Vienna, Austria—The below opinion piece on the recent discovery and massive failure of U.S. intelligence officials having revealed war plans to a journalist while in sensitive and likely classified discussions on Signal, a mobile phone app. The piece is written by Gregory Cromwell, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired, a Montana UOCAVA voter, resident of Austria, and Member of the Democrats Abroad Global Veterans and Military Families Caucus.
There has been a lot of downplaying of “Signalgate” by the Administration as it attempts to shift focus away from the missteps of its unelected, high level decision-makers, on to a discussion about the semantics of whether the information passed in the chat was “classified” or “sensitive” and whether it was a “war plan” or an “attack plan.” But it is all irrelevant and meant only to distract.
The bottom line is that none of this should have taken place on an unclassified, publicly available chat app. Without this careless, original sin, an uncleared person such as Jeffrey Goldberg would never have been inadvertently included in the chat group.
Here’s why sensitive information should never be discussed on unclassified networks:
- In the short term, broadcasting sensitive military operational details on Signal, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did, could have put American servicemembers’ lives at immediate risk.
- In the medium term, the readout on the effects of the strike that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz posted, could endanger the lives of any human intelligence sources who provided information on the whereabouts of Houthi leadership. It might also negatively affect the future willingness of those, and other, sources to provide further information.
- In the strategic long term, we can expect that such demonstrated careless handling of sensitive information by our nation’s highest ranking national security officials will cause even our closest allies and partners to think twice about sharing sensitive intelligence and law enforcement information with the United States, putting our national security at further risk.
While the President should hold his Cabinet accountable for this unforced error, he is unlikely to exercise any of the options he has available for doing so.
And even in the absence of presidential action, Secretary Hegseth and NSA Waltz owe it to the American public and our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Warriors to show some backbone and take personal accountability for their actions. Instead, they are choosing to lie, omit, and redirect. Shame on them.
U.S. citizens living abroad, both civilian and military, are highly encouraged to check your voter registration status and request your ballot for any upcoming elections in your home voting state that you are eligible to vote in.
The VMF Caucus, proudly consisting of veterans, military family members, and strong allies of veterans and military family causes, has a membership of approximately 1,300 members located in dozens of countries.
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