Completely Insane.........

‘This Is Completely Insane’: A Reality Check About the Signal Chat Leak

A national security insider explains what counts as a war plan and why top officials don’t even need Signal.

By Nahal Toosi

n Washington, there are public meetings, there are private meetings, and now there’s the Signal chat known as the “Houthi PC small group.”

That discussion, as the world now knows, included top Trump administration national security officials as well as Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, who was inadvertently added to the chat and later wrote about the administration’s secret plans to strike targets in Yemen.

The “PC” stands for principals committee, a longstanding institution in Washington. “PC” meetings usually include Cabinet members and top White House officials. They are among the most sensitive sessions held in Washington, typically in the Situation Room in the White House. They are not supposed to be held on chat apps, even encrypted ones such as Signal.

Ilan Goldenberg has served in an array of roles at the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, and he’s witnessed his fair share of high-level, top secret meetings, including PCs.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Goldenberg, who is now a top official with the progressive pro-Israel group J Street, said he was struck by many of the dynamics inside the Signal group chat, not just its mere existence. Among the notable moments: The way Vice President JD Vance seemed potentially at odds with President Donald Trump, and the ease with which officials offered up their points of contact. But in some ways, the discussion wasn’t that different from a PC in a Situation Room, Goldenberg says.

Still, there’s one thing he’s sure about: “What they put on that Signal chat was classified.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your immediate reaction when you saw the initial Atlantic story about the Signal group chat?

My initial reaction was: This is completely insane. A, I can’t believe they are doing all of this on Signal, and B, even more remarkable, I can’t believe they added Jeffrey Goldberg. Both in terms of the level of sensitivity of information that was on that discussion, but also part of the reason that you don’t do things like that on Signal is precisely because of user error. We’ve all added the wrong person to a chat at some point. But there are systems in place where I can never accidentally email this to Jeffrey Goldberg, because if I was on a classified system sending an email to this group of people, his email would never pop up because he would never have access. The whole thing was just jaw-dropping.

How does the conversation in the Signal chat compare to the conversation in a traditional principals committee meeting? Do people talk the same way? I suppose their facial expressions can sub in for the emojis.

Some of it is very reflective of exactly how people would talk in those meetings, like looking at different strategies, arguing it out. I was surprised with a couple of things. One, Pete Hegseth, in particular, had almost a frat-bro type of approach. These conversations, at least the ones I’ve been in, are usually much more nuanced and thoughtful than “We must re-establish deterrence’’ and “Europeans are pathetic” in all caps — that does not ever happen in a principals meeting or similar discussion that I witnessed. I also thought Vance’s comments were pretty interesting, to do it in that particular channel.

But broadly, yes, these are the kinds of conversations people have — the pros and cons, even when everybody agrees or everybody is relatively aligned, as they are in the Trump administration, or we were in the Biden or Obama administrations, on the big things. Once you start getting into the nitty gritty of policy, how exactly do we do this? Is this a good idea? Is this the right set of targets? Is this going to make sense? How is it going to be seen internationally? How are we going to discuss it publicly? That part seems very normal.

The Atlantic also has published the full texts in the days since. In your estimation, is it fair to believe that the material in it is classified?

Yes. That’s my opinion. “War plans” is the wrong word. The right word is “concept of operation.” Two hours before an operation goes live, when you’re really getting to the point of discussing details, all that stuff needs to remain in classified channels so you don’t inadvertently tip off an adversary and put American troops in harm’s way, or result in adversaries leaving or moving to a different location.

My sense is that The Atlantic used the term “war plans” in a generic way, but the Trump administration is trying to weaponize it, saying what was discussed was not technically a “war plan.” You’re saying it wasn’t a war plan, it was a “concept of operations”?

A war plan is basically an overall framework of a war with, like, China or Russia or Iran. It’s very meta, right? It’s the overall strategy — the military plans for a conflict, the way plans for those conflicts then lead to what kind of weapons we are going to need in 20 years. How do we posture ourselves?

A CONOPS is, frankly, much more sensitive and needs to be much more classified. Because what it’s saying is we have this specific concept of operation in this particular thing, in this particular place, at this particular time. A war plan is the big meta thing from which you derive the CONOPS. Maybe they’re saying it’s technically not a war plan, and they’re right, but actually it’s much worse.

What the White House is doing is trying to hide behind a technicality when the reality is the journalist was using the term in a layman’s fashion. Either way, what they put on that Signal chat was classified.

As someone who has witnessed these conversations, what jumped out at you that might not have been obvious to a layperson?

One of the things that was quite interesting was JD Vance coming out and kind of raising a flag after it seemed like a decision had already been made by the president. You would think he would have raised his concern earlier in a meeting, and then lost the argument, since the president clearly made the decision to go — in which case you don’t do it again. But also, he’s the vice president. If he really had these concerns, he should have a channel to the president, and he should be able to communicate that directly to the president. I’m surprised he would do that in that big of a group.

Then there was the constant going after Biden. I never saw us going after Trump. That’s a very political thing, but it’s not something that you bring into these levels of national security meetings.

Speaking of Vance, what do you make of the back-and-forth debate over policy, especially with the vice president expressing skepticism or caution and Stephen Miller effectively shutting him down?

In terms of substance, I thought it was a little amateurish, especially some of the Hegseth stuff. But in terms of different viewpoints being expressed among principals — different people taking different positions — that is very normal, and it’s also good in a lot of these meetings. Eventually people kind of assume a type. I could see JD Vance being the keeper of the MAGA, kind of isolationist, foreign policy, and he probably sees his job in these meetings as consistently trying to hold the president to that position and keep the president there, despite all the other pressures. Sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses, but his voice is always to do that.

Is the term “principals committee” flexible? There were several people in the Signal group who were not National Security Council principals — and I’m not just talking about Jeffrey Goldberg. Who is allowed to actually attend these meetings?

Every administration issues its own national security memorandum where it describes early on its organizing principles and who’s going to be in the principals committee and the processes that they’re going to use to be making their agency decisions. On a meeting-by-meeting basis, it kind of flexes based on the issue. Does everybody need to be there? Sometimes it just needs to be a smaller group. There’s really one principal and in each agency there’s three or four underlings; depending on the issue, they’ll divide things up.

What matters most is that the key agencies are represented — such as the State Department, the Pentagon, CIA, DNI, usually almost always Treasury. Beyond that, you add depending on the particular issue at hand.

Usually, White Houses put out super lame, meaningless talking points about these meetings, if they say anything at all. So there’s a feeling of opacity when it comes to such critical decision-making. Isn’t it nice for the public to get some real insight?

It’s interesting. The policy debate, yeah, that’s interesting for the public to see. The operational details that endanger American lives is not. There’s certain things that need to stay secret for a reason.

But there’s also possible harm in the policy debate being public. Sometimes, you might be critical of an ally, right? These guys, everybody knows they’re critical of allies. But you do want people to be able to have that conversation totally freely and not in a way that harms them politically or damages relationships with our allies.

How secure are standard principals committee meetings, really?

They are very, very secure. Top secret communications devices, and a lot of times people are all together in the Situation Room, where you can’t take in your phone.

Just the fact that [National Security Adviser Michael] Waltz called this Signal group the Houthi PC small group — the name for the chat kind of blew my mind. It leads me to wonder how many more of these Signal chats are there, at the PC level, at the deputies level, below that. Is this proliferating around the government?

The world moves so much faster now than before. Should there be some permission for these types of group chats so that high-level people can communicate and make decisions?

This group of people, they all have people who are with them, 24/7, who can get them the secure comms where they are. They have built-in SCIFS in their homes. They have military aides. So these people — no. And the things that they are deliberating on are the most important and the most sensitive and the ones that other [foreign] intelligence agencies are most interested in getting a hold of.

Do you need more flexibility for people who don’t have that same level of support on a regular basis? That’s worth thinking about and looking into. The government is behind technologically as it is on a lot of things.

How cumbersome is it for top government officials to stick to government-issued phones and computers? Do many of them wind up trying to do at least some work on their personal devices?

It’s cumbersome, but there’s a reason for it. The reason is security. The government would be smart to figure out ways to be more flexible and think about how you deal with all this in the 21st century. But the irony is this group of people has everything they need , because they have all the support they need.

There also are deputies’ committees meetings, known as DCs, and other meetings of lower-level officials, too. Are those different from the principals meetings? More or less formal or secure?

They are ultimately very similar. The lower level down you go, the more detail you’re talking about an issue. The whole way the interagency process works is the most important and most sensitive issues get pushed up to the very top.

But a lot of times, principals will meet and they’ll say, “Deputies, go work on this, that, or the other thing.” Or the deputies will meet and they’ll say, “Hey, a level below that, you guys go do more work.” If we’re going to sanction Iran, “Why don’t you guys figure out the precise recommendations on entities that you want to target, and then bring it up to deputies for approval.” And deputies can decide we’re good and nobody else needs to approve this — or we need to send this up to principals. But the ultimate structure is very similar.

Let’s face it — everyone in Washington uses encrypted apps to communicate. And when I’m overseas, I’m startled by how some governments seem to run on WhatsApp. What does that mean for record-keeping, especially when these messages disappear?

In terms of internal U.S. government deliberations, there’s no reason those need to happen on these chat apps. Almost no reason. There’s a whole process associated with PCs and DCs and all these meetings have very specific record keeping associated with it. You have an agenda for these meetings, and you have ultimately some kind of document that basically categorizes conclusions. It’s sent out to everybody and has tasking associated with it. All of that is done on purpose to create this track record so that the public can understand what’s going on. By doing a PC on Signal, you’re totally circumventing that whole process.

Should someone in the Signal chat have spoken up to say it’s not the right forum to discuss this information? Why do you think no one did?

I think nobody did because they’ve been doing it for three months. One interesting thing was the first text from Waltz is let’s set this up and everybody tell me your point of contact. And everybody pops in with here’s my POC. Like, very quickly. It seemed pretty clear to me this wasn’t the first time they were doing this. And so maybe somebody raised a concern at some point. But it seems like they’re all used to doing this.