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But Mark Zaid, a
national security attorney, said he is not persuaded by Hegseth’s
argument that the information about the strikes shared in the chat was
too vague to be considered classified.
“Even if
they had never happened, it still would have been classified for a period
of time, without a doubt,” Zaid told Task & Purpose. “They were
planning this strike on that specific day, with those specific aircraft,
at that specific time, which could give a window into future operations.”
Zaid has
decades of experience litigating Freedom of Information Act requests for
classified information. He said he has “no doubt” that the information
about the Yemen strikes was classified at the time Hegseth sent it.
“It’s
dumbfounding to even contemplate an argument that this would not be
classified,” Zaid said. “It’s reminiscent of the end of the ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ where the wizard is saying, ‘Don’t look over at the man
behind the curtain,’ when you’re staring right at him.”
While
Hegseth has the power to declassify information, Zaid said he believes it
is not realistic that he did so before sending the message about the
Yemen strikes.
“Why in
the world would the secretary ever declassify sensitive military and
operational plans when he thinks he’s discussing it with only his other
principals?” Zaid said. “If they want to say it’s now not classified
because they declassified it, that’s a separate issue. But it’s laughable
to say he declassified it before or as he was sending it as part of a
secret text conversation that no one in the public was ever meant to
see.”
Also,
the Defense Department’s declassification process involves determining
when information will no longer be of any value to an adversary, which
would logically be after a military strike has occurred, not before, a
source with extensive knowledge of military operations told Task &
Purpose.
Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who led both the Central
Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, told Task & Purpose
that he is convinced the information Hegseth shared before the strikes
was classified, and perhaps may even have been Top Secret.
Top
Secret is a level of classification given to information that, if
disclosed without authorization, “reasonably could be expected to cause
exceptionally grave damage to the national security,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Classification Guide.
If an
adversary had obtained that information Hegseth shared before the
strikes, it is possible that U.S. military forces could have suffered
casualties as a result, Hayden said.
“They
said this is going to happen,” Hayden said. “They talked about drones and
everything. They were naming the weapons too. When I was CIA director, we
have a lot of drones: I didn’t talk about them on the telephone.”
If Trump
administration officials have been using Signal for the past two months,
it is possible that Russia and China have already intercepted sensitive
information sent on the messaging app, Hayden said, noting the NSA warned
its employees in February that Signal is vulnerable to being exploited by U.S. adversaries.
Hayden
said he has spoken with members of the U.S. intelligence community, who
are appalled by Goldberg’s revelation about the Signal chat group.
“The
president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, secretary of
state, all of them are saying: ‘Oh, it’s OK’ — it’s not OK,” Hayden said.
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