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This situation is comically stupid, even by the established standards of the Trump admin. I don't even really see much of a problem with them using Signal for sensitive communication, in theory (it's not like they were using Telegram); yes, the government should have its own internal secure platform for something like this but I would not be surprised if, in practice, that secure platform is just "email" which would be such a pain in the ass as to make me sympathetic to the signal-using officials. But, good lord, literally inviting a journalist into your government chat? What??? How did none of them notice he was in the chat? Clown world indeed.
Honestly, I don't buy the theories that this leak was intentional (or at least that the leak was intentional on the part of the Trump admin as an entity, it could've been intentional with the goal of embarrassing them) -- what would they stand to gain? They just look like a bunch of idiots. And the "intentional leak to embarrass the cabinet" theory doesn't make sense either since the invite came from the goddamn National Security Advisor. Therefore I have to conclude that this comes from simple gross incompetence. Defenses of this from sympathetic right-wingers are pretty weak as well, just compare it to the (justified) furor about the Hillary Clinton email server... this might not be worse in terms of practical effect, but that's mostly because the journalist himself chose not to do anything with the information he received until after the strikes took place. I'm a little surprised there isn't even more outcry from Democrats but I guess they don't tend to get riled up about national security the way Republicans do.
If I were President in this situation I would, honestly, fire the guy who invited the journalist on the spot. Everyone else involved here is breaching protocol, yes, and they really should have noticed that "hey, one of these guys isn't a government official", and sure, it's just one simple mistake -- but fat-fingering the invite for a group chat such that you leak the details of an upcoming military operation to the press seems to me to be so profoundly dumb (and utterly oblivious to any notion of OPSEC) as to disqualify you outright from serving in any sensitive position. If he had done it intentionally, this would arguably be treason.
If nothing else, it's terrible PR for the administration. I will be surprised if Waltz keeps his job longer than the next few days, especially given Trump's reputation for turnover.
My conspiracy mind wonders if there’s some secret switch in Signal which only gets enabled (by who?) for journalists, so they can view chats unseen in “spectator mode” for reporting purposes. This would explain why nobody saw JG in the chat. If true, Signal would need to be dumped ASAP by everyone.
Less sensationally, there may be another Jeffrey Goldberg [or (JG) generic user icon] who Waltz meant to invite, perhaps someone with top secret clearance in an intel agency who wasn’t expected to weigh in, but was supposed to stay informed. J is the most common first initial in America, and G is in the top ten last initials: https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2011/01/14/two-letter-initials-which-are-the-most-common.html
Yeah, I think this is plausible. I recall seeing that there is, in fact, a reasonably-high-up intelligence official with initials JG who could perhaps have been an intended invitee, although I can't remember the name off my head. Even so, that's still a very stupid/sloppy mistake to make given the subject matter.
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