.

Bobbing and weaving and trying to, you know, filibuster your answer.

Director Gabbard, if this was a rank and file intelligence officer who did this kind of careless behavior, what would you do with them?

Senator, I'll reiterate that there was no classified material that was shared in that...

And if there's no classified materials, share.

Senator, I was on a signal messaging group.

So you were the John Ratcliffe on that chat?

Can I provide some context, Senator, to that?

But I think it's important because at the outset, you made a couple of comments about signal messaging using encrypted apps.

So that we're I was confirmed as CIA director, was signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers.

One of the things that I was briefed on very early, Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of signal as a permissible work use.

Now, of course, Senator Mark Warner, who is, of course, a Democrat said that, look, if there is nothing that is classified in these conversations, release these conversations, let them be publicly available.

If there's nothing classified, put them out.

And if things are classified, then what were you doing on that signal group?

Yeah, the conversation and you put out an entire plan.

So if they have to release it, they'll have to release all the things that were said and shared, which included the entire plan.

It had the plan of what time, what is going to take off, which area is going to be bombed when, it had a detail of what weapon systems are going to be used for this attack.

Especially because, you know, what I've seen is that, you know, some of the reporting coming out of the American media has been absolutely damning, because it's going after each and every single one of the people involved in these meetings and saying that, look, you have in the past, attacked the past democratic administrations, your political opponents, Hillary Clinton, saying that you guys have used private service, you're endangering national security, heads must roll.

Now people are citing those very same quotes back to them and saying, National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz.