Ambassador Susan Rice Responds to “Signal-Gate"

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I'm joined by former Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor, Ambassador Susan Rice.

Welcome.

We really want your help to help us navigate what's going on with these text messages of war plans that they invited a journalist on in this Trump regime.

Let me just share with you what Tulsi Gabbard said during a hearing in the Senate.

She said there was no classified materials.

I read it.

I want to get your take on it, but let's play this clip.

Contact the Defense Secretary or others after this specific military planning was put out and say, hey, we should be doing this in a skiff?

There was no classified material that was shared in that.

So then if there were no classified material.

Ambassador, you've been able to see what's been published publicly.

Is there classified information in there?

And what do you make of her response?

It's laughable.

Let me explain why I say that, Ben.

And by the way, it's great to be with you.

Any meeting of the national security principals, this is the cabinet-level senior-most national security team, and that's what this was,

is by definition in itself on almost every possible occasion, those are classified discussions because even the topics that they choose to discuss tells our adversaries something of relevance.

So,

having a meeting of the National Security Council principles is by itself a classified matter.

Then, next, here we are talking about whether or not and when and how the United States should attack a foreign adversary.

The fact of that conversation and its contents is inherently classified because if an adversary were to have the ability to learn of those plans and intentions in advance, then that adversary could prepare both by hardening their defenses or evading attack, but more worryingly by going after the United States and our assets as we conduct the attack.

So military plans and operations are inherently classified.

Add to that that

we know from Jeff Goldberg's reporting

that Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, shared sensitive military plans including attack targets, timing, sequencing, the ordnance or the bomb types that they were going to use.

That is all inherently classified.

Tulsi Gabbard is either lying or being deliberately evasive by trying to say no intelligence material was shared.

You know, she may be trying to be very cute by half and suggesting that no product produced by the intelligence community as opposed to the Defense Department was shared on that chat.

We have no way of knowing that.

We do know apparently that the CIA director exposed a covert operative's name on the chat.

That's inherently classified.

But more to the point, then let me explain how national security decision-making is supposed to work.

If you're having a meeting of this National Security Principles Committee, as we call it,

it is typically held in person in the White House Situation Room, which is a very secure facility in the basement of the White House.

You're not allowed to take your phone into the

situation room.

You're not allowed to take your Apple Watch into the Situation Room.

You leave all of that outside because those devices,

we know can be hacked by our adversaries and used as listening devices so that the Russians could be listening to everything said in the situation room if you brought your phone in.

We conduct meetings of the national security principals and deputies in the situation room precisely so that we have that kind of secure bubble that can't be infiltrated by our adversaries.

And if the principals individually or collectively are not in Washington, not able to gather in the situation room, or maybe it's late at night and they need a way to communicate securely, we have all kinds of setups for that.

Every single national security cabinet level principal, whether you're the national security advisor or the secretary of defense or the director of national intelligence or the secretary of state, they travel everywhere they go.

with a secure communications package.

These are people who set up for them secure phones, secure videos, secure document handling capacity.

So that's always with a cabinet-level principal if they're traveling.

The fact that they wouldn't use it if they had it is mind-boggling.

Secondly, in everybody's home in the Washington area, there are secure compartmented facilities in their homes where they can go and communicate by phone, by email,

by video, securely.

So we do that for a reason.

We do not communicate national security information or have principals committee meetings by signal text chat.

It's not a secure vehicle.

You're not allowed to put them on your government phones.

It's not for classified information.

And since these were all done on people's personal phones, highly vulnerable to infiltration and exfiltration by our adversaries.

So just the mere fact of having a principals committee meeting by text on a signal chain is incredibly reckless and dangerous.

Then you share

classified

discussions about military plans and operations and then classified military documents about those plans and operations on this chat.

It's extraordinarily

reckless, dangerous, and in my recollection, unprecedented.

Donald Trump's special envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, was allegedly in Moscow while he was on this group chat.

The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, testified today that he wasn't even aware

today

that Witcoff was in Moscow when I knew about it because it was a matter of public attention.

How dangerous is that?

Do you believe the Russians now have all of that information and potentially more?

What can you give us based on

what you know about these things?

Well,

if unless, no, there's no, yes, the Russians have whatever Witkoff was doing or saying on his personal cell phone.

The way Witkoff should have handled this and the way this meeting should have been conducted is Witkoff should have gone into the U.S.

embassy in Moscow and gone into their secure compartment facility and conducted his participation by video conference.

That's how this whole thing should have happened.

There should never have been a signal chat used as the vehicle

for a discussion that involved anything sensitive regarding national security.

The Russians undoubtedly have it.

What should happen?

I guess in the normal course, what should happen?

What do you want to see happen?

What do you think is going to happen?

In the normal course, this would be the subject of a gazillion congressional investigations that took months if not years uh and went through every aspect of this with a fine-tooth comb on a bipartisan basis that's how it would normally happen uh and people would be held accountable in a normal administration if the national security advisor and the secretary of defense

the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA Director engaged in a sensitive conversation about military operations on a non-secure platform, they would no longer be in those jobs.

That's just how it works.

We can't afford to have such recklessness and

irresponsibility among the people who are meant to guard our national security.

Ambassador, do you see anything here that could potentially rise to criminal violations of the Espionage Act and how this is handling or other things like that?

I'm not a lawyer, and so I'm not going to make that judgment.

But

those that are lawyers and who have spoken on this have said this could well be a violation of the Espionage Act

or said a series of violations.

It seems much more clearly to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act unless the people on that chat very deliberately then copied and downloaded the chat to a government communication system, a classified or unclassified system, then they will have violated the Presidential Records Act.

On that, I have enormous experience and I'm pretty confident in saying that.

So, but you know, for Donald Trump to say, well, you know, Mike Walls has learned his lesson and won't do it again

is

more than insufficient.

The president who

campaigned in 2016 on Hillary's emails knows very well

how important it is to safeguard classified information.

And if he can't hold his team accountable for this, then clearly he's not interested in safeguarding classified information.

Seeing a recent poll that just came out, about 74% of Americans find this to be a very serious issue.

Only 8% say they don't find it serious.

Then there's a group of undecided zero.

I just have to ask you while I have you on the show, you know, you've been observing what what this trump administration i say regime has been doing in terms of attacking our allies consistently talking about uh taking over canada annexing it annexing greenland annexing panama throwing tariffs on this country pulling the tariffs back really pushing our allies to isolate us form their own kind of defense groups we're seeing that in europe with canada making deals with australia while i have you i just would want to hear your kind of overall.

Also, by the way, Trump's attacks on Ukraine, a lot to unpack.

And I want to have you back on the show to go over all of those issues, of course.

But while I have you here now, Ambassador, you're just your overall thoughts of what you've been observing.

Well, let me give you my overall thoughts, but let me give you, before I do that, a specific thought that relates to what we've been talking about, the so-called Signal Gate, that is relevant to your question.

You know, J.D.

Vance is revealed on that Signal chat

to have expressed a really shocking view that is

consistent with the concern inherent in your question.

His view was that, in his judgment, it wasn't worth

now

the United States taking military action against an Iranian-backed terrorist organization.

that was attacking and continues to attack the United States, our personnel, and our vessels,

because it would have the ancillary benefit of helping the Europeans who

use that

passageway around Yemen, water

sea passageway, Red Sea, et cetera, for much of their commerce.

He would rather screw the Europeans and leave the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who are terrorists.

to continue to attack us

than do something that would be beneficial to our European allies.

So we're living in a real upside-down time.

Now to go to your larger question,

there is a extraordinary pattern here in the Trump administration of

the United States taking actions and decisions that directly harm our closest allies,

whether the Europeans or the Canadians,

you know, threatening Greenland, threatening Canada, as you said, imposing painful tariffs on our closest partners,

withdrawing USAID from the field, closing down the voice of America, leaving Ukraine

almost to Russia's mercy.

This is all of a peace that is extremely worrying.

We have realigned ourselves.

reoriented ourselves.

We are no longer the ally and trusted friend of Western democratic nations.

We are instead the favored partner now of Russia and through Russia, China, who are closely aligned.

This is upside down and it's deeply disturbing.

We are

rupturing trust and ties that have kept Americans safe since World War II

and we are casting our lot.

with autocrats like Putin and Xi, who don't share our values, don't share our interests,

but want to take the United States off the field in Europe, in Asia, and elsewhere around the world.

It's absolutely

upside down, and you have got to ask yourself, what is the motive for

President Trump and his team to pursue this radical

revision of what has kept us, the structures, the relationships, the alliances that have kept us safe for so long.

Well, sometimes Occam's razor, the simplest answer, may be the tragic, unfortunate, and dangerous one.

Ambassador Rice, it's an honor to have you on.

First time on the Midas Touch network, and we hope you come back, and we hope this is the beginning of a number of interviews we're able to do with you to help us navigate through these difficult times.

Thanks, Ambassador.

Thanks, Ben.

I look forward to it.

Take care.

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