The CIA chief and the director of national intelligence faced questions about their participation in the Signal group chat during a Tuesday Senate hearing.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard defended their handling of sensitive national security information at a March 25 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, as they faced questions about an apparently accidental leak of details on renewed U.S. strikes on Yemen.
Originally planned as an open hearing on worldwide threats, the Senate hearing came just one day after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported that he was looped into a group chat with Trump administration officials on the encrypted messaging app Signal. In the chat, according to Goldberg, the officials appeared to discuss a then-forthcoming plan to strike Yemen’s Houthi terrorists.
Goldberg identified users on the Signal chat whom he believed were Ratcliffe and Gabbard, among other officials.
Ratcliffe and Gabbard were both among the intelligence community leaders present at Tuesday’s Senate hearing. Facing questions about the leak episode, both intelligence community leaders said that no classified materials were shared on the chat channel.
During one early exchange, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking member of the committee, pressed both Gabbard and Ratcliffe to confirm they were on the chat channel. Gabbard initially avoided the question, saying she didn’t want to get into the specifics of the episode “because this is currently under review by the National Security [Council].”
In another exchange with Gabbard, Warner asked, “If this was a rank-and-file intelligence officer who did this kind of careless behavior, what would you do with them?”
“Senator, I’ll reiterate that there was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard said, amid cross-talk from the Virginia lawmaker.
Ratcliffe said he was on the Signal group chat. The CIA director said that the messaging app was loaded onto his work computer shortly after the Senate confirmed him for the intelligence agency leadership role.
“One of the things that I was briefed on very early, senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use. It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration,” Ratcliffe said.
By Ryan Morgan
