Blame Signalgate on Amateurs

The Trump administration can’t talk its way out of ‘Signalgate’ after The Atlantic published (March 26) almost the entire group chat on Signal in which allegedly classified information on US airstrikes in Yemen were discussed—a group that included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, NSA Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, et al and to which Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg had been accidentally invited. His article ‘The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans’ (March 24) triggered a Senate hearing. The problem is twofold: a messaging app shouldn’t have been used in the first place, protocol requiring a Sensitive Compartmentalised Information Facility (SCIF) sans mobile phones. The US government already has secure systems like JWICS and SIPR for classified communication. Moreover, the auto-deleting chat violates the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act which need all government communication to be preserved. The EU may despair at hearing what Vance and Hegseth think about it, but America’s friends will think twice before sharing sensitive intelligence. The Trump team is brazening it out by calling Goldberg an “anti-Trump hater” but serious damage has been done to its two-month-old reputation.

Jerusalem Hosts a Strange Guest

Palestinians in Gaza have taken to the streets in protests against Hamas that would have been unthinkable a few months ago: “For God’s Sake, Hamas Out” is the tenor of public anger. Fear of being targeted by Hamas has been replaced by desperation, with little left to rebuild lives on. Meanwhile, Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Rally was invited to address an anti-Semitism conference in Jerusalem—also unthinkable less than a generation ago given that National Rally’s predecessor, the National Front, was founded by virulent anti-Semite Jean-Marie Le Pen and French wartime Nazi collaborators. Changes under Le Pen’s daughter Marine have made the party vocal against anti-Semitism along with identifying Islamism and immigrants as its primary targets. But Bardella’s visit (Marine Le Pen’s repeated requests were turned down for years), which included a trip to Yad Vashem, shows what has changed under Benjamin Netanyahu’s own far-right-dependent government, making common cause with the extreme right elsewhere notwithstanding their Nazi pasts. French Jews remain sceptical of National Rally while French-Jewish philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy and the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt pulled out of the conference
in protest.

Pilot without Passport

Of all the likely reasons a long-haul international flight turns back after two hours, a pilot forgetting his passport must rank among the rarest of rare. That was the fate of a United Airlines Boeing 787 flying from Los Angeles to Shanghai on March 22 when a frustrated pilot was heard saying on the intercom he had forgotten his passport. United took care of the passengers, but a larger investigation could shake up the airline which has had a series of controversies of late. Think of the disrupted traffic over LAX and the cost of the jet fuel that had to be dumped as the plane turned back.

airlinesgeopoliticsJD VanceJeffrey GoldbergJerusalempassportPete HegsethpilotSignalgate