Ambassador Susan Rice Responds to “Signal-Gate"
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What is 'Signal-Gate' and why is it significant?
I'm joined by former Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor, Ambassador Susan Rice. Welcome. We really want your help to help us navigate what's going on with these text messages of war plans that they invited a journalist on in this Trump regime. Let me just share with you what Tulsi Gabbard said during a hearing in the Senate. She said there was no classified materials. I read it. I want to get your take on it, but let's play this clip.
contact the defense secretary or others after this specific military planning was put out and say hey we should be doing this in a skiff there was no classified material that was shared in that so then if there was no classified material ambassador you've been able to see what's been published publicly is there classified information in there and what do you make of her response
It's laughable. Let me explain why I say that, Ben. And by the way, it's great to be with you. Any meeting of the national security principals, this is the cabinet level senior most national security team, and that's what this was. is by definition in itself on almost every possible occasion, those are classified discussions because even the topics that they choose to discuss tells our adversaries something of relevance. So having a meeting of the National Security Council principles is by itself a classified matter. Then next, here we are, talking about whether or not and when and how the United States should attack a foreign adversary. The fact of that conversation and its contents is inherently classified because if an adversary were to have the ability to learn of those plans and intentions in advance, then that adversary could prepare.
both by hardening their defenses or evading attack, but more worryingly, by going after the United States and our assets as we conduct the attack. So military plans and operations are inherently classified. Add to that that we know from Jeff Goldberg's reporting that Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, shared sensitive military plans, including attack targets, timing, sequencing, the ordnance or the bomb types that they were going to use. That is all inherently classified. Tulsi Gabbard is either lying or being deliberately evasive by trying to say no intelligence material was shared. She may be trying to be very cute by half and suggesting that no product produced by the intelligence community, as opposed to the Defense Department, was shared on that chat. We have no way of knowing that. We do know, apparently, that the CIA director exposed a covert operative's name on the chat. That's inherently classified.
But more to the point, then, let me explain how national security decision-making is supposed to work. If you're having a meeting of this National Security Principles Committee, as we call it, it is typically held in person in the White House Situation Room, which is a very secure facility in the basement of the White House. You're not allowed to take your phone into the Situation Room. You're not allowed to take your Apple Watch into the Situation Room. You leave all of that outside because those devices – we know can be hacked by our adversaries and used as listening devices so that the Russians could be listening to everything said in the Situation Room if you brought your phone in. We conduct meetings of the national security principals and deputies in the Situation Room precisely so that we have that kind of secure bubble that can't be infiltrated by our adversaries.
And if the principals individually or collectively are not in Washington, not able to gather in the Situation Room, or maybe it's late at night and they need a way to communicate securely, we have all kinds of setups for that. Every single national security cabinet-level principal, whether you're the national security advisor or the secretary of defense or the director of national intelligence or the secretary of state, they travel everywhere they go with a secure communications package. These are people who set up for them secure phones, secure videos, secure document handling capacity. So that's always with us.
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