The CIA chief and the director of national intelligence faced questions about their participation in the Signal group chat during a Tuesday Senate hearing.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard defended their handling of sensitive national security information at a March 25 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, as they faced questions about an apparently accidental leak of details on renewed U.S. strikes on Yemen.
Originally planned as an open hearing on worldwide threats, the Senate hearing came just one day after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported that he
was looped into a group chat with Trump administration officials on the encrypted messaging app Signal. In the chat, according to Goldberg, the officials appeared to discuss a then-forthcoming plan to strike Yemen’s Houthi terrorists.
Goldberg identified users on the Signal chat whom he believed were Ratcliffe and Gabbard, among other officials.
Ratcliffe and Gabbard were both among the intelligence community leaders present at Tuesday’s Senate hearing. Facing questions about the leak episode, both intelligence community leaders said that no classified materials were shared on the chat channel.
During one early exchange, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking member of the committee, pressed both Gabbard and Ratcliffe to confirm they were on the chat channel. Gabbard initially avoided the question, saying she didn’t want to get into the specifics of the episode “because this is currently under review by the National Security [Council].”
In another exchange with Gabbard, Warner asked, “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,” Gabbard said, amid cross-talk from the Virginia lawmaker.
Ratcliffe said he was on the Signal group chat. The CIA director said that the messaging app was loaded onto his work computer shortly after the Senate confirmed him for the intelligence agency leadership role.
“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. It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration,” Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe also said he did not divulge classified information in the Signal chat that Goldberg saw.
“My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group, were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information,” he said.
During his opening remarks, Warner expressed dismay that Goldberg’s presence on the group chat went unnoticed for as long as it had.
“It’s also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line, and nobody bothered to even check,” Warner said. “Security hygiene 101: who are all the names? Who are they? Well, it apparently included a journalist.”
In another exchange with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ratcliffe denied assertions that he had compromised a CIA officer’s cover by naming him in the group chat.
According to Goldberg’s recounting of the episode, several senior administration officials identified their best points of contact for further discussions within the administration. Ratcliffe likewise identified a point of contact, but Goldberg wrote that he chose to withhold the CIA officer’s name from his article. Ratcliffe told Heinrich that the CIA officer in question is not an undercover agent and has routinely “openly and routinely” coordinated as communicated with the White House.
“So the intimation that there was something inappropriate was clearly incorrect,” the CIA director testified.
Heinrich also asked about Goldberg’s claim that the Signal chat conversation included a discussion of specific weapons, targets, and timing of the renewed U.S. strikes on Yemen. Ratcliffe and Gabbard both denied being aware of any such discussions in the group chat.
Speaking with reporters at a stop-over in Hawaii on March 24, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “nobody was texting war plans.”
In an interview with The Bulwark on Tuesday, Goldberg faced questions about whether he would release more of the text conversation to back up his reporting of the incident. The journalist didn’t preclude the possibility.
“Maybe in the coming days, I’ll be able to let you know that, ‘okay, I have a plan to have this material vetted publicly,'” Goldberg told host Tim Miller.
During the hearing, Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) indicated they had their own questions about the Signal chat episode, but would wait until the hearing moved into a closed-door session before raising the issue further.
