WASHINGTON – Americans still do not know how a journalist got added to a high-level national security chat group discussing an imminent strike against Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
But US President Donald Trump is offering no apologies.
Or threatening retribution.
The unprecedented security breach would have had heads rolling in more conventional administrations. It drew an uncharacteristically mild reaction from Mr Trump.
Maybe he can afford to let it slide because 44 per cent of Americans believe that the country is on the right track under him. The last time the number was this high was more than 20 years ago.
Mr Trump stood his ground in the face of accusations from Democratic senators, during a heated intelligence committee hearing on March 25, that the breach was a grave matter which could have endangered national security and American lives.
He defended his National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and said the episode had been “the only glitch in two months” of his administration.
“And it turned out not to be a serious one,” the President declared.
Outrage erupted after Mr Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the left-of-centre Atlantic magazine, revealed on March 24 he was unexpectedly invited to be part of a chat group on the Signal messaging app that was confidentially discussing the March 14 bombings against the Houthis, a group backed by Iran, which the US has classified a terrorist organisation.
Mr Waltz said he took responsibility for the breach, which occurred over the chat group he had created with Vice-President J.D. Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other top officials.
The breach could cast a shadow over Mr Hegseth’s first trip to Asia this week, where he is scheduled to meet his counterparts in Japan and the Philippines.
A White House statement called the outrage over the leak a “coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe”.
Mr Trump disclosed that it was a National Security Adviser staff member who included Mr Goldberg in the chat group. But the inclusion had “no impact at all” on the strike in Yemen, he added.
Without naming the staff member, Mr Trump stressed in a White House briefing and in interviews with American media that Mr Waltz retained his confidence.
“Michael Waltz has learnt a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Mr Trump said, adding that he would not be fired. “I don’t think he should apologise,” he said.
In his article, Mr Goldberg reported on the conversation that he was privy to. “According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1.45pm Eastern Time,” he wrote.
“So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot (on March 14). If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1.55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
“One more person responded: ‘John Ratcliffe’ wrote at 5.24pm with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.”
In their strained testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr Ratcliffe and Ms Gabbard testified that “no classified material” was shared in the chat.
While the Republican senators did not challenge this, the Democrats were incredulous.
“If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behaviour, they would be fired,” said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who serves as vice-chair of the committee.
“This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behaviour, particularly towards classified information.”
Mr Warner said the leak could have cost lives. “If this information had gotten out, American lives could have been lost. If the Houthis had this information, they could reposition their defensive systems.”
His fellow Democrat on the panel, Senator Jon Ossoff from Georgia, called it an “embarrassment”.
“There’s been no apology. There’s been no recognition of the gravity of this error,” he said.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, another Democrat, said: “I’m of the view that there ought to be resignations.”
In contrast, the Republicans in Congress were softer on the White House. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said it could have had grave consequences but refrained from criticising Mr Waltz.
“We dodged a bullet,” Mr Graham said. “I hope we understand what happened and never do it again.”
Mr Trump’s attitude appears to have evolved significantly since his 2016 election campaign when he called for criminal prosecution of his rival Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, for communicating about classified information with her aides on a private e-mail server.
Speaking to The Straits Times, a former senior intelligence officer who served in then President George W. Bush’s National Security Council said there needed to be a fuller accounting of how the breach happened.
“Using Signal for highly classified deliberations violates every rule of national security I was ever taught,” said Mr Dennis Wilder, who is now a senior fellow in the Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University and teaches at the Walsh School of Foreign Service.
He said Mr Waltz stood to lose the most from the episode.
“The individual whom this damages is the National Security Adviser. He or his staff added the reporter to the chat. This shows a high level of incompetence, particularly when dealing with national security. Mr Waltz will need to explain how this happened.”
The episode follows another national security-related embarrassment for the White House when the New York Times reported on March 21 that billionaire Elon Musk, who is Mr Trump’s close adviser, had been scheduled to receive a highly sensitive briefing about top-secret plans for a potential war with China.
The White House denied the news, which had sparked immediate uproar that Mr Musk, a private citizen, would have access to classified information. Critics also said his extensive business interests in China, through Tesla’s manufacturing operations, could lead to conflicts of interest.
The Pentagon has launched a probe to uncover the source of the leaks, which reportedly includes the use of lie detectors.
In contrast, the White House seems to have decided to play down the seriousness of the chat breach.
“One of Mr Trump’s guiding principles is never ever apologise. It’s a sign of weakness,” Mr Wilder said.
Mr Trump’s reluctance to own up perhaps also reflects his popularity, which has not fallen despite controversial policies such as imposing tariffs on trading partners or his threats to annex Canada.
An NBC News poll last week showed that his approval rating is at a personal high of 47 per cent, although still below the 50 per cent threshold.
The White House also draws comfort from NBC findings that the share of voters believing the country is on the right track under his presidency stands at 44 per cent, the highest since 2004.
In comparison, just 28 per cent of polled voters said in September 2024 that the country was headed in the right direction under former president Joe Biden.
- Bhagyashree Garekar is The Straits Times’ US bureau chief. Her previous key roles were as the newspaper’s foreign editor (2020-2023) and as its US correspondent during the Bush and Obama administrations.
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