Rash: An intelligence analyst’s smart take on the Signal chat

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

The phrase “fog of war” generally refers to confusion on the battlefield, not to a fight over communications about military action. But now, following the recent attack on Yemen by the U.S., a shroud of claims, counterclaims and controversy has descended regarding a dialogue among Trump administration officials that took place on the Signal app and inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine.

Jon Olson is uniquely well qualified to pierce this fog. A retired commander who spent 21 years in U.S. naval intelligence, Olson now teaches “Intelligence Methods in National Security” as well as other courses at Carleton College and the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School. He also works with the U.S. Army War College to lead the annual International Strategic Crisis Negotiation Exercise at both schools.

On Wednesday, Olson shared his expertise on the metastasizing scandal. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

On the information included in the chat

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is saying “there’s nothing classified in there. And then you look at the actual transcript of the Signal app messages back and forth and he’s giving you a literal rundown of exactly what’s going to happen and when during this military operation.

“All of that is absolutely classified.”

It “can be declassified after it happens, but you’re sure as heck not going to put U.S. military personnel in harm’s way before they carry out an operation by discussing these things over a non-secure line, a non-DOD [Department of Defense] or U.S. intelligence community- or U.S. government-approved secure communications network.”

On Pentagon protocols

In “the signals intelligence world, you [classify information] based on what is the information you’ve got and how did you acquire it — sources and methods is a key thing that we look at when we classify information. But anything that’s going to happen on the U.S. side, especially military information, operational security is an absolute necessity for the safety of our personnel before they are going to carry out these operations.

“Every one of these top-level national-security leaders in the Trump administration have at their beck and call communications experts who can put them face-to-face with secure videoconferencing services, even airborne.”

The Pentagon “just two weeks ago said, ‘Don’t put anything classified on Signal.’ There are weaknesses even in that encryption, which is why you only discuss things that are classified across the SIPRNet [Secret Internet Protocol Router Network] or the JWICS [Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System] — if you need to do something that’s actually classified, you do it only across those secure channels.”

The “fact that they were using Signal and having this back-and-forth conversation, having included the editor of the Atlantic … I mean, that is just an epic failure in operational security.”

On the international impact of the participants’ rhetoric

European allies are “looking across the Atlantic and saying, ‘What are we to make of the United States of America? Are they a reliable partner, a partner we can trust?’

“I see this as very dangerous for the United States, especially at a time when the relationship between Russia and China and North Korea and even Iran and other authoritarian nations around the world is becoming closer, maybe more collaborative, maybe a coordinated effort to undermine the liberal democratic order that the United States put in place after World War II in partnership with our allies and friends.”

In international relations, “You cannot surge trust. You can surge more combat power. You can surge money. You can surge diplomatic efforts. But that really special thing of trust is something that has to be built up and maintained over a long period of time, demonstrated time and time again so that people know they can trust you. That’s true for international relations and relations between nations, and when things like WikiLeaks happen, or what just happened, what came out through the Signal app, that damages that trust, and that is not what we need to have right now in this time of global instability.”

On the role of the press

“I’m a big fan of democracy. I absolutely believe in the U.S. Constitution, the checks-and-balances system of the three co-equal branches of government. It has served America well for almost 250 years.

“But there’s this little thing that we have built into the Constitution: the First Amendment, the freedom of the press. And in free societies I truly believe that the Fourth Estate, the press, is a critical entity in holding all three branches of government accountable to the people who have elected the representatives to build the laws and carry out the laws that we want, and that’s why elections are so vitally important.“

On Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg

“And so, if you’re attacking the press and, in this case, Mr. Goldberg, a member of the press, for reporting what actually happened, I mean, the Fourth Estate is doing its job. It’s holding government accountable to the people for egregiously stupid mistakes that were made.

“And he, to his credit, did not release the transcripts initially, until they decided to attack him and call him a liar, and then he said, ‘OK, game on.’ This is what the Fourth Estate is supposed to do. It’s supposed to hold people accountable who are demonstrating a complete lack of integrity, which is what the secretary of defense did, by denying that there was any classified information in the Signal app, messages that he sent out to everybody else.

“So, I think he did everything right. I think his timing was responsible and professional. He held off sharing anything, any of those details, while any of those operations were ongoing. To his credit, that’s great. I mean, if you’d found a journalist with less integrity and less professionalism who was just interested in making a big splash, he could have gone public with that immediately and put all of our military personnel in danger. And Goldberg did not do that. He showed maturity and professionalism, which is what one would expect by somebody who’s the editor at the Atlantic, a very well-respected magazine.”