No. of Recommendations: 11
While the target seems to be focusing in on Hegseth, I believe the whole use of Signal is one giant clusterF. It was a leak waiting to happen from the very beginning. Here's how.
First off, the name of the group. "Houthi PC small group". If all you intercept is that, right away you know that something is happening regarding the Houthi's. So if you're a foreign adversary you immediately know something is up. If you are affiliated with the Houthis, you can tip them off that the US is up to something. You may not know exactly what is going on, but you can raise your alert level or work harder to crack further into this group.
Lesson: This is why code names exist. It's why the discussions 80 years ago were about "operation overlord" and not "French coastal invasion".
The level of recklessness is already apparent. But it gets worse.
So once you've figured out that this group is an important one, if you can get the very first message, you can still deduce an awful lot. One - that Waltz doesn't know the difference between principles and principals. More importantly, you know that something is going to happen in the next three days. So if you are a Houthi, you can think about changing your activities and routines over the next three days. Work from someplace unusual. Move in disguise under cover of darkness. Use decoys. Get to someplace you don't frequent. And get all of your leadership to do the same.
Those two bits of information alone are sufficient to thwart any attack. And if you are a smart Houthi, you keep this info to the smallest group of people that is practical. The best intercepted info is info that your adversary (in this case the US) doesn't know you have.
Keep in mind that we are only at the creation and naming of the group and the first message. Long before anything really serious was posted. It goes downhill from there.
The names of the people in the group tell you who to monitor. And the listing of contacts tells you who else to monitor, and helps identify who these "principles" are likely to be if you hadn't already figured that out.
On to Waltz with more verbal diarrhea. State and DOD have a notifications list. That says we're looking at military action possibly involving overflights of foreign countries. Joint Staff confirms that this is military in nature.
Vance, Kent, and Radcliffe tell us that there are concerns and the leadership is not entirely on the same page. That means there may be a way to use diplomacy to avoid the attack. (I know - diplomacy is a dirty word in the Trump administration.)
There's more, of course. But I think that an awful lot of info can be gleaned before we even get to Hegseth's absolutely damning breach of security.
And let's remember that this was all ALREADY leaking as the group started when Goldberg was added to the chat. The only thing - the ONLY THING - that kept the operation secure was Goldberg's combination of skepticism and patriotism. He could have gone public with the info immediately, ruining any chance of the operation (whatever he thought it might be at that point) going forward. He could have gone public after Hegseth's timeline was posted, which would almost certainly have put pilots' lives at risk. And he knew that. But going further, once he could figure out the attack was real, he continued to keep silent about it until the operation was complete, making sure that he didn't add to the risk that our armed forces were taking simply by being in the theater.
A leak at any of these points could have been disastrous. And these absolute morons in leadership didn't take the time to stop and think about what they were doing by having these conversations outside of the highly secure government systems.
I've posted Duckworth's take on Hegseth in this incident. I think she was going easy on him, and on the rest of the group by not mentioning them. This is utter incompetence at every level imaginable. None of these people belong in any governmental position of authority. And at least a couple - headed by Hegseth - belong in a courtroom having their potential breech of the Espionage act fully examined.
--Peter
