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    Pentagon chief says US could ‘revive’ Panama bases

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    The US defence secretary has floated the idea of the country’s troops returning to Panama to “secure” its strategically vital canal, a suggestion quickly shot down by the Central American country’s government.Pete Hegseth suggested during a visit to Panama that “by invitation” the US could “revive” military bases or naval air stations and rotate deployments of its troops to an isthmus the US invaded 35 years ago.He also said his country was seeking free passage through the canal for its navy ships – which Donald Trump had said were “severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form”.Trump, since coming to power in January, has repeatedly claimed that China has too much influence over the canal, which handles about 40% of US container traffic and 5% of world trade.His administration has vowed to “take back” control of the strategic waterway that the US funded, built and controlled until 1999.Hegseth suggested on Wednesday the former US military bases that dot Panama could be used again to host American troops.He said a deal signed with Panama this week was an “opportunity to revive, whether it’s the military base, naval air station, locations where US troops can work with Panamanian troops to enhance capabilities and cooperate in a rotational way”.While Hegseth cited the possibility of joint exercises, the mention of a rotational force was likely to raise the hackles of Panamanians, for whom sole ownership of the canal is a source of national pride.The US has long participated in military exercises in Panama. However, a longer-term rotational force – such as the force the USmaintains in Darwin, Australia – is politically toxic for Panama’s centre-right leader, José Raúl Mulino.His government quickly slapped down the idea. “Panama made clear, through President Mulino, that we cannot accept military bases or defence sites,” said Panama’s security minister, Frank Abrego, in a joint public appearance with Hegseth.Hegseth also said the US was seeking an agreement under which its warships could pass through the canal “first, and free”.Jose Ramón Icaza, Panama’s minister for canal affairs, said: “We will seek a mechanism by which warships and auxiliary ships can have a compensation system for services, that is, a way to make them cost-neutral but not free.”The independent Panama Canal Authority (PCA) that manages the waterway said on Wednesday that it was seeking a “cost-neutral scheme” to compensate services rendered in security matters for warship tolls.Under current treaties, the canal is open to all countries and vessels must pay the same rates according to their capacity and cargo, regardless of their country of origin or destination.The PCA said the US recognised Panamanian sovereignty over the waterway, although Hegseth did not mention it in the news conference.The Pentagon chief’s two-day visit has been peppered with comments about China and its influence in Latin America. He said the US was not looking for war with China but would counter Beijing’s “threats” to the region.“We do not seek war with China. And war with China is certainly not inevitable. We do not seek it in any form,” Hegseth said. “But together, we must prevent war by robustly and vigorously deterring China’s threats in this hemisphere,” the former Fox News anchor said.China hit back after Hegseth’s comments, saying Washington officials “maliciously attacked China … exposing the US’s bullying nature”.Trump has zeroed in on the role of a Hong Kong company that has operated ports at either end of the canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for decades.Hegseth asserted that China-based companies were also capturing Latin American land and infrastructure in strategic sectors, such as energy and telecommunications, and that China had too large a military presence in the hemisphere.“Make no mistake, Beijing is investing and operating in this region for military advantage and unfair economic gain,” he said.Under pressure from the White House, Panama has accused the Hong Kong-backed Panama Ports Company of failing to meet its contractual obligations and pushed for it to pull out of the country.The company rejected an audit on Wednesday that suggested it had failed to pay $1.2bn due under its concession.The ports’ parent company, CK Hutchison, announced last month a deal to offload 43 ports in 23 countries – including its two on the Panama canal – to a consortium led by the US asset manager BlackRock for $19bn in cash. A furious Beijing has since announced an antitrust review of the deal.The US invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the dictator Manuel Noriega, killing more than 500 Panamanians and razing parts of the capital. More

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      China fires back after Pete Hegseth calls country a threat to Panama canal

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      US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that the Panama canal faces ongoing threats from China but that together the United States and Panama will keep it secure.Hegseth’s remarks triggered a fiery response from the Chinese government, which said: “Who represents the real threat to the Canal? People will make their own judgement.”Speaking at a ribbon cutting for a new US-financed dock at the Vasco Nuñez de Balboa Naval Base after a meeting with Panama president, José Raúl Mulino, Hegseth said the US will not allow China or any other country to threaten the canal’s operation.“To this end, the United States and Panama have done more in recent weeks to strengthen our defense and security cooperation than we have in decades,” he said.Hegseth alluded to ports at either end of the canal that are controlled by a Hong Kong consortium, which is in the process of selling its controlling stake to another consortium including BlackRock Inc.“China-based companies continue to control critical infrastructure in the canal area,” Hegseth said. “That gives China the potential to conduct surveillance activities across Panama. This makes Panama and the United States less secure, less prosperous and less sovereign. And as President Donald Trump has pointed out, that situation is not acceptable.”Hegseth met with Mulino for two hours on Tuesday morning before heading to the naval base that previously had been the US Rodman naval station.On the way, Hegseth posted a photo on Twitter/X of the two men laughing and said it was an honor speaking with Mulino. “You and your country’s hard work is making a difference. Increased security cooperation will make both our nations safer, stronger and more prosperous,” he wrote.The visit comes amid tensions over Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that the US is being overcharged to use the Panama canal and that China has influence over its operations – allegations that Panama has denied.Shortly after the meeting, the Chinese embassy in Panama slammed the US government in a statement on X, saying the US has used “blackmail” to further its own interests and that who Panama carries out business with is a “sovereign decision of Panama … and something the U.S. doesn’t have the right to interfere in”.“The US has carried out a sensationalistic campaign about the ‘theoretical Chinese threat’ in an attempt to sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation, which is all just rooted in the United State’s own geopolitical interests,” the embassy wrote.After Hegseth and Mulino spoke by phone in February, the US state department said that an agreement had been reached to not charge US warships to pass through the canal. Mulino publicly denied there was any such deal.The US president has gone so far as to suggest the US never should have turned the canal over to Panama and that maybe that it should take the canal back.The China concern was provoked by the Hong Kong consortium holding a 25-year lease on ports at either end of the canal. The Panamanian government announced that lease was being audited and late on Monday concluded that there were irregularities.The Hong Kong consortium, however, has already announced that CK Hutchison would be selling its controlling stake in the ports to a consortium including BlackRock Inc, in effect putting the ports under US control once the sale is complete.Secretary of state Marco Rubio told Mulino during a visit in February that Trump believes China’s presence in the canal area may violate a treaty that led the US to turn the waterway over to Panama in 1999. That treaty calls for the permanent neutrality of the US-built canal.Mulino has denied that China has any influence in the operations of the canal. In February, he expressed frustration at the persistence of the narrative. “We aren’t going to speak about what is not reality, but rather those issues that interest both countries,” he said.The US built the canal in the early 1900s as it looked for ways to facilitate the transit of commercial and military vessels between its coasts. Washington relinquished control of the waterway to Panama on 31 December 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by Jimmy Carter.“I want to be very clear, China did not build this canal,” Hegseth said on Tuesday. “China does not operate this canal and China will not weaponize this canal. Together with Panama in the lead, we will keep the canal secure and available for all nations through the deterrent power of the strongest, most effective and most lethal fighting force in the world.” More

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      I worked in Trump’s first administration. Here’s why his team is using Signal | Kevin Carroll

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      No senior US government official in the now-infamous “Houthi PC Small Group” Signal chat seemed new to that kind of group, nor surprised by the sensitivity of the subject discussed in that insecure forum, not even when the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, chimed in with details of a coming airstrike. No one objected – not the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was abroad and using her personal cellphone to discuss pending military operations; not even the presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow at the time. Yet most of these officials enjoy the luxury of access to secure government communications systems 24/7/365.Reasonable conclusions may be drawn from these facts. First, Trump’s national security cabinet commonly discusses secret information on insecure personal devices. Second, sophisticated adversaries such as Russia and China intercept such communications, especially those sent or received in their countries. Third, as a result, hostile intelligence services now probably possess blackmail material regarding these officials’ indiscreet past conversations on similar topics. Fourth, as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request. And fifth, no one seems to have feared being investigated by the justice department for what appears to be a violation of the Espionage Act’s Section 793(f), which makes gross negligence in mishandling classified information a felony; the FBI director, Kash Patel, and attorney general, Pam Bondi, quickly confirmed that hunch. Remarkably, the CIA director John Ratcliffe wouldn’t even admit to Congress that he and his colleagues had made a mistake.The knock-on effects of this are many. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, needs to address his colleagues’ characterization of European partners as “pathetic” with foreign ministers now dubious of the US’s intentions. Allies already hesitant to share their countries’ secrets with the US, because of valid counterintelligence concerns regarding Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, will clam up even more rather than risk their sources being compromised by Trump’s appointees. Gabbard and Ratcliffe may have perjured themselves before Congress regarding whether their Signal chat included classified national defense information; certainly, their credibility on Capitol Hill is shredded. As a former CIA case officer, I suspect these directors’ own subordinates will prefer not to share restricted handling information with them going forward. Hegseth, confirmed as secretary by a vote of 51-50 despite concerns over his character and sobriety, lost any moral authority to lead the defense department by reflexively lying about his misconduct, claiming that the story by Jeffrey Goldberg, the unsuspecting Atlantic editor improvidently included in the text chain, is somehow a “hoax” despite the fact the White House contemporaneously confirmed its authenticity.Trump dismisses this scandal, now under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general, as a witch-hunt, and his followers will fall in line. But every senator who voted to confirm these national security officials, despite doubts regarding their temperaments and qualifications, quietly knows that they own part of this debacle. For fear of facing Republican primary challengers funded by Elon Musk, these senators failed in their solemn constitutional duty to independently provide wise advice and consent regarding nominations to the US’s most important war cabinet posts. How would the senators have explained their misfeasance to service members’ bereaved families – their constituents, perhaps – had the Houthis used information from the Signal chat, such as the time a particular target was to be engaged, to reorient their antiaircraft systems to intercept the inbound aircraft?I happen to have served in Yemen as a sensitive activities officer for special operations command (central). Conspicuous in their absence from the Signal chat were uniformed officers responsible for the recent combat mission: the acting chair of the joint chiefs of staff Adm Christopher Grady, central command’s Gen Michael Kurilla and special operations command’s Gen Bryan Fenton. These good men would have raised the obvious objection: loose talk on insecure phones about a coming operation jeopardizes the lives of US sailors and marines standing watch on warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, naval aviators flying over the beach towards the target, and likely special operators, intelligence officers and human sources working in the shadows on the ground.You don’t need 30-plus years in uniform to know that holding a detailed yet insecure discussion about a pending military mission is wrong; the participants in the chat knew, too. They just didn’t care, not as much as they cared about keeping their communications from being legally discoverable. They’re safe in the knowledge that in a new era without benefit of the rule of law, Patel’s FBI and Bondi’s justice department will never bring charges against them, for a crime which uniformed service members are routinely prosecuted for vastly smaller infractions. As the attorney general made plain in her remarks about this matter, federal law enforcement is now entirely subservient to Trump’s personal and political interests.Most senior US government officials in 2025 are, unfortunately, far gone from the fine old gentleman’s tradition of honorable resignation. But participants in the Signal chat should consider the Hollywood producer character Jack Woltz’s pained observation to the mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in The Godfather about his indiscreetly wayward mistress: “A man in my position cannot afford to be made to look ridiculous.” Trump, the justice department and the Republican Congress may not make them resign, but to the US’s allies and adversaries, and to their own subordinates, these officials now look ridiculous.

      Kevin Carroll served as senior counselor to the former homeland security secretary John Kelly and as a CIA and army officer More

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      Mike Waltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal chats for national security work – report

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      Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and his team have created at least 20 different group chats on the encrypted messaging app Signal to coordinate sensitive national security work, sources tell Politico.The revelation, which cites four people with direct knowledge of the practice, follows heightened scrutiny of the administration’s handling of sensitive information after the Atlantic recently published messages from a chat that included the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sharing operational details of deadly strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.Those anonymous sources told Politico the Signal chats covered a wide range of policy areas, including Ukraine, China, Gaza, broader Middle East policy, Africa and Europe. All four individuals reported seeing “sensitive information” discussed in these forums, though none said they were aware of classified material being shared.Over the last few days, Waltz’s flippant nature over the protection of national security secrets has been exposed. The Washington Post reported on documents revealing that Waltz’s team had been conducting government business through personal Gmail accounts.The White House has again defended the practice, with a national security council spokesperson, Brian Hughes, telling Politico that Signal was “not banned from government devices” and was automatically installed on some agencies’ phones.“It is one of the approved methods of communicating but is not the primary or even secondary,” Hughes said, adding that any claim of classified information being shared was “100% untrue.”The insistence by administration officials that none of the messages were classified, including past remarks by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and Hegseth, fly in the face of the defense department’s own rulebook on what would count as classified.In the earlier chat, Hegseth shared specific operational details about military strikes in Yemen, including launch times for F-18 fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles. These details, according to the former state department attorney Brian Finucane, who advised on past strikes on Yemen, would typically be classified based on his experience.Others in the national security establishment have similarly warned that using a messaging app like Signal could potentially violate federal record-keeping laws if chats are automatically deleted, and could compromise operational security if a phone is seized.Despite the earlier controversies, Leavitt indicated on Monday that Trump stood firmly behind his national security adviser, and that an investigation into how Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a sensitive chat had been closed. More

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      The Observer view on JD Vance: spurned in Greenland and humiliated at home, the vice-president should resign

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      Not for the first time, JD Vance, America’s outspoken vice-president, has made a public fool of himself. He insisted on visiting Greenland despite unequivocal statements by the territory’s leaders and Denmark’s government that he was not invited and not welcome. Vance’s trip was confined to a remote Arctic base, where he briefly spoke to a few Americans. Plans to make a wider tour and speak to Greenlanders were cancelled – because Greenlanders did not want to speak to him.Such hostility is entirely understandable, given the repeated, provocative and disrespectful declarations by Vance’s boss, Donald Trump, that the US plans to annex Greenland and may do so illegally and by force. Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark. Election results this month showed the vast majority of local people back expanded self-rule or outright independence. They do not want to be Americans.In a feeble attempt to justify what is, in effect, a Putin-style bid to seize another country’s sovereign territory, Vance claimed Denmark had failed to protect Greenland from Chinese and Russian threats – but did not produce any evidence. He also failed to explain why, if such dangers exist, the US, which like Denmark is a Nato member, has not honoured its legal obligation to develop a “collective capacity to resist armed attack” under the 1951 US-Denmark “Defence of Greenland” treaty.Trump, too, has been prating about Greenland’s importance for “world peace”. It’s true the Arctic region is seeing increased great power competition, partly because climate change renders it more accessible. Yet Trump, in another echo of Ukraine, appears more motivated by desire to control Greenland’s untapped mineral wealth. As in Gaza and Panama, his main interest is not security and justice but geopolitical, financial and commercial advantage. Insulting plans to enrol Canada as the 51st state reflect another Trump preoccupation: a return to an earlier age of aggressive US territorial expansionism.Vance in Greenland may have preferred a woolly hat to a pith helmet, but his imperialist intentions were unmistakable. Yet despite his frosty reception, he was perhaps glad to escape Washington, where he and his travelling companion, US national security adviser Mike Waltz, are feeling the heat for another scandalous piece of foolishness: the Signal message group security breach. This concerns the inadvertent inclusion of a leading journalist in an online discussion by Vance, Waltz and senior officials of real-time US bombing attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen.This breach, by itself, is bad enough. It might have endangered US pilots and wrecked the Houthi operation. The discussion, on an insecure platform, could have been, and probably was overheard by the Russians and others. Yet its contents, which have now been published in full, also include rude and mocking comments by Vance and Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, about European allies. Their shaming, ignorant exchanges dramatically and damagingly highlight the rapid deterioration in transatlantic ties since Trump took office.Like the Greenland incursion, the official response to the Signal scandal speaks volumes about the true nature of the Trump administration. Trump’s shabby instinct was to deny all responsibility, minimise its importance, denigrate the journalist and dismiss the whole thing as a hoax. Hegseth’s claim that no classified information was released is an obvious, stupid lie, as the transcript demonstrates. There is huge hypocrisy in the refusal of Waltz, Vance and Hegseth to even contemplate resignation, when such a blunder by a lower-ranking official would certainly have led to the sack.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAbove all, the hubris, arrogance, amateurishness and irresponsibility revealed by both episodes is truly shocking – and a chilling warning to the world. More

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      Trump has managed to spin Signalgate as a media lapse, not a major security breach | Andrew Roth

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      When it comes to Trump-era scandals, the shameless responses to “Signalgate”, in which top administration officials discussing details of an impending strike in Yemen in a group chat without noticing the presence of a prominent journalist, should set alarm bells ringing for its brazenness and incompetence.In a particularly jaw-dropping exchange, Tulsi Gabbard, the United States’ director of national intelligence, was forced to backtrack during a house hearing after she had said that there had been no specific information in the Signal chat about an impending military strike. Then, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published the chat in full, contradicting Gabbard’s remarks that no classified data or weapons systems had been mentioned in the chat.“My answer yesterday was based on my recollection, or the lack thereof, on the details that were posted there,” said Gabbard. “What was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the Signal chat.”Then there was the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth who – staring straight down the camera – baldly stated: “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.” The next day, Goldberg revealed that Hegseth himself had texted the precise timing of the attacks and the weapons systems to be used, specifically F-18 jets and MQ-9 drones.And Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser, was left scrambling on live television as he was quizzed by a Fox News anchor on how Goldberg’s number had ended up on his phone. “You’ve never talked to him before so how is the number on your phone?” asked conservative television anchor Laura Ingraham. “It gets sucked in,” Waltz, a former congressman and army special forces soldier, replied – without explaining how a number can get “sucked in” to a phone.But despite all this, no one is really taking the prospects of an investigation seriously. At heart, this is about politics – and the fact is that Democrats simply don’t have the votes or the sway to deliver a body blow to the administration at this point.It’s unlikely that anyone will be punished. Donald Trump has told his aides that he doesn’t want to give the Atlantic a scalp, and vice-president JD Vance responded forcefully during a trip to Greenland on Friday: “If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody you’ve got another think coming … I’m the vice-president saying it here on Friday: we are standing behind our entire national security team.”For decades, national security was broadly seen as the last bastion of bipartisanship in Washington, an area where Democrats and Republicans put aside their differences for a general consensus on supporting the national interest. Members of Congress on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees often maintained cordial relationships. There was also an understanding that big scandals could jump the partisan line, and lead to serious repercussions even with tensions between the parties at their highest.Scooter Libby, once chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, was sentenced to prison after an investigation into the leak of the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. The Department of Justice under Barack Obama launched more Espionage Act investigations for leaking sensitive information than all previous administrations combined.And the FBI, of course, launched a years-long investigation into Hillary Clinton for keeping emails on a home computer server that ultimately may have helped sway the elections. “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity,” Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Friday. “We’re all shocked – shocked! – that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws … What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”Observers have remarked that the scandal would have been far greater if it had taken place at a lower level in the intelligence community. Mid-level officers and defence officials would all face far harsher blowback if they were caught divulging the kind of information that Hegseth sent into the chat, including the specific timing of the strikes and the weapons systems to be used.But the Trump administration believes that it can simply divert and divide public attention until there is a new scandal. That may be a winning strategy. Trump is to introduce tariffs this week that will probably dominate the news agenda for weeks. And his deputies are out on cable news every day, pushing back at the media for covering the scandal and suggesting that Goldberg somehow sneaked his way into the chat rather than being added directly by Waltz, the national security adviser.“They have treated this as a media event to be spun rather than a grievous error to be rectified,” wrote Phil Klay, a military veteran and guest columnist for the New York Times. The early indications are that the Trump administration will skate through this scandal, crossing into new territory in Washington where even a major security leak can be repainted as the fault of the media for covering it. More

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      The Signal chat exposes the administration’s incompetence – and its pecking order | Sidney Blumenthal

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      On 13 March, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who was the policy director for two secretaries of defense and was a member of the House intelligence committee, sent a message on the commercial Signal app: “Team – establishing a principles group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours.” “The Houthis PC small group” would oversee a US air attack on the Houthis in Yemen.Despite Waltz’s extensive professional background, he misspelled “principals” as “principles” – perhaps an ordinary typo, but symptomatic of the shambles to come. Although the secretaries of defense, state and treasury, the director of national intelligence, the CIA director, the vice-president, and the president’s chief of staff were among the 18 people included, neither the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, who is a statutory member of the principals committee of the National Security Council, nor any military designee was invited into this group. Instead, the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was sent a link. Waltz noted: “Joint Staff is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days.”The Atlantic’s publication of Goldberg’s article about the Signal group’s exchanges was followed by a spray of attempts to cover it up. Trump and the rest of his administration simply denied that anything classified had been released; there were no “war plans”, it was a “hoax”, Goldberg was “scum”, “a loser” and “discredited”, and what about Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton? Which prompted Goldberg to publish the detailed war plans he had withheld in his first article. He was the only responsible person involved in the incident.Quite apart from the glaring incompetence and illegality of the whole affair – Goldberg’s careless inclusion, the fact that a provision of the Espionage Act (18 USC § 793) criminalizes “gross negligence” for mishandling classified national security material, and that operating on Signal with timed deletion of messages violates the preservation of records for the National Archives – the conversation pulled back the curtain on the White House.The transcript exposed the internal pecking order of the Trump administration and its actual chain of command, if it could be called anything that regular. In the end, the final decision-maker within the group to whom the others deferred was not any cabinet secretary or the chief of staff. They turned to “SM” – Stephen Miller – the deputy chief of staff who is Trump’s zealous enforcer. The chief of staff, Susie Wiles, came across as a cheerleader. Miller was the one who gave the stamp of approval. He conveyed Trump’s word. For all intents and purposes, Stephen Miller acted as the de facto president.The desultory discussion on Signal also highlighted the juvenile towel-snapping bro culture at the top of the administration. The Fox News personalities in the cabinet and the others who have habituated themselves to blathering forceful opinions appeared in the leaked transcript to have seamlessly carried over their habits of loud and thoughtless talk. Above all, they don’t know when not to speak; nor do they know what they reveal about themselves when they do. They don’t know how to conduct themselves as serious people in the room. Their incompetence comes naturally.About the military plan on the eve of being executed, JD Vance opined: “I think we are making a mistake.” By venturing his view at this advanced point in the operation, he showed that he had been out of the loop. Vice-presidents since Walter Mondale, under President Jimmy Carter, have been made indispensable figures in important decisions, especially involving national security. But Vance sounded like an outsider, a guest on a podcast.He went on about how the Houthis menacing the trade in the Hormuz Strait affected Europe more than the United States. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” he said. Vance felt that it was Trump who was out of the loop or assumed Trump’s ignorance. If only Trump understood his own contradictions.But Vance conceded: “I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself.” Where did he think he would voice his dissent, Joe Rogan’s show? He did not know Goldberg was already listening in. Then Vance suggested: “But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”“There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line,” piped up Joe Kent, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, lending support to Vance. Kent has been an overlooked figure in the scandal. He has an extensive history of associations with extremist domestic terrorist organizations. As a Republican congressional candidate, he paid a consulting fee to a member of the Proud Boys; he has also been close to the Christian nationalist Patriot Prayer group involved in violent street brawls in Portland; defended the white supremacist Nick Fuentes; and stated: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white people special interest group,” during an interview with a group called the American Populist Union. In 2022, after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Kent called him “very reasonable”. When Kent ran for the House that year, after his ties to the far right were exposed, he claimed he had distanced himself from such groups. Kent was the deputy of the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, on the Signal group.Waltz joined in the Europe-bashing with talking points to buttress Trump’s zero-sum mercantilist view of the world, explaining: “Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”Vance broke in to say that if Hegseth wanted “to do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”Hegseth agreed: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” He added: “Question is timing.”Enter Stephen Miller. “As I heard it,” he said, “the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”“As I heard it …” Miller spoke as if he were the only one to hear Trump. No one else said they had. Miller was definitive. He was more than the Trump whisperer. He was the voice of Trump.Miller also chimed in on the chorus of contempt for Europe. It was as though Europe was the enemy. The allies are not really allies; they are renters, and the rent should be raised.On 15 March, Hegseth returned with an “update” of precise details of the attack. “I will say a prayer for victory,” he wrote. It was a go. As it proceeded, Waltz chronicled the targets hit on Signal.Susie Wiles weighed in: “Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really great. God bless.”Waltz posted three emojis – a fist, a flag and a fire.“Great work all. Powerful start,” said Miller. He was the one to give the praise. He apparently had the authority.In Russia, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, responded with two prayer emojis, a flexed muscle emoji and two American flag emojis.Afterward, Witkoff, a former New York real estate operator and Trump golfing partner, gave an interview to Tucker Carlson, the far-right podcaster who is highly influential with JD Vance and Hegseth, in which Witkoff said he “liked” Vladimir Putin, who was not “a bad guy”, “straight up”, and had presented him with a portrait of Trump to take home – “such a gracious moment”.Proclaimed a “success”, the operation itself will do little to quell the Iran-backed Houthis, who resumed their missile attacks on shipping in the Hormuz Strait after Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking to maintain his fragile grasp on power, abandoned the ceasefire in Gaza, which Trump declared he “fully supports” after doing nothing to sustain it. Instead, Trump proposed turning the ravaged Palestinian territory into a beachfront property, a “riviera of the Middle East”. Trump shared an AI-generated video of himself and Netanyahu lolling on the beach with dollars raining down and half-naked dancing women. Trump’s policy, of which the Houthi strike supposedly demonstrates “success”, has further entangled the US in cycles of violence without any clear path forward.As soon as Goldberg’s article appeared, the cover-up effort began. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic; to me it’s a magazine that is going out of business,” Trump said. “I know nothing about it. You’re saying that they had what?”Republicans in the Congress stammered or were silent. At last, the senator Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, chair of the Senate intelligence committee, called for an expedited report from the Pentagon’s inspector general. Unfortunately, there is no such inspector general – at least not a permanent one. Trump fired him on 27 January along with 16 others across federal agencies and departments, without reason, contrary to the Inspector General Act of 1978, tightened in 2022. “I don’t know [the fired inspectors general],” Trump said, “but some people thought that some were unfair or were not doing the job.” For now, there is an acting inspector general.The scandal might have been avoided if Hegseth could have consulted with the Pentagon’s legal authorities, the judge advocate generals. But he fired the top Jag officers of the army, navy and air force three weeks before the Signal group was formed.Nor did Hegseth, or anyone else, apparently think to include the joint chiefs of staff, who just might have objected to the obvious sloppiness and illegality of the Signal setup. But on 21 February, Trump fired the chair of the joint chiefs, the four-star general CQ Brown Jr, the chief of naval operations and the air force vice-chief of staff. He had already removed the chief of the US Coast Guard.Brown, the former air force chief, was the first Black person to head a branch of the armed forces. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt,” said Hegseth in dismissing Brown. Adm Christopher Grady, serving as the acting chair of the joint chiefs, was not sent the invitation for the Signal group that Goldberg received.To replace Brown, Trump has nominated a retired three-star general, Dan Caine, whom Trump insists on calling “Razin’ Caine”. But no one raised Caine to participate in the chat.He might be grateful to have been ignored. Instead of the three-star general, Waltz mobilized three emojis.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      Pete Hegseth’s Arabic tattoo stirs controversy: ‘clear symbol of Islamophobia’

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      The US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth has a tattoo that appears to read “infidel” or “non-believer” in Arabic, according to recently posted photos on his social media account.In photos posted on Tuesday on X, the Fox News host turned US defense secretary had what appears to be a tattoo that says “kafir”, an Arabic term used within Islam to describe an unbeliever. Hegseth appears to have also had the tattoo in another Instagram photo posted in July 2024.Some people on social media criticized Hegseth for getting a tattoo that could be considered offensive to Muslims, especially as the US military seeks to represent a diverse pool of faiths. It is estimated that upwards of 5,000 to 6,000 US military members practice Islam.“This isn’t just a personal choice; it’s a clear symbol of Islamophobia from the man overseeing U.S. wars,” posted Nerdeen Kiswani, a pro-Palestinian activist in New York.She added: “‘Kafir’ has been weaponized by far-right Islamophobes to mock and vilify Muslims. It’s not about his personal beliefs. It’s about how these beliefs translate into policy – how they shape military decisions, surveillance programs, and foreign interventions targeting Muslim countries.”A former leader of the far-right Proud Boys, Joe Biggs, also has a similar tattoo.“Tattooing the Arabic word kafir – which refers to someone who knowingly denies or conceals fundamental divine truths – on his body is a display of both anti-Muslim hostility and personal insecurity,” Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), told Newsweek.This is not the first time Hegseth has been involved in a tattoo-related controversy. The defense secretary has previously shown off tattoos that indicate a fascination with “crusader aesthetics”, an increasing trend among the far right.His prior contentious tattoo is located on his right biceps – right next to the new one. It reads “Deus Vult”, which translates to “God Wills It” in Latin, believed to be a Crusader battle cry. Hegseth also has a tattoo on his chest of the Jerusalem cross, also known as the Crusader’s cross due to being popularized during the Christian Crusades.The criticism of the tattoo comes at a time of increased scrutiny for the defense secretary. Members of Congress in the US are calling for an investigation into Hegseth and the other officials involved in the Signal leak that inadvertently exposed operational details of US plans to bomb Yemen. Several representatives have called for Hegseth to resign. More

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      The Atlantic handled ‘Signalgate’ with good judgment | Margaret Sullivan

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      Over the past six months or so, the Atlantic has been assembling more and more reporting talent, including by poaching some of the biggest stars from the troubled Washington Post.One of the best intelligence reporters in the country is Shane Harris, who moved from the Post to the Atlantic last summer.Harris shared the byline this week on the Atlantic’s shocking scoop, in which top editor Jeffrey Goldberg inadvertently was given access to a group text where top US officials were planning a strike in Yemen.Before they published and at every step along the way, the Atlantic conferred with knowledgable lawyers about how to proceed. The journalists revealed what they had in stages, and carefully.The Atlantic thus was a model of caution and good judgment.“Jeff Goldberg and The Atlantic handled the whole thing perfectly,” Martin Baron, the renowned editor who led the Washington Post newsroom until 2021, told me in an email on Thursday.The journalists’ actions “could be a college journalism class in careful, ethical handling of sensitive information”, said David Boardman, dean of Temple University’s media school.The contrast was sharp between those well-considered measures and the dangerous negligence at the highest level of the Trump administration. One awful thing is that this incompetence is baked in; in a very real sense it is intentional. Just as “the cruelty is the point,” as writer Adam Serwer said years ago of Trump World, so is the bumbling.It’s an offshoot of the only thing that really matters to Trump: loyalty.“Carelessness – or any of the injurious attributes of clowns, idiots and buffoons – is something Trump can trust,” noted John Stoehr, who writes The Editorial Board, a politics newsletter. “When things go south, as they will, he can trust them to cling to him more tightly, as by then, he might be the only thing standing between them and a jail cell.”Here’s one telling detail. When Tim Miller on the Bulwark’s daily podcast asked Goldberg about the covert CIA operative who was named in the text thread, the Atlantic editor said he purposely withheld her name.“I didn’t put it in the story because she’s under cover. But, I mean, the CIA director put it in the chat.”Yet, inevitably, Trump loyalists responded by trashing Goldberg and the Atlantic. Always attack, as Trump learned decades ago at the knee of the disgraced lawyer Roy Cohn.Thus, Goldberg was described as sleazy, and the magazine itself as hyper-partisan and failing.The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called the story “another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin”.You would have to be plenty credulous or truth-averse to buy that, and much of Maga Nation is just that, including those who relied on Fox News – where, soon after the story broke, prime-time host Jesse Watters made himself part of the defense team: “Journalists like Goldberg will sometimes send out fake names with a contact with their cells to deceive politicians. … This wouldn’t surprise me if Goldberg sneaked his way in.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Atlantic’s CEO, Nick Thompson, noted the contrast: “One lesson from this story: how honest, consistent and careful with national security the best reporters are, compared to the people who always attack them.”Pete Hegseth, the Fox News personality turned defense secretary, played the blame game rather than concede his culpability. “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist,” Hegseth said of Goldberg.Granted, a scintilla of acknowledgment came from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who said “somebody” made a mistake by adding a journalist to the chat, but that didn’t begin to touch the utter lack of security provisions that were laid bare – the apparent use of personal devices by these powerful officials, the reliance on Signal, the messaging app that’s inappropriate for such uses, and so much more.That Goldberg and the magazine are being targeted by Trump and others in his government, Baron told me, was a sign of the administration’s “desperation, its unwillingness to accept responsibility for its own egregious blunders and the hollowness of its attacks on the media”. Just so.Shining a bright spotlight on this mess was a public service. One can only imagine what other information has been as recklessly handled.Maybe this revelation will prevent future lapses, though with this crowd in charge I wouldn’t count on it. Instead, we’ll see punitive leak investigations and even more efforts to control information.Still, this chapter does show the value of conscientious journalism in an increasingly dangerous environment.There has been plenty of sleaziness on display in recent days – but it has nothing to do with the Atlantic’s exemplary reporting.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More