It now appears that the goofball, amateur hour (and intel violations) of the Signal chat fiasco may dog the Trumpers until the senile, lawless renegade finally leaves office - or is ousted. See e.g.
Outcry over Signal chat scandal spills into courts and Congress
But leave it to Trump sympathizers, like the WSJ's Peggy Noonan ('A New Administration’s Signal Failure', WSJ, p. A14) adding in a sub-header:
The national-security communications snafu shows a
government in the hands of immature bros.
to try to use 'both side-ism' to assert it is just something that can happen to new administrations, trying to find their sea legs. And after all, JFK also messed up in his early months in office too, right? You know, with the Bay of Pigs fiasco? As Noonan writes:
“The Signal mess is a real mess, not something that will fade
away quickly, because it’s one of those scandals that give the world a picture
of a new administration.
At just about this time in John F. Kennedy’s presidency
(April 17-20, 1961) came the Bay of Pigs disaster, the failed invasion of Cuba
by U.S.-backed and trained exiles who had been assured of American air support
but learned on the beach it wouldn’t be forthcoming. It shadowed JFK for a long
time. The Soviets concluded he was a dilettante and inferred from his actions
an ambivalence about the use of force, which led Premier Nikita
Khrushchev to rough him up at their first summit, that June in Geneva. JFK
wasn’t prepared for such treatment. He confided to the journalist James
Reston that it was “the worst thing in my life”; Khrushchev “savaged me.”
BUT - little known to too many Americans is that a previous Repub Prez (Ike) laid this one on JFK, and with very little wiggle room to get out of it. The truth? (In short supply these days in Trumpland USA ). “Operation Zapata” (aka 'The Cuba Project') was actually initiated and developed during the Eisenhower administration and pushed on Kennedy by telling him it was "in the national security interest” to do it. What young president is going to go against his senior who was also a World War II icon, by challenging the claim? Not many.
Awed by the conviction and national security patter of an elder president with 8 years in the Oval office, JFK took Ike at his word and paid the price. Most of this didn’t come to light until the discovery of an internal CIA Report on the “Cuba Project”, which had been kept hidden for over 35 years. The results were released under ‘The Bay of Pigs Declassified’. It was actually based on the agency’s own internal audit and assessment of its behavior in respect of the event.
According to the declassified report, the Agency committed at
least four extremely serious mistakes:
i) Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter, frenzied stages to a cold and objective appraisal by the best talent available before submitting the final plan to Kennedy
ii) Failure to advise the President, at an appropriate
time, that the mission’s success had become dubious- and to recommend the
operation therefore be canceled.
iii) Failure to recognize the project had become
overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the
Agency alone.
iv) Failure to reduce successive project plans
(dating back to 1959) to formal papers and to leave copies with the President
and his advisers, to request specific written approval, confirmation
thereof.
The section goes on to note (p. 53):
“The timely and objective scrutiny of the operation in
the months before the invasion – including study of all available intelligence-
would have demonstrated to Agency officials that the clandestine paramilitary
preparations had almost totally failed and there was no responsive underground
Cuban force ready to ally with the invaders.”
The commentary is even more critical of the CIA after noting (ibid.) that the United States Intelligence Board, the Office of National Estimates, and Office of Current Intelligence all provided clear warning that a careful reappraisal was needed.
RE: Cancellation (p. 55):
“Cancellation would have been embarrassing. The Brigade
could not have been held any longer in ready status, probably not held any
longer at all. Further, its members would have spread their disappointment far
and wide. Because of multiple security leaks in the huge operation, the world
already knew about the preparations, and the Government’s and nation’s
embarrassment would have been public”
Re: The Choice (ibid.)
“The choice was between retreat without honor and a gamble
between ignominious defeat and dubious victory. The Agency chose to
gamble, at rapidly decreasing odds.”
The consensus position of the National Security Archivists is that JFK was
misled by the Agency’s hubris and incompetence. Depending on the CIA for
guidance as to intelligence about this operation – in preparation for more than
two years- the Agency blew it and big time. JFK took the blame, yes, but
the CIA ultimately was responsible for not advising cancellation when they knew
the near zero chances of success, had the opportunity to do so.
As per a Baltimore Sun piece on the above named Report
findings ('Internal Probe Blamed Bay of Pigs Fiasco on CIA', p. 6A, Feb.
22, 1998), it was noted:
"The 150-page report, released after sitting in the CIA Director's
safe for nearly three decades, blames the disastrous attempt to oust Fidel
Castro not on President John F. Kennedy's failure to call airstrikes, but on
the agency itself."
"The CIA's ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance toward the 1,400
exiles it trained and equipped to mount the invasion was responsible for the
fiasco, said the report, obtained by the Associated Press yesterday."
"The document criticized almost every aspect of the CIA's handling
of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning
poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation
beyond 'agency responsibility as well as agency capability'."
In the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and learning how badly he’d been
played, JFK fired Allan Dulles – the then CIA Director - and
asserted his willingness to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and
scatter it to the winds.” He also fired Charles Cabell, the deputy CIA
director at the time and unwittingly laid the basis for the national security
state to act against him. Indeed, many serious JFK assassination
researchers (including me), are convinced that at least one team of mechanics
for the Dallas hit were comprised of surviving Bay of Pigs Cubans - with axes
to grind against JFK.
JFK then, in the Cuban Missile crisis (of October, 1962), stood toe to toe with Nikita Khrushchev and didn’t blink as he forced the brash Russian Premier and his Soviet ships bearing missiles to turn back – away from Cuba.
By contrast, the Signal blowup - which wreckage is still unfolding - was almost destined to occur. This is given Pete Hegseth - a former FOX News blowhard, loser and drunk - was confirmed as Secretary of Defense, and a host of ancillary clowns like Tulsi Gabbard -were confirmed by balless Repukes in the Senate. So no, there is no comparison to the Bay of Pigs. Zero.
JFK and his administration were misled by a revered, outgoing GOP President and the CIA in Operation Zapata . But in the Signal case, classified war plans were recklessly released by a cadre of arrogant little Trumpers who saw everyone else as pissants to be used and even mocked. (Like "pathetic Europeans"). The worst aspect? The Trumpers even had one of their clown crew (Steve Witkoff) in Moscow when the Signal chat went live. E.g.
https://fortune.com/2025/03/26/trump-aide-steve-witkoff-russia-signal-group-chat-atlantic/
Btw, this same jive turkey Witkoff gave a stunning interview to Tucker Carlson in which he said that Putin was “straight up” and "not a bad guy.” While embracing the Russian claim that people in the seized Ukrainian territory “want to be under Russian rule.”
More and
more making one wonder if this polemic on Trump (“Krasnov”)
doesn’t explain everything we’re seeing in terms of the carnage inflicted on government agencies, education, free speech, the courts and the Constitution.
Even the Murdoch-0wned Wall Street Journal wasn’t swallowing the Trumpsters' spin that "there were no war plans”. In an editorial yesterday the WSJ
editors thundered: “The White House won’t
let bad enough alone when it comes to the Signal app fiasco,”
Then, while conceding the White House’s point about the
adviser’s phone, it blasted the administration’s “defensive insistence that the
chat didn’t disclose any ‘war plans,’ which is a weak attempt at obfuscation.”
Holy reactionaries! Look, when you’ve got even the reactionary op-ed section of the Rupert Murdoch WSJ against you it’s time to pack it in about the gaslighting and lies. Give it up and take the loss.
Don't think the Russkies could gain access? Think again. This was a magnitude 10 clusterfuck and will follow Trump and his clown car of incompetent misfits right up until the latter resign, and Dotard is impeached - a 3rd time.
See Also:
And:
Judge orders Trump administration to preserve Signal communications about Yemen operation
And:
Pete Hegseth and the Signal leak
And:
by David Badash | March 27, 2025 - 5:38am | permalink
Highly sensitive information belonging to several top national security officials from the Trump administration—including passwords and cell phone numbers linked to their Signal accounts—is publicly available online. The encrypted messaging app was used in a major breach of classified national security information earlier this month, according to a leading German news outlet, DER SPIEGEL, which concluded that it is “conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group” discussions.
“DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials,” the news site reported Wednesday. The top officials include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—all of whom were part of the Signal chat in which a military attack was mapped out and carried out.
The sensitive information has been used by the three top officials in various ways, and reportedly remains in use.
And:
by Heather Digby Parton | March 27, 2025 - 5:26am | permalink
It took two months, but we finally have our first "gate" of the second Trump administration: "Signalgate" — and it's a doozy. You are no doubt aware by now that The Atlantic has published an article reporting that the top national security officials known as the "Principals Committee" were gathered together in a Signal group chat to discuss the impending bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and accidentally included the magazine's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in the chat without realizing it.
In the chat, they discussed policy concerns about the campaign, slagged the European allies, shared what experts say are by definition classified battle plans, which included "precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing" and even mentioned the name of a covert CIA officer. Goldberg published an article about it on Monday, complete with screenshots of the chat, although he did not publish the classified information or the name of the CIA officer. On Wednesday, the Atlantic published more from the group chat:
