Top Senate Democrats tore into the Directors of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency during a Tuesday hearing on global security threats, demanding answers after a bombshell report found they used an unsecured messaging app to plan a bombing in Yemen — possibly in violation of the law.
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard refused to answer several questions from Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), including whether she participated in “the group chat with the Secretary of Defense and other Trump senior officials discussing the Yemen war plans.”
“Senator,” Gabbard replied, “I don’t want to get into the specifics,” a statement she made at least three times before the frustrated Vice Chair then asked: “Is this, is it because it’s all classified?”
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Gabbard would only say that the incident “is currently under review by the National Security Council.”
“Because it’s all classified?” Warner pressed. “If it’s not classified, share the texts now. Is it classified or non-classified?”
Gabbard ultimately told Warner that “there was no classified materials that was shared in that Signal chat.”
He immediately replied, “If there was no classified material, share it with the committee.”
“You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security,” Warner said, as Gabbard remained silent and expressionless.
But several Senators appeared to be unconvinced or uncomfortable with her claim of no classified information in the Signal chat.
U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) told Gabbard that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets, the weapons we were going to be using, attack sequences and timing—and yet you’ve testified that nothing in that text, in that chain was classified.”
“Wouldn’t that be classified? What if that had been made public that morning before the attack took place?” he asked.
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“Senator,” Gabbard replied, “I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time,” she insisted.
“So the attack sequencing and timing and weapons and targets you don’t consider should have been classified?” King asked.
“I defer to the to Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council on that question,” Gabbard responded.
“Well,” King, appearing somewhat dumbfounded, reminded Gabbard, “you’re the head of the intelligence community and you’re supposed to know about classifications.”
“So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified,” King continued, noting that “if that’s the case, please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a a view of what actually transpired on this on this discussion.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified,” he concluded.
U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) further pressed Gabbard on what Senator King had seemed to suggest might be potentially classified information.
“In the Signal chain, was there any mention of a target in Yemen?” he asked.
“I don’t remember mention of specific targets,” Gabbard replied.
“Any generic target?” Senator Kelly asked.
Gabbard, pausing, then replied, “I believe there was discussion around ‘targets,’ in general,” she said.
Earlier in the hearing, Vice Chair Warner had blasted the Trump national security officials who were using Signal, the unsecured messaging app, to map out the Yemen bombing.
“There’s plenty of declassified information that shows that our adversaries, China and Russia are trying to break in to encrypted systems like Signal,” the Vice Chair said. “I can just say this, if this was the case of the military officer or an intelligence officer, and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired.”
“I think this is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one off or a first time error,” he lamented.