Welcome back to the Red Letter! Thank you
, , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with former National Security Council Official Brett Bruen about the fallout over Pete Hegseth’s war plans group text.Bruen, a former White House National Security Council Official under Barack Obama and former State Department official under George W. Bush, is not afraid to criticize either party when it comes to national security. He called on Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to resign after the disastrous pull-out of Afghanistan and he’s also calling on NSA Mike Waltz to resign in this interview.
Bruen, who has been in Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF) where this type of classified communication is securely discussed, pushed back on White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt’s insistence that Hegseth’s texts were not war plans. Bruen called their actions criminal because it had the potential to endanger U.S. troops. He added that the national security team was using personal phones because Signal cannot be downloaded on a government device. The Associated Press reported that the Biden administration allowed officials to download Signal to their White House-issued phones, but to use it sparingly.
There are already conversations in the White House about whether Hegseth will need a pardon in advance of a Democratic administration that will most likely prosecute him, according to a former Trump administration official, who remains an ally of the administration.
Based on my conversations with a Senior administration official last night, I sensed that the administration is more concerned with protecting Hegseth over Waltz, who added The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat. The NSA is appointed by the President and can easily be replaced. The administration spent a lot of political capital to confirm Hegseth, a troubled nominee who faced allegations of drinking and sexual assault. If anyone takes the fall for this, it will mostly be Waltz.
Another former White House official who has been in touch with the White House said they are already calling him a neo-conservative, the ultimate insult to America First, for having Goldberg’s number.
“The only way out for him is to resign,” said the former official.
“Mike Waltz is a great American,” White House communications director Steven Cheung texted me last night.
There’s also concern about Hegseth’s out-right denial this morning, while other members of the administration, like CIA director John Ratcliffe and the spokesperson of the NSC have been acknowledging the incident.
“You’re creating a drip drip drip,” said the first former admin official. “It’s going to about the lie, then it’s that he needs a pardon, there are so many more story lines around Hegseth than Waltz. And that’s when Trump is tired of hearing about this guy on T.V.”
Here is a transcript of our conversation that has been edited for clarity and length.
How is classified information is typically exchanged and what level of classification are war plans?
The White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt is pushing back on: these weren't war plans. And yet Jeffrey Goldberg knew the exact timing of Saturday strikes. That in and of itself is a major, major operational security issue. Because U.S. warplanes, U.S. military officials would have been in the zone of operations, Tehran, Russia, other adversaries, the Houthis themselves, might have known because this information was on a whole range of personal devices. Signal is not on your
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