WASHINGTON DC – U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, joined Senate colleagues in a letter to President Donald Trump demanding answers about reporting that revealed that several National Security Council members used an unsecured group chat for highly sensitive, high-level military planning in violation of our nation’s security protocols and the law.
“We are gravely concerned by appalling reports that senior officials of your Administration, including the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and other Cabinet members, coordinated military strikes in Yemen over the commercial and unclassified messaging application Signal. We are even more concerned by the fact that a reporter was included on the same Signal chat, entitled ‘Houthi PC small group,’ demonstrating a complete lack of understanding by all involved of the gravity of the discussion and a profound carelessness for the lives of the servicemembers conducting operations against the Houthis,” wrote the senators. “It does not take much imagination to consider the likely ramifications if this information had been made public prior to the strike – or worse, if it had been shared with or visible to an adversary rather than a reporter who seems to have a better grasp of how to handle classified information than your National Security Advisor.”
“Not only was an uncleared reporter given access to sensitive intelligence via this group chat, since cell phones are not permitted in Secure Compartmentalized Information Facilities (SCIFs), it appears that these text conversations were sent in violation of basic security protocols – either from within a SCIF, or more likely, out in public where the unsecured devices were susceptible to theft, hacking, or being seen by anyone walking by,” the senators continued. “This incompetence warrants disciplinary action.”
The full letter can be found HERE.
Senator Rosen has been fighting back against this violation of security protocols that put sensitive national security information at risk of leaking. Yesterday, she released a statement strongly criticizing this inexcusable failure that put American lives at risk, and called for Senate hearings and disciplinary action on the matter.
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