The White House’s effort to defend Defense Minister Beit Higseth be bent over Wednesday in a semantic argument. What he published in the chat is now a joint reference with his national security colleagues, Mr. Higseth and other administration officials insisting, was not a “war plan”.
Technically, they were right. What the Atlantic Ocean published, from the series in which the main editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently, similar to the timeline of the suspended attack. But it is a detailed-with the time when the aircraft was supposed to launch F/A-18F Super Hornet and the time when the MQ-9 Reaper drone is going from the Earth’s bases in the Middle East-the answer may prove discrimination without difference.
The full “war plan” will undoubtedly be more specific, with weapons and coordinates directives. But it is unlikely to help the Minister of Defense because he tries to explain the reason for placing these details on an unspecified commercial application, despite his encrypted, was far from the internal systems that heavily protected and the works used by the Pentagon.
The schedule published on Wednesday morning – which the administration all encouraged by announcing loudly that no information related to chat – just accelerated the Democrats calls to Mr. Higseth to resign.
The timelines he included in his letters, hours before the attack began, were critical: If this information leaked, the Houthi fighters and the missile experts that the United States that were targeting in Yemen would have time to escape, and it was possible that American pilots and other service members could put into danger. The references of Mr. Higseth in the Signal Series to “OPSEC” – or operating security – indicated that he fully understands the need to maintain this time.
The details of the details were amazing: “1215et: F-18s Launch (the first strike package)”, “Higseth was written in the chat. 1345: “F-18 Strike Window (Target Errorist is its well-known location, it must be on time)-also the launch of Strike Drones (MQ-9S).”
It is clear that this is the most sensitive to the battlefield plans, which opponents can use to avoid being beaten, or preparing to attack American forces. “It is a wonderful grace to God that we do not mourn the dead pilots at the present time,” actor Jim Hems, Democrat in Connecticut, said in a hearing on Wednesday morning with senior intelligence officials, and some of them were part of the sign chat.
National Security warriors say it is almost defeated that this was not classified, at least when Mr. Higseth sent the details of the plan to the group chat. It was so sensitive that in most departments, he would even be removed from most of the classified systems. The discussion that has been played is usually limited to referring to the position room, as a few officials of safe sites are required on the lines specifically protected and owned by the government.
However, the issue of classification was at the heart of the Trump administration interpretations because of the sign chat was a simple encroachment.
“So this was not classified,” President Trump insisted during a meeting with US ambassadors at the White House on Tuesday. “Now if it is classified information, it is likely to be a little different, but I always say, you have to learn from every experience.”
(His dialect has changed, and perhaps he looked at Wednesday. Journalists asked her whether he still believes that there was no exchange of information, Mr. Trump said: “This is what I heard. I don’t know. I am not sure – you have to ask the various people concerned.”
White House and National Security officials will not say whether the timing data has been lifted, which made this decision, or decisively, whether they had done so after the attack ended – and after spreading the detection of the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. Higseth, in another confrontation with the correspondents who travel with him to Asia, avoid any questions on Wednesday, especially the main: Why put the strike data on a commercial application whose servers are outside the United States? Instead, he blamed the Biden administration for not hitting the Houthis more difficult and said, “No one plans for text messages war.”
“There are no units, no location, no roads, no flight paths, no sources, no roads, no secret information.” He deleted what is clear: timing and goals were included.
But it is clear that the White House has decided that if the facts do not win a day, the semantic gymnastics may. Caroline Levit, the White House press secretary, explained that Mr. Higseth, a former infantry man in the National Guard and television commentator who made a series of mistakes in the first two months in his post, did nothing wrong. It sought to nullify the Atlantic Ocean, which initially did not publish the specified information about the worrying attacks that it could be classified and the effects of national security, and I only did so after the administration has repeatedly insisted that the material was not classified and tightened the description of Mr. Goldberg to the contents of the text chain.
Mrs. Levitte wrote on X after she used the Atlantic Ocean the phrase “attack plans” to describe it. “The Atlantic Ocean acknowledged: These were” war plans “. This entire story was another trick written by Trump known as his exciting role.”
Regardless of her attacks on Mr. Goldberg, who covered national security affairs for several decades, Mrs. Levitt’s explosion was publicly opposed by the Director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, in a certificate before the Senate Committee on Tuesday.
He admitted that the chain of signals, in which he was a participant, was real, and Mr. Goldberg’s description was accurate. Tolsi Gabbard, director of the National Intelligence, who initially tried to evade questions about the chain of signals, later agreed, as soon as Mr. Ratcliffe confirmed his participation.
Both said that the information was not classified. But when clicking on them, they modified their comments to say that there was no secret intelligence in the chat – which means that they did not comment on whether there were operating plans in the classified Pentagon.
But to test the truth, their comments, consider this sound question: If a news organization went to the Pentagon or the National Security Council before the attack, and said that she was considering publishing this type of timing and details, would the administration asked to block information because it had endangered the attack? Or because it could have endangered American pilots if the Houthis knew, with their missile capabilities, that they would come?
Certainly, the administration would have been asking not to publish – the most responsible news organizations may return to this data, at least until the attack ended. It is a scenario played several times in the past few years, which includes everything from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to attacks on Syrian and Iranian sites.
All of this makes it more mysterious than that more than 18 Trump administration officials discussed this timing on a commercial application if it is encrypted, or they usually use it to apostasy about ideas, or discuss sensitive but unknown ideas. Or it seems that they have no feeling of paradox, less than a decade ago, they were angry that the former minister of the state nominated for the presidency had put in place less important on the computer servant in her home.
