‘Arrogance and incompetence’: Retired four-star general blasts Trump admin. over leaked texts
Mar 26, 2025, 3:30 PM | Updated: 7:40 pm
Senior Cabinet officials — including the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Advisor — were discussing sensitive attack plans in Yemen on the messaging app Signal when Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to the group chat.
Retired four-star general Barry McCaffrey called the slip-up “breathtaking incompetence” on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio Tuesday.
“It’s an element of arrogance,” he added “I think, by the way, the big thing about this story isn’t that they were so clumsy and uncoordinated that they put up a first-class editor-in-chief of Atlantic magazine under a chat group. The big problem is, they were using a commercially encrypted system to discuss pending war plans. I would be astonished if many foreign intelligence services haven’t been targeting this administration since they were sworn in, that they undoubtedly have hacked this commercial grade encryption, and so they’ve been listening to their conversations the whole time.”
Former general says leaked texts put lives at risk
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McCaffrey said the officials didn’t want to be held prisoner to the official records act, so they used a private chat room. He believes their decision put lives at risk.
“They’re putting the lives of US navy and air force pilots at risk,” he said. “They were putting at risk the targeting information. The people they were after would be potentially capable of fleeing the strike scene. So it’s arrogance and incompetence of just unbelievable proportions.”
Co-host of “Gee and Ursula,” Ursula Reutin, mentioned that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied that war plans were shared. Then, during a hearing Tuesday morning, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director, both denied that classified material had been shared in the chat.
“It strikes me as a bunch of fifth-grade boys,” McCaffrey responded. “I mean, the lying is comical. It’s pathetic.”
Ursula said that normally, the incident would be investigated.
To which McCaffrey replied, “Well, it’s not going to happen.”
Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9am to 12am on KIRO Newsradio.
