Shane Harris
Appearances
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
There's another reason why this was so dangerous that doesn't involve mistakenly adding a journalist to the thread. And that is that while Signal, I mean, you said it's end-to-end encrypted. It's very good and secure that way. That's true. But the device that it's on, right, is your phone.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
And while the iOS system is pretty good, nation states – and here I'm talking about China in particular, which, remember, is behind a recent penetration of the telecom networks called Salt Typhoon – the phone in the pocket of every one of those national security officials must be presumed to be a number one target for a foreign intelligence service. Mm-hmm.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
And there are kinds of malware that they could get implanted on that phone. It could be very expensive, very sophisticated stuff that could allow them to read the messages on the phone as they're being typed. That's why a system like Signal, even though it's good intent encryption, is not approved for sharing classified information because it's on your phone, which can be hacked.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
So there are a couple that it might. Conceivably, it could violate the Espionage Act, which despite the name, it's not just about spying. It's about the handling of what's called national defense information. So if this is considered national defense information, there are provisions of that law governing how you transmit it. Who's allowed to have it?
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
P.S., someone like Jeff who doesn't have a security clearance, not allowed to have it. So now these officials made this known to someone who wasn't cleared inadvertently. So that could be, you know, a mitigating piece of information. There's also a provision of the Espionage Act that governs what's called gross negligence in the handling or more precisely the mishandling of classified information.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
This was the provision that the Justice Department looked at when deciding whether to charge Hillary Clinton for using a private email server. And ultimately they did not. And this provision of the law has only, to my knowledge, been successfully used once to prosecute someone because it's ambiguous. What do you mean by gross negligence? Was it grossly negligent to put it on signal?
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
Was it grossly negligent to add Jeff? The common sense reaction to that might be yes. So that's possible that that could implicate maybe Mike Waltz or Pete Hegseth even under the law. And then there's also the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act. And in this case, I think these text messages are both –
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
Federal records and presidential records because they're coming out of the White House in some cases. And the law says— Literally, one of the participants is the elected vice president of the United States. Another is the White House national security advisor.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
And we quoted an expert in the story, an expert on these laws, who said, look, you know, if it's a presidential record, you have to maintain it. And what that means is in this case, a backup of these messages would need to be sent to some kind of government official account. Mm-hmm. If they were doing that, then they're complying.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
But there are also DOD regulations about not putting classified information on an unclassified system, as clearly happened here as well. So you've got... couple laws, maybe two or three laws, provisions of those laws and regulations that this activity would seem to violate.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
My faults could just call you.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
I think there's that aspect too, which, I mean, there is a little bit of a who among us, right? We've all done this. I mean, not about planning a war, but we know what this is like and how embarrassing and unintentional it can actually be. But what I do think this shows is a level of recklessness.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
There's just no world in which a reasonable person serving these positions would think it's okay to discuss this kind of active operation, I think, in this way. Now, there may be people who would challenge me on that, and there may be people who would say, listen, it's not as bad as it looks. They weren't getting into totally the operational weeds, even though I think they actually were.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
You could make excuses for that. But just as a judgment matter – This was a bad one. It was a bad call, I think, to use Signal in this way. It's not approved for this way. And you can see why it was such a bad call because a horrible accident like this from their perspective can happen.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
But what I also think it reveals, too, and this is important to the policy debate, is there is not agreement in the administration over whether they're doing the right thing with this action. There is widespread agreement, it seems, that they should make the Europeans try to pay for this military action because it's mostly European goods that are moving through this part of the world.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
But when the vice president comes out and says, I disagree, and I don't think that the president understands the implications for this and how it will affect his foreign policy, that's quite striking. And you see in the messages how they're referring back to previous meetings that they had where it seemed to some people in the room like this issue was settled, but apparently it wasn't.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
And they go on this kind of extended debate about, well, should we wait a month? And then Stephen Miller, as Jeff said, comes in and says, no, the president said we're doing this. And so you see that there's not clarity around the president's decision making, around the policy. And that is just to be a fly on the wall for that is extraordinary.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
That's very revealing about the policy process in this White House.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
I mean, what they do is talk about who we're going to bomb and why should we bomb them. They don't do it on signal. And the initial presentation of this that Jeff gave to me, I thought, well, this sounds crazy. Why would they be that reckless? Why would the National Security Advisor set up a group, call it, you know, P.C. Huthi Group, And then start adding these people.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
And it was actually kind of baffling, too, because, again, if this was a hoax, somebody was going to really great lengths to do it, which could happen. I mean, you know, sophisticated operations do happen in the intelligence world. And the question was, of course, like, why? To what end? So where is this going?
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
And then as it went on, I think it became, like as Jeff said, increasingly clear that the needle was moving quickly towards authentic. But my initial reaction as to why it was probably not real was that I couldn't imagine – senior national security officials deciding that it was a good idea to discuss something of this sensitivity where, let's be clear, pilots are in the air.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
They could be shot down. People could be killed. People are going to be killed on the ground. Things are happening very fast. Why would you not do that in the Situation Room? Or in a secure facility. Many of these cabinet officials, by the way, have facilities like that in their house. They can go have those conversations.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
Yeah. So the problem is this. There's a couple of problems. One, it's encrypted, but it's never been approved by the government for sharing classified or what's called national defense information. Now, to be clear, we talked to former security officials, former U.S. officials who said, yeah, we did use Signal in the government.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
We might use it to transmit sort of certainly unclassified, not sensitive information. We might talk around something or like notify someone that you're leaving a particular country. But this level of specificity, actual planning for an ongoing operation, the sharing of intelligence and information about strikes, that is clearly not what Signal's intended for.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
It's very convenient and it is relatively safe. I mean, I know like some officials who've traveled overseas and – conflict zones who use it because they're not near a U.S. embassy, let's say. But it's not meant for this kind of detailed planning, which occurs, as, you know, Mr. Walt said, and the principal's committee level.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
That is done in the Situation Room, or that's done at their various, you know, buildings where these people work.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
So details like the number of aircraft that are involved, the kinds of munitions that are being dropped. Times. Times.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
Specific targets on the ground. Intelligence-related matters relating to the strike and to the targets. Names of individuals who should not – U.S. officials who should not have been put in an unclassified chain because of their status as intelligence officers.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
There's probably six or seven different kinds of information that are arguably implicated under the rules and the law for how you're supposed to handle this stuff.
Radio Atlantic
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Our Editor Their War Plans
Or an Iranian diplomat.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
I think this is likely to confirm for our allies that they were right to be skeptical about this administration's ability to properly handle sensitive information and that they will start pulling back accordingly. I think they already have been. And look, in the two days since this story is broken, I've had a chance to talk to officials in Germany And they're appalled.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
They can't believe this is happening. And they are very candid in saying, you know, this is essentially why we have to rethink whether we can trust this administration. And, you know, what's also so striking to me in some of these conversations is as aghast as they are, they're not actually surprised. It's not that they can't believe that anyone would do this.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
It's more that they think that if anyone were going to do it, it would be people in this administration. Because there's a track record. There has been since the inauguration. There's a track record in Trump's first term. So, you know, people are... Und wie alle von uns, lachen sie. Es gibt einen tiefen Comic-Thread zu dieser Geschichte. Keine Ahnung.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
So viele Memes. Die Memes waren großartig. Es war eine der besten Teile. Aber sie nehmen es auch wirklich ernst, weil sie jetzt einen echten Beispiel haben, Beweis, dass Informationen über Bandits verbreitet werden.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
in this way and you know i was talking to someone just recently you know who said so are we to assume that you're going to take the intelligence that we give you from our country and you're also going to be sharing it with people over signal because that's not okay right okay so that's the situation with historic allies what about america's adversaries what kind of conversations do you think are happening right now in north korea and china
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Um, I think, you know, again, aside from the comedy of it, um, look, we have...
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
These individuals, particularly the very senior members of the administration, the DNI, the CIA director, the Secretary of Defense, and include their senior aides, already are presumably at the top of the target list for foreign intelligence services to try and get information on them, compromise their electronic devices.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
What I'm afraid this episode will show to those foreign spy agencies is that that work of spying on our officials might be easier than they had thought it would be. And I don't think we should presume for a minute that all of the phones that were used in this signal chain are 100% secure. I'm not saying I know them not to be, but I would not presume that they are.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
I think that there is kind of a pattern of sloppy behavior by senior members of the administration with... wie sie Briefungen mit den Leuten, die sie um sie herum haben, machen, und ob diese Leute die entsprechenden Kommunikationssysteme, die sie benutzen, gereinigt haben. Ich denke nicht, dass wir diese Signalgruppe als Ein-und-ein-Gruppe beurteilen sollten.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Ich denke, dass dies ein Illustrativ eines Behalts und einer Praxis ist, das wir in Januar gesehen haben, seit Präsident Trump im Einsatz war.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
We've talked before and I've written before about the counterintelligence and security risks that happen or get created when people from the Doge service start barging into agencies and mucking about in computer systems that they don't really understand and the way that they can expose information or make it more vulnerable.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
So I think about that and other threads that I'm kind of pulling on and say the way to think about the Houthi PC small group signal scandal is as part of a whole pattern of behavior, not as something that happened in isolation.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
My reaction was, well, if what we're looking at in these texts isn't classified information, then maybe I don't know what classified information is. I've been doing this a while. And look, I don't understand their argument here. This information is presumptively classified, and I don't think you have to take my word for it. You can actually go look at...
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
DOD-Regelungen und Intelligenzregelungen, die online vorhanden sind. Und es gibt hilfsvolle Tafeln, wo in einer Kolumne die Beschreibungen der Art von Informationen gelistet werden und dann ihre relevanten Klassifikationsstatus, wo sie gesetzt werden sollten, und es gibt auch Vielen Dank.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Well, since that response, The Atlantic published the text of the Signal Chat, including information that was previously left out of Monday's story.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Well, there were two things that were that we were deceiving the public. That if the public saw them, they would see that actually, you know, Jeff and the editors of The Atlantic were lying to them about what they really said. And so I think that we felt an obligation in that way, too, to show people, look, this is what is in these messages.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
You can decide for yourself if we're being honest with you. And by the way, this is everything that the president says is unclassified and his top advisors say is unclassified.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Denken Sie es so an. Die Information wird klassifiziert. Ich spreche von der Information... Es kann alles sein, und die Regierung klassifiziert viele Dinge. Sie wird klassifiziert aufgrund der Schäden, die erzielt werden würden, wenn die Information öffentlich veröffentlicht wurde. Es gibt also verschiedene Ebenen der Klassifikation. Es gibt das Geheimnis. Darüber gibt es das Top-Geheimnis.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Darüber gibt es das Top-Geheimnis, das SCI. Und auch innerhalb dieses Ebenens gibt es verschiedene, was wir Informationen-Komponenten nennen. Es ist also Informationen, die nur denjenigen bekannt sein können, die in einem bestimmten Gefängnis gelesen werden müssen. Das sind also wirklich supergeheimnisierte Dinge, wenn man sich daran erinnert.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Und diese Labels werden auf Teile von Informationen gelegt, damit die Leute in der Regierung, die diese Informationen behandeln, wissen, wie man sie behandeln kann, wie viel man sie beschränken kann, wer sie sehen kann. Es ist im Grunde ein Kodingsystem, das, wiederum, basiert auf dem Schaden, das gemacht werden würde, wenn es außerhalb dieser geschlossenen Räume bekannt wäre, die es kennen müssen.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
So, who decides when information is classified? Senior level government officials often have that authority. Secretaries of defense, of state have what's called original classification authority. Pete Hegseth can mark something classified if he wants to. He can also begin the process to declassify something if he wants to do that.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Und das ist wirklich, ich meine, meistens etwas, das auf einer Agenzie- oder Department-by-Department-Basis gemacht wird. Also kategorisiert die Defense Department alle ihre klassifizierte Informationen und die CIA macht das Gleiche für ihre klassifizierte Informationen. Und es ist wirklich einfach, ich meine, wenn wir über etwas sprechen, das klassifiziert wird,
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Usually what it really means at base is it's sensitive. It's information that the agency doesn't want a lot of people to know about or doesn't want people outside the kind of cleared circle to know about. That's probably the best way to think about it.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Ich würde mir vorstellen, dass sie top-secret waren. Das heißt nicht, dass das der größte, größte Geheimnis ist, aber ich würde mir vorstellen, dass sie zumindest top-secret waren, weil du über Informationen sprichst, über einen militärischen Angriff, der gerade stattfindet.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Hegseth teilt Dinge wie die Zeit, in der die F-18s laufen werden, wann sie ihre Waffen lösen werden, was die folgenden Angriffe sein werden, von welchen Flugzeugen, welchen Waffen.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
This is sensitive information because if this fell into the hands of an adversary, the adversary is going to know how to try to avoid the attack or potentially launch a counterattack, which then that could also jeopardize the lives of US forces who are already flying into harm's way because the Houthis have anti-aircraft capabilities. They can try to shoot these planes down and we know that.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
So why would you want information like this? Ja, genau. So this is why Signal is not well suited for sharing this kind of information. Talking about things in a more broad sense or unclassified or not highly sensitive information, sure. And lots of officials do that. And there are instances in which that is fine and condoned. But I have yet to find anybody who...
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
who can tell me that this kind of information is fine to share and signal. I just think it's not. And if these officials have made a determination that it is, I think they owe the public an explanation for that. Instead, what they've done is insist it's unclassified, which implies it's not terribly sensitive, and they've attacked us for reporting about it.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Ja, ich denke, wenn man den Hillary-Clinton-E-Mail-Server auf einer Seite der Schwierigkeit betrachtet, also auf der niedrigeren Seite, das ist nicht unbegründet, das möchte ich aufmerksam machen.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Und dann gibt es Donald Trump, der klassifizierte Dokumente zu Mar-a-Lago nimmt, für die er verurteilt wird, auf der hohen Seite der Schwierigkeit, weil hier sprechen wir über Schuhe aus Papier, klassifizierte Dokumente in einem unabhängigen Ort, wo viele Leute darüber reden. I think that this signal chat falls somewhere in the middle of that and maybe closer to the Hillary Clinton email side.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
And the reason I say that is because, look, if Jeff had not been in the room. It's possible that these would have been the only people who knew about it. So that's to some degree, as in to say these officials, who are all cleared to have this information, by the way. There's no question that they're allowed to see what was in the room.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
It's a question of the way it was transmitted and the risk that goes with that. There is the obvious risk that, you know, someone could be in the room that wasn't supposed to be there. But there's another risk that we haven't talked about, which is that the devices themselves, the phones, on which signal is running for these 17 or so officials,
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Could those phones have been compromised by a foreign government or by a criminal group?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Could they be hacked, exactly. And if they were hacked, that means somebody could theoretically be reading the messages as if they were standing there holding the phone themselves. And this is not theoretical.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
The government, just in recent days, has put out guidance to people who are using Signal, including officials who are using it, warning them about the vulnerabilities that Signal has to foreign intelligence services. And there are questions about, was signal running on these officials?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Government phones, which we would hope have a pretty high degree of security, or their personal phones, which are under their personal recognizance. That might not be as secure as a government phone. So that, I think, tilts it a little more towards the severe side. But I think it's in the middle of those two scandals.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
The typical response to this would be, I think it would be twofold. One, I think the officials would be humiliated. They'd be highly embarrassed. And if they... were thinking about their reputations, would probably try to come out and maybe try and do something to soften the blow, but essentially take responsibility for it.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
I would expect in any other administration, the national security advisor probably would have offered the president his resignation, and the president might have taken it. The other thing that would happen here is that there would be an investigation, and probably the FBI would do that investigation. The reason for that is...
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Although this is a very novel example of a classified leak, putting aside that the government says it's not classified, it's still a leak, it's still a leak.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
And when there is sensitive information that falls into the hands of people who aren't supposed to have it, the FBI usually investigates that, particularly if, you know, it's publicly known in this case, but if the agency is in question whose information was implicated, what they would normally do is refer that to the FBI and say, we'd like you to investigate this and find out how it happened.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
And then, of course, part of that investigation would be, you know, to determine whether or not there are criminal charges that should be filed. I don't think that's likely to happen in this case. I don't think it'd be likely to happen, by the way, in another administration. The law, this is a strange case.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
I don't imagine anyone would be prosecuted, but they're certainly not going to be prosecuted in the Trump administration.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Now, that's possible. I mean, there's a question of standing, you know, does the plaintiff have standing to bring it? But it's a really, it's a good point that's worth just dwelling on a second. There are two records laws that are implicated here, the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
And in a nutshell, what they require is that if people are going to use a text messaging service or any electronic service for that matter, that's not an official one. It's not like a .gov service. They've got to make a backup of those communications if they are pertaining to official matters.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
CIA Director John Ratcliffe actually was testifying earlier this week and mentioned this very fact as a way of defending themselves. More with Shane Harris after the break.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Do people want to make a Houthi PC small group chat room too?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
I think people, what I'm hearing is a mix of people being appalled, outraged. A lot of, if I had done this, I'd be fired. If I had done this, I would be investigated and indicted. There's a real sense of anger, I think, at what people see as the hypocrisy of these officials.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
And sort of having a fine for me and not for thee attitude when it comes to what is ultimately just a really reckless use of technology, I guess. Really don't think there's any way around that.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
And I think a real sense too among people, including people who don't work in the government who I've talked to, that a real feeling that nothing will happen as a result of this and that no one will be held accountable and that that's a real shame.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
I think that's reasonable and I presume it's not the only one. And the reason I do is because in this whole conversation that we're watching them have, not one person says, hey, should we be doing this on Signal? Why did you add me to this group? Wait, why are we doing this on a text thread? Everyone behaves as if this is perfectly normal.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
And to my knowledge, at least in previous administrations, it is not normal. That suggests to me that These people have either done this before or no people have done it before.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
I think that has been a question that has been simmering for a lot of the country's allies since even before the election, when they looked to the possibility that Donald Trump might come back to office. How much could they trust the United States to be A reliable partner in protecting secrets, protecting intelligence that they might share.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
I should say it wasn't like a five alarm fire kind of worry, but people were really starting to ask this because Donald Trump had a history of disclosing other countries' information, disclosing the United States' own secrets in some cases, and notably was criminally charged for mishandling classified information.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
So I think with his election, those anxieties rose, and now what we're seeing is kind of compounding that is this even more
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
I might even say kind of existential question of not just can we count on the allies saying, not just can we count on the United States to protect our information and be a good security partner at the kind of tactical level, but can we count on them to be a good partner strategically at all anymore? And I think all of these questions are kind of colliding right now and really undermining reality.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
What had been decades of confidence that European allies in particular had had in the United States, regardless of whether a Republican or a Democrat was sitting in the Oval Office.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Yes. So the most important intelligence sharing arrangement that the United States has is something that is referred to as the five eyes. And that refers to five countries, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, that have this longstanding kind of pact where they share highly sensitive intelligence and information online.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
auf einer Routinenbasis mit einander, die Interesse auf ihre gemeinsame Sicherheit haben. Und wirklich die großen, großen Spieler in diesem Bereich sind oft die Vereinigten Staaten und das Vereinigte Königreich. Um euch ein Beispiel zu geben, wie nahe wir Informationen mit den USA teilen,
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
When it comes to signals intelligence, which is like electronic eavesdropping, intercepting emails and other digital communication, the physical infrastructure, you know, literally like the technology, the kit that these two countries rely on, is intertwined in some locations. It is that closely connected. Vielen Dank.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Maybe on a less exclusive, maybe a bit more restricted basis, but certainly shares with other NATO allies, you know, France, Germany. The United States, you know, for decades has depended extensively on German intelligence to tell us information about terrorist organizations and particular threats that are brewing in Europe that might be of interest or a threat to the United States.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
So this is the kind of, you know, on the ground, if you like, level of sharing that goes on just routinely. And it happens importantly via channels and via career employees that are in place regardless of who the heads of government, the heads of state are in the various member countries.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
I've always loved it because, you know, they're all watching. And importantly, I should say, it's interesting to follow on that. In The Five Eyes, in that agreement, what's important too is they do not spy on each other. Right. That is something that's also very special to the relationship in those five countries.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
I think that's right. And you're right to say that it makes everyone less safe because if any country is holding back on information, arguably that is potentially making everybody less informed and less aware, which could have real world implications.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
And, you know, I should stress that no one has said to me, well, we're just going to stop sharing information with the United States because we don't trust you. The real concern now is that A, the United States might just start cutting off information flows to other countries. We did see this week, the Financial Times had a very interesting report that Peter Navarro, who is sort of a...
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
kind of an aid to donald trump who is known for saying some pretty outlandish things i should say was raising the idea that canada should be kicked out of the five eyes arrangement and presumably this is some kind of coercive measure that would be used to try and get more favorable trading terms from canada Now, Navarro came out and said there was nothing to this. It was a made-up story.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
But we have heard rumors of this. I've heard chatter about it before, about whether or not Trump was considering doing that. The mere idea that the United States would be using Five Eyes membership and kind of access to national security intelligence to protect the country's citizens as a coercive measure to try and get more favorable trading terms –
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
You know, strikes people I've talked to as appalling, but totally in keeping with what they would expect Donald Trump to do, which tells you just how far we've deviated from the norm.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
That's definitely on people's minds. You know, there was a famous incident in the first year of his first term where he seemed to disclose a top secret source of information we were getting from Israeli intelligence during a meeting he had with two Russian officials, which didn't go over great.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
So there is that kind of general concern about Trump himself and the people around him being very leaky and using intelligence in a way that is to their own benefit and interest. That's been a worry. Another, I think, less appreciated concern has been this intelligence-sharing relationship.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
While it is ostensibly a two-way street, really it's the other four or five eyes that are depending on the United States for most of the information. I mean, the British Security Service, while very capable, is much smaller. Vielen Dank.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Which routinely shares information with the Five Eyes partners as they're going through this sort of chaotic period where they're being taken over by political loyalists like Kash Patel and Don Bongino, the new deputy director. And Trump has gone through and fired these sort of upper echelons of the career establishment or is trying to.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Those are the people, the individuals with whom these different allied countries interact with on a regular basis. And some of them have said to me, look, you know, while you guys basically, you know, can't get your stuff together and you're kind of in chaos, we worry that that's going to have a downstream negative effect on us because you're so distracted.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
By politics and internal witch hunts and, you know, personnel matters that maybe you're taking the eye off the ball and we're not getting the usual high quality of intelligence that we depend on.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
I think that there is. I don't think that, certainly intelligence officials I speak to aren't quite there yet in proposing it. But there is a, everyone is aware that the nature of the alliance is shifting and perhaps not irrevocably, but at least for the foreseeable future.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
You know, if you take some intelligence agencies in Europe right now, take, you know, take the British intelligence service and the security service right now, for instance, they have been very aggressive in und viel mehr an der Frontlinie der Aktion in der Ukraine als in den Vereinigten Staaten.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Sie haben bestimmte Fähigkeiten und Netzwerke und Informationen erweitert, die ihnen sehr nützlich sind. Die europäischen Länder, die UK beteiligt sind, sehen die Bedrohung von Russland, denke ich, anders als die Amerikaner. Sie sehen es als etwas, das sehr viel in ihrem Hintergrund liegt.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Und deswegen denke ich, dass sie mehr Ressourcen anbieten, um ihre eigene Intelligenz auf Russland zu steigern. Und könnte das sie in eine Richtung drücken, in der sie vielleicht sagen, wir müssen uns weniger auf die Vereinigten Staaten abhängig machen und unsere eigenen Fähigkeiten steigern und uns mit einander teilen? I think that's quite possible.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
What the United States has to offer is, you know, technical reach. I mean, we're talking about electronic information. We're talking about just a constellation of satellites that can capture imagery and all kinds of other information. So the United States still has that bulk and has those numbers.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
But that does not mean that these other countries can't develop even more specific and tailored ways of collecting information that suit their own interests equally. and make them less dependent on the United States. I think that could happen.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Well, I mean, look, count me on the side of people who believe that the alliances have been very much in the interest of the various members and, you know, that this information sharing is just kind of a, it's a culture that now pervades among these countries. There's a belief that
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
More sharing, you know, and a kind of mutual, not dependence, but, you know, this feeling of we're all in it together is generally good for the collective whole. I don't want to overstate this. The United States is the dominant intelligence force in the West. Could it go off on its own and probably be okay? Yeah, it probably could be for the near term.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
But you never want to be missing that one key piece of information that tells you about, you know, a bigger threat. And I just don't see any reason particularly other than, you know, Trump being Trump, why we need to blow up those alliances. But, you know, this is where we are right now, isn't it?
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
I think that they hear that and honestly they think, we've heard this before. You know, everyone talks a lot about, you know, the J.D. Vance's speech in Munich and some of the statements that Donald Trump has made about Zelensky being a dictator and this affection for Putin. And all of this has been happening in the past month. My mind goes back to 2018 when...
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki. And listeners may remember the question of Russia's interference in our elections in 2016 came up and Trump, in front of the audience, in front of the world, said that he believed Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies when Putin said that Russia didn't interfere in the election. And I think that was as stunning of a moment as
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
of a kind of a single jaw-dropping moment as I can remember in my career covering intelligence, that the President of the United States was standing there next to an ex-KGB officer and saying, I believe him and not the U.S. intelligence community. Our allies heard that, and really ever since then, you know, when I talk to people, you get a range of opinions from... Ja. Ja. Ja.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
as a significant problem. And it's one that they have to manage. So what they're hearing from him now with this affection for Putin is not new. The difference is that now Trump is actually breaking these alliances with the West. And he is talking about a settlement in Ukraine that does not necessarily appear to be either in the interests of Ukraine or other European countries.
Radio Atlantic
The Five Eyes Have Noticed
And that has intelligence officials in Europe extremely nervous.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
The book that really hit me as a high school student was Franny and Zoe by J.D. Salinger, which I read the summer of my junior year. I was at this kind of like nerd camp where you go and live on a college campus for six weeks and take classes because that was something that overachievers thought was a fun thing to do with their summer.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
And it was in a course on postmodernism, and we read Franny and Zoe.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
It did sort of like open my eyes to a whole different way of thinking about spirituality that was not, at least it seemed to me when I read it, was not rooted in the kind of faith traditions that I grew up in, like church and, you know, especially growing up in the South, that really I did not take to, that felt kind of almost alien to me, even though the communities that I lived in
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
and people practiced those religions. There was something almost like it was saying, this is a doorway onto something that people might call spirituality without it having to be religion. And I think I was really interested in that as a proposition when I was that age. And the story kind of launched my inquiry into that.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
I was very intrigued by the ideas of Eastern philosophy and particularly Zen Buddhism that come through in that story. And also the character of Franny as this person who is sort of like on the verge of and going through a breakdown. It was something that seemed kind of like literarily romantic about that and compelling as a character. But it was more the themes about Eastern philosophy and
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
but not in the context of faith, more in the context of sort of practice. Like there's a scene, kind of the dominant scene in Franny, because Franny and Zoe is really two stories, where she's reciting this prayer, and it's almost like in the way of kind of like a mantra that she keeps reciting it over and over and over again. And I'd never been exposed to anything like that.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
Being a teenager, it's an especially great time to read books, but also to sort of discover them on their own. I mean, Salinger is kind of this perfect example of, you know, generations of high schoolers read Catcher in the Rye. And I actually came to Catcher in the Rye later in my reading through Salinger. I started with Franny and Zoe, then went to nine stories.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
By the time I got to Catcher in the Rye, it actually felt a little juvenile compared to some of the other stories, which are about people who are, you know, older than Holden Caulfield. But like, it's the perfect teenager book. I mean, it's like everybody's classic experience of reading a book when they're teenagers that really turned them on to reading.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
It's kind of like Catcher in the Rye is one of those books. And being 14 to 17, 18 is the perfect time to be. You're impressionable. You know, you're just starting to play around with life. Ideas that you might want to try to apply to your life, right? Your curiosity has gone from things that are merely novel to things that are more meaningful. I'm Shane Harris. I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Radio Atlantic
The Books We Read in High School (Part 2)
I write about intelligence and national security.