“The plain, simple, indisputable fact of the matter is this: all of us, all of us, are less safe because of this administration. We are lucky – damn lucky – that no one has died as a result of their repeated incompetence and mishandling of classified information. We are damn lucky.”
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor to slam the Trump administration’s careless and potentially deadly mishandling of sensitive national security matters.
Watch his full remarks HERE. Download remarks HERE.
Key Excerpts:
On the refusal to take accountability for this historic national security scandal:
The fact that information was shared with such reckless disregard on an unsecured, vulnerable network – apparently with regularity – is a scandal of historic proportions. And yet they refuse to accept any accountability. They engage in more what-about-ism. They dodge every which way. Deny. Deflect blame. Blame the journalist. Blame the publication. Blame the app. Call it unimportant. Call it a lie. Call it a hack. Say that someone’s contact information was just “sucked into” their phone.
The list goes on. The lies and obfuscation get worse. And in the end? No accountability. No security. No, nothing.
Signalgate is the perfect microcosm of this administration’s carelessness with our national secrets. But it doesn’t start or end with Signal or using Gmail for sensitive national security matters.
On the blind eye towards the administration’s inadequate handling of national security:
[…] They were fired because a right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist apparently told the president to get rid of them. Because an internet troll – not an intelligence professional in any sense of the word – walked into the Oval Office and claimed these officials were not sufficiently loyal to the president. National security be damned, in this troll’s view, they were not sufficiently loyal to the president.
How can we not see what’s going on here? Or do we see it – and just don’t care enough to do anything about it? To say something? Anything? They are betraying our national security. And they will do it again. They are turning their back on our closest friends and allies as they cozy up to dictators and murderers. And they will do it again. They are compromising the safety of our servicemembers. And they will do it again. They are investigating the investigators. And they will do it again. They are prosecuting the prosecutors. And they will do it again. Over and over again. Because this administration has all the wrong priorities, in all the wrong places.
And who does that hurt the most? The American people.
Read the transcript of his remarks as delivered below:
In February of [2014], Russia began its invasion of Crimea, a part of Ukraine. Little green men arrived suddenly in masks and unmarked uniforms.
But everyone knew them to be Russians, acting on the orders of the Kremlin, despite the Kremlin’s rather pathetic denials.
I traveled to Ukraine shortly afterwards, joined by my colleagues in Congress from both parties. We were there to speak with our friends in Kyiv and to pledge our support for our ally. To reinforce, in our own way, our commitment to NATO’s eastern flank and to uphold our obligations under the 1994 Budapest memorandum. That memorandum assured Ukraine’s territorial integrity if Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons it acquired when it was part of the Soviet Union.
At the time, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear stockpile in the world. Not only was the U.S. a signatory to that assurance, along with the UK, but so was the Kremlin. Well, Ukraine did give up its nuclear weapons in 1994. And sadly, Russia violated the terms of that agreement with ferocity.
When people like Steve Witkoff say they believe Russian leaders live up to their word, they are dangerously ignorant of history. In 2022, Russia launched an even more massive invasion of Ukraine. And just a month later, I returned to that country alongside Speaker Pelosi for the first congressional visit to that country during the war.
Now I’m not here today to talk about Putin’s aggression, or this administration’s shameful betrayal of Ukraine and capitulation to the Kremlin. I’m here to talk about the fact that before those trips – we received clear guidance.
Assume everything you say will be overheard by the Kremlin. Everything you type on a phone may as well be a direct message to the Kremlin dictator. Certainly, do not message anything sensitive. Just don’t do it. The danger of Russian hacking and spying is high enough abroad – just imagine how aggressive they are in a country they are actively invading.
But that caution, that instruction was not limited to my visits to Ukraine. As the former Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, I found myself traveling around the world, to places like Iraq. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Yemen. And more. Numerous secret trips over a decade. And every time, the same message – assume everything you do on your phone – a personal device or burner phone it doesn’t matter – will be snooped and scooped up by any adversary who cares to do so. And let me tell you, they do care to do so.
The same is true here at home – handling classified information, we took every precaution. Practically, that meant we spent a lot of time underground. Quite literally. Inside a windowless, secure compartmented information facility or a SCIF in the basement of the Capitol. An actual bunker. No phones allowed. No recording devices of any kind. Not even a Fitbit. We understood hey, it wasn’t going to be convenient. It wasn’t designed to be convenient. It was designed to be secure. And we all knew then – as we all know today – that preserving the classified nature of our nation’s secrets is of utmost importance.
Which brings us to today. Where we have witnessed the top officials in this administration discussing classified military operations, military strike plans, war plans, in the open, on Signal – a commercial app, like WhatsApp. The administration’s top officials created an unsecured group chat and shared information before — before — the start of a military operation that could have put the pilots flying these missions directly in harm’s way.
And now – it appears that this was not a one-off. Because, of course it wasn’t a one off. We’re now hearing that there were twenty or more of these chats involving top officials discussing sensitive information. Where the administration seems to have shared national secrets like they were discussing well I don’t know, March Madness. Texting them recklessly.
And it appears that the only reason – the only reason we know about these chats is because they accidentally added the Editor-in-Chief of the Atlantic into one of them. While he was apparently sitting in his car in the parking lot, as a Safeway grocery store. It would be funny if it wasn’t so damn dangerous to our national security.
Put aside the amateurism of deliberating over our national security operations using emojis and whatever else they used on this chat. From a counter-intelligence perspective, this is the effective equivalent of shouting our national security secrets on the busy streets in Beijing. Or leaving folders of sensitive info in cafes near the Kremlin. It’s a national security screwup of epic proportions.
As former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I have heard after-action reports of what happens when an intelligence failure occurs. When a source or an asset is compromised. When an enemy penetrates our networks or gets a source that can provide a glimpse into our secrets. Because when an intelligence failure happens – it can be catastrophic. Informants can be burned. Their lives ruined.
In some cases, human sources can be tortured and murdered. Operations can be compromised. Our soldiers put in harm’s way without their knowledge. Our methods exposed and therefore adapted to. Future missions scuttled because the source, human or technical, has been burned, gone.
In Syria, the Houthis are undoubtedly turning everything upside down to figure out how we knew where the target of this operation would be. Was there a human source who knew the location of the building — which was, apparently according to this chat, the girlfriend’s residence. Or was there a technical source, like the target’s phone or someone else’s phone?
What future missions will now not be possible because we don’t know if our sources are compromised? The loss of trust is also significant — from our allies around the world that contribute intelligence to support operations like this one.
Published reports indicate that Israel may have provided some of the information used in support of that attack on Houthi missile operatives and that the Israelis are furious.
For me it brings back memories of other published reports of President Trump whooping it up with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister in the Oval Office if you remember that saga during Trump’s first term, while reportedly discussing still other intelligence reportedly provided by Israel.
The accidental inclusion of a reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg sitting in that Safeway parking lot, privy to that classified exchange of operational military planning is a serious indictment of the arrogance and incompetence of this administration.
The fact that information was shared with such reckless disregard on an unsecured, vulnerable network – apparently with regularity – is a scandal of historic proportions. And yet they refuse to accept any accountability. They engage in more what-about-ism. They dodge every which way. Deny. Deflect blame. Blame the journalist. Blame the publication. Blame the app. Call it unimportant. Call it a lie. Call it a hack. Say that someone’s contact information was just “sucked into” their phone.
The list goes on. The lies and obfuscation get worse. And in the end? No accountability. No security. No, nothing.
Signalgate is the perfect microcosm of this administration’s carelessness with our national secrets. But it doesn’t start or end with Signal or using Gmail for sensitive national security matters.
Just yesterday, we learned of another purge. This time at the National Security Council. If firing of Inspectors General, and ethics lawyers, and career prosecutors wasn’t enough – senior officials at the NSC just got shown the door.
Among others, Lieutenant General Timothy Haugh, the well-respected director of the National Security Agency, the NSA, and commander of CYBERCOM. Fired. Not because of incompetence. No. Not because he was responsible or involved in this Signal group, no. The folks in the Signal group – they’re doing just fine.
No, they were fired because a right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist apparently told the president to get rid of them. Because an internet troll – not an intelligence professional in any sense of the word – walked into the Oval Office and claimed these officials were not sufficiently loyal to the president. National security be damned, in this troll’s view, they were not sufficiently loyal to the president.
How can we not see what’s going on here? Or do we see it – and just don’t care enough to do anything about it? To say something? Anything? They are betraying our national security. And they will do it again. They are turning their back on our closest friends and allies as they cozy up to dictators and murderers. And they will do it again. They are compromising the safety of our servicemembers. And they will do it again. They are investigating the investigators. And they will do it again. They are prosecuting the prosecutors. And they will do it again. Over and over again. Because this administration has all the wrong priorities, in all the wrong places.
And who does that hurt the most? The American people.
What are we supposed to say to the families unable to sleep at night – worrying that their father, or daughter or sister or brother may not come home from their deployment or may come home in a body bag because some administration official was sloppy handling war plans and their plane got shot down.
The Houthis have air defenses. They can shoot down aircraft and they have. The servicemembers who volunteer to go into combat to keep us safe – don’t know if they can trust their own government to do the bare minimum to ensure their own safety.
The plain, simple, indisputable fact of the matter is this: all of us, all of us, are less safe because of this administration. We are lucky – damn lucky – that no one has died as a result of their repeated incompetence and mishandling of classified information. We are damn lucky.
But it’s got to change, before our luck runs out and someone gets killed. I yield back.
###