MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Did Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put American lives at risk? A new report from the Pentagon says he did when he shared sensitive operational details in a Signal chat earlier this year. That chat was about a U.S. bombing mission in Yemen, and it inadvertently included a journalist, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. I talked this through today on our national security podcast Sources & Methods with Tom Bowman, who covers the Pentagon, and Quil Lawrence, who covers veterans.
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KELLY: OK, Tom, the report - where's it coming from? Who wrote it? What's it say? Headlines.
TOM BOWMAN: This is the Pentagon inspector general, and this report was called for by the two leaders on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker and also Senator Jack Reed. They asked for it shortly after news reports about these Signal chats done by Hegseth a couple of hours before these strikes in Yemen. So they were disturbed by the reports, and they called for the IG to look into this. And it was sent to the Pentagon a couple of months ago for their review, and it just was released today.
KELLY: And to what is surely the most explosive line that people are focused on - the conclusion that Hegseth could have put U.S. troops at risk - how so? What does it say?
BOWMAN: Well, it basically says - and Quil has more information on this - that the Signal risks a potential compromise to sensitive DOD information, quote, "which could cause harm to DOD personnel and mission objectives." Basically, someone could tap into that information on Signal and, you know, relay it to adversaries or - you know, it put in danger the pilots who were flying in.
KELLY: Signal, again, just to remind people, an excellent app. I use it to communicate regularly. But it is not a government app. It is not a classified app. Military officials are not supposed to be discussing battle plans on it.
QUIL LAWRENCE: And we aren't supposed to discuss it without mentioning that NPR CEO Katherine Maher is on the board of the Signal Foundation. Have I said that right?
KELLY: Chairs the board of the Signal Foundation.
LAWRENCE: There we go.
KELLY: Indeed.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, I've got the report in my hand here in the studio. It's 76 pages. And you can - it doesn't do anything to contradict what was published - indeed, leaked - to The Atlantic magazine in real time, which is basically that...
KELLY: Just to be clear, it wasn't even leaked. They asked...
LAWRENCE: Correct.
KELLY: ...The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to join this group chat, not knowing that they...
LAWRENCE: We have to say...
BOWMAN: He was improperly added to this Signal chat.
KELLY: Exactly. OK.
BOWMAN: And he listened in and got all this information.
KELLY: Yeah.
LAWRENCE: And so, I mean, what it basically says is that emails - classified emails - marked classified were coming from the CENTCOM commander about these impending military operations against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and that Hegseth, also pretty much in real time, sent them out several hours before these operations took place - two to four hours - and he sent them over Signal, which would have been a terrible breach because you can't send classified information out to people who aren't authorized to see it, including this journalist. But it does say that because he was the classifying authority of this information, he could declassify it at any time. And so, apparently, by sending this out, he was then deciding that he was declassifying it, which he has the authority to do.
KELLY: Right. This has been a central point of contention that lawmakers, reporters, others have been trying to figure out. Was classified information inadvertently revealed? And the argument, it sounds like Hegseth has made, is it was classified, but I'm the SecDef and I can declassify it, and that's what I did.
LAWRENCE: Right.
BOWMAN: But there's a process to doing that. You can't just say, in my mind, I'm going to declassify it. There's a process, a written process, you have to go through. And let's also look at exactly what he was sending - target information, the timing of aircraft, the F-18 aircrafts going to attack Houthi rebels.
KELLY: And drones and Tomahawk missiles.
BOWMAN: Correct. But the most important thing, of course, is, if I'm flying an F-18 into Yemen and this guy is sending information over unsecured channels, that could put me at risk if an adversary gets that information and knows I'm coming. That's the key here.
LAWRENCE: Right, and this report talks a lot about classified information, whether he could declassify, etc., but it takes till page 25 - and I want to read this - to finally lay it out. And it says, the secretary sent information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned - manned - U.S. aircraft - so people aboard, not a drone that you shoot it down - over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately two to four hours before the execution of those strikes. Although the secretary wrote in his 25 July statements that there were, quote, "no details that would endanger our troops or the mission," if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces, i.e., shoot them down, shoot at them, or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes. Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the secretary's actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots
BOWMAN: And it's important to note that, at the time when the news came out exactly what happened with Signal and Hegseth's role, that he said there was no classified information that was sent out. But this report clearly says, no, it was secret information, not for foreign distribution either.
KELLY: Right.
BOWMAN: So it was quite clear about that. And I got to tell you one thing. After this broke - the story broke - I got calls from, like, three or four military people who were astounded and angry about this. And they said, Tom, if I had done this, I would at least lose my security clearance, maybe go to jail.
KELLY: Let me back us up just to how the inspector general looked into this, how the inspector general office knows what they know. Did Secretary Hegseth cooperate with all this? Did he sit down, do an interview?
BOWMAN: He gave a brief statement. He would not sit down for an interview, and he didn't release all of the messages that were over Signal. They had to get them through The Atlantic.
KELLY: Right.
BOWMAN: That's what happened.
KELLY: The editor, Jeff Goldberg, had screenshotted it and then published it.
BOWMAN: Correct. And also, they said, by the way, that Hegseth said he thinks the IG is partisan, that the report was biased. That's his view of this report.
LAWRENCE: And just to add a couple more tidbits. He refused to be interviewed.
KELLY: You're deep in this report. Keep going, Quil.
LAWRENCE: Sorry (laughter). It's just, yeah, I did speed-read it before we sat down here. It just came out a couple of hours ago at the time of this taping. But yeah, the SecDef refused to be interviewed, and he repeatedly said there was no classified evidence - which is OK if he didn't classify it - and no war plans. But it's very clear that they describe here what are really war plans or at least attack plans, depending on whether you say we're at war with the Houthis or not.
KELLY: Yeah.
LAWRENCE: Signal chats delete automatically, which essentially this report says, in so many ways, was the destruction of evidence. They could not get that evidence because the Signal is set to delete automatically, which is why it's against DOD policy to use it. It's like having a virtual shredder on your device. It disappears the information. And the last bit is that, you know, we had heard reports of other group chats, not just the one with, say, the secretary of defense, the vice president, people - OK - you could send this information to. You don't mean to be sending it to The Atlantic. But this report looked into and heard from five officials who said that Hegseth was messaging in other group chats. But essentially, because he refused to turn over his personal phone to the IG, he refused to cooperate fully with this investigation, they couldn't confirm reports that he was sending out these same attack details to people like his wife or his brother.
KELLY: I will inject the White House is defending Hegseth. They put out a statement and it reads, quote, "this review affirms what this administration has said from the beginning - no classified information was leaked and operational security was not compromised." And it goes on to say President Trump stands by Secretary Hegseth.
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KELLY: That was an excerpt from NPR's national security podcast Sources & Methods. You heard me talking with NPR's Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman. You can hear the whole episode wherever you get your podcasts.
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