Texting Treason: The War Plan Leak That’s Being Memory-Holed
A TS/SCI-level intelligence breach, denials on Fox News, and the hypocrisy threatening U.S. national security from the inside out
“If an E-4 did this, they’d be in Leavenworth already.” That’s the verdict from multiple retired military intelligence professionals after bombshell screenshots surfaced last week showing a Signal group chat between top U.S. officials—including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Security Advisor Jake Gantry—texting real-time classified details of a military operation to a civilian journalist.
The recipient? The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who broke the story in a scathing article titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.” Goldberg published partial transcripts of the exchange and confirmed metadata tracing it back to a Signal chat group that included Hegseth, Rubio, and Gantry. The topic of the messages? A Time Sensitive Target (TST) operation underway in Yemen. The language and details used—including timestamps, kill box identifiers, and reference to ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) asset locations—leave little doubt: this was Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI).
This wasn’t a post-op debrief. It was live. Unsecured. Shared with someone who didn’t have a clearance.
Let’s put this bluntly: this is a textbook Espionage Act violation.
How Classified Info Is Supposed to Be Shared
In the U.S. defense and intelligence community, there are strict protocols for how classified information—especially TS/SCI—is handled and shared.
At the highest levels, sensitive operational details are transmitted using:
JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System): A secure, air-gapped intranet used for transmitting Top Secret and SCI-level data.
SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities): Physically secure rooms where classified data can be accessed or discussed. No personal electronics allowed.
Encrypted Classified Devices (e.g., SIPRNet terminals or specialized classified-capable phones): Hardened systems with layered encryption and internal monitoring.
What isn’t allowed?
Signal.
WhatsApp.
Email.
iPhones.
Group chats with journalists.
Even the use of “encrypted” consumer apps like Signal violates information handling protocols when the content itself is classified. Encryption is not clearance. Unless the channel is authorized for classified material and the recipient has appropriate clearances and need-to-know, it’s an illegal disclosure.
What Happens When Military Members Break These Rules?
Let’s compare.
Reality Winner, a former NSA translator, leaked a single document about Russian election interference in 2017. She received 63 months in federal prison.
Airman Jack Teixeira, arrested in 2023 for leaking TS documents in a Discord group, now faces decades behind bars under the Espionage Act.
Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, who shared battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, received 35 years before a commutation.
And those are just the high-profile cases.
Across the U.S. military, hundreds of service members have faced Article 15 punishment, court-martial, or prison time for improperly storing or transmitting classified data—sometimes as minor as writing notes in the wrong notebook or discussing ops over an unsecured line.
If a junior intelligence analyst had shared TST details via Signal with an unauthorized civilian, the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) would come down hard. Charges would likely include:
Article 92 (Failure to obey order or regulation)
Article 134 (General article — Espionage Act violations)
Article 106a (Improper communication of classified information)
Loss of clearance. Dishonorable discharge. Prison. Career over.
So why does Pete Hegseth get to go on Fox & Friends and laugh it off?
The Lie Heard 'Round the Beltway
After The Atlantic published Goldberg’s article, Hegseth took to the airwaves to discredit the journalist. On Fox & Friends Weekend, he claimed:
“Nobody was texting war plans. It’s just another fabrication from the legacy media who want to make this administration look bad.”
That would be easier to believe—if it weren’t for Speaker of the House Mike Johnson publicly admitting the opposite just hours earlier.
In a separate interview with The Hill, Johnson confirmed the texts’ authenticity, stating:
“There was definitely a lapse in judgment, and we’re conducting an internal review to assess the scope and ensure safeguards moving forward.”
In other words: it happened. There is proof. The Speaker of the House said so.
So why lie?
Because Hegseth’s entire political brand rests on the myth of “tough-on-security” patriotism. Admitting that he carelessly—or worse, willfully—compromised a live military operation for media advantage would shatter that image and potentially open him to prosecution.
Instead, he did what we’ve come to expect: gaslight, deflect, deny.
Fox News and Brit Hume Join the Damage Control
Within hours of Hegseth’s denial, Fox News anchor Brit Hume came to his defense on X (formerly Twitter), writing:
“This is a nothingburger hyped by an over-eager journalist. There’s no evidence any actionable intel was leaked. Every administration has its internal chatter.”
Except that’s false. The text messages included:
A mission window (“0500-0600Z”)
Reference to an ISR feed handoff
Real-time BDA (Battle Damage Assessment) speculation
The codename of the target
That’s not “chatter.” That’s operational intelligence.
Meanwhile, Fox ran limited coverage of the incident—focusing not on the leak, but on “liberal media hysteria,” with several pundits calling for The Atlantic to be investigated for “unauthorized possession of classified data.”
Let that sink in: the leak wasn’t the problem. Reporting on it was.
Selective Outrage and a Dangerous Precedent
What’s unfolding now is a full-blown test of America’s two-tier justice system—one for the powerful, and one for everyone else.
Imagine, for a moment, if the names in the group chat had been reversed:
Secretary of Defense Tammy Duckworth
Secretary of State Pete Buttigieg
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan
Journalist Rachel Maddow
Fox News would be apoplectic. The Judiciary Committee would already be drawing up subpoenas. Trump would be live-posting in all-caps.
But because it was Trump loyalists and MAGA-aligned media figures, the reaction has been muted, downplayed, or twisted into an attack on journalism.
It’s not just hypocrisy—it’s strategic. By denying the legitimacy of any institution that challenges them (DOJ, military, media), Trump-era officials are effectively immunizing themselves from consequence.
And when they do get caught? They bet on public exhaustion and partisan blindness to bury the story.
The International Fallout
There’s also a broader implication here—one that extends beyond U.S. borders.
The Yemen TST operation wasn’t unilateral. Multiple sources confirm that allied assets were involved, including U.K. surveillance drones and Jordanian forward observers. If those nations believe their classified contributions are being broadcast in unsecure U.S. chat threads, cooperation may falter.
Trust is the bedrock of coalitions like NATO and Five Eyes. Breaches like this erode that trust.
According to Dr. Amanda Breen, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic Intelligence Studies:
“Every time a high-level leak goes unpunished, it sends a message to our allies: your secrets are only as safe as our politics.”
What Comes Next?
Speaker Johnson has said a review is underway. But there’s been no independent investigation. No referral to the FBI. No Special Counsel.
Meanwhile, Hegseth remains Secretary of Defense. Rubio is still conducting diplomacy as Secretary of State. Jake Gantry hasn’t commented at all.
This is more than negligence—it’s normalization.
And if the U.S. government continues to treat classification rules as optional for its political elite, it won’t be long before the entire system collapses under the weight of its own double standards.
Final Thought
What’s the point of having a classification system if only the rank-and-file have to follow it?
At a time when foreign adversaries are watching for signs of U.S. dysfunction, internal chaos like this isn’t just embarrassing—it’s dangerous. We cannot allow the careless transmission of war plans to become “just politics.”
So the question isn’t just who leaked.
It’s who will be held accountable—and whether that answer still depends on the name next to the (R) or (D).