Pete Hegseth, Mike Watlz, Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance...and an Atlantic reporter? Lt. Col. Amy McGrath and Former Congressman Denver Riggleman break down why this is SUPER problematic. About Truth in the Barrel: Amy and Denver are both military veterans, political junkies, and whiskey lovers who sit on opposite sides of the aisle but have one thing in common: they love the United States of America. Truth in the Barrel was born of Amy & Denver’s commitment to country, the Constitution, and a well-curated collection of the world’s finest bourbon. Join them weekly for deep dives into timely topics, interviews with recognizable guests, and a dose of call-in fun. Visit TruthintheBarrel.com Subscribe to Truth in the Barrel: / @truthinthebarrel
Full Episode
Welcome, everyone, to Truth in the Barrel Small Batch. I'm Amy McGrath with Denver Rigman, and we are going to talk about the Signal Chat debacle that you have seen in the last few days. And actually, I think this is really important, Denver, for us to talk about. talk about this because you have an intelligence background and I have an operator background.
And both of those things are being talked about right now in different ways regarding this, in my opinion, incompetency that we're seeing from the national security team of our country right now.
Amy, you know, the reason I think we're paired so well together is you were a pilot. You know, I was an intelligence officer who cut my teeth on briefing pilots doing threats as an ops I.N., right, in a fighter squadron, then a bomber squadron, right? So pretty exciting. So great. I have all this experience.
But you have this special, right, sort of thing that I want to tell people about is that you're the first woman, Marine, who flew in an F-18 in combat, correct? That is correct. What's amazing when you're flying into combat, and for me, I've debriefed hundreds of missions, right, whether it's in training or real world.
So the first thing I would ask you, because, you know, me and you both know what air tasking orders are, ATOs. Both of us have done mission planning from using computers all the way to acetate and grease pencils or wet markers. I don't know if you remember those old days, right? Whatever you got in the tent. Whatever you got in the tent, right? We did it. So if I'm asking him, like, you know what?
Guess what, ma'am? I know you're flying into harm's way, but I was happy. You know, I'm on a signal chat or I'm on this other chat. I'm going to think I want to say, tell some of my buddies. It's only an hour before, you know, when time over target is, what your specific target is and the platform's actually flying.
What would you do to an intelligence officer helping you train who is even suggesting that maybe you're I would say publishing your times over target, your IPs, what you're flying, and who your specific target is about an hour before you went out over a non-secure channel. How would you think about that there?
We'd scrub the mission because... Yeah, because you have just risked the entire mission. You've risked our lives. The signal chat thing is personal to me because the pilots that are out there, look, I trained many of them while they were midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy, while I taught there. they're the ones now out doing these missions. And I used to do these types of missions, right?
I had 89 combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, strike missions. The air tasking order, folks, for everybody that's listening, that is the order that has the flight times and the call signs and the strike packages, what aircraft are taking off and when. That order, I have never seen. I have never seen an air tasking order that is not
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