Donald Trump’s CIA Director John Ratcliffe blamed the Joe Biden administration for allowing national security officials to communicate using the Signal app after Trump officials texted war plans to a reporter.
On Monday, The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported that national security officials in the Trump administration accidentally added him to a group text chat about strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
Among those listed in the group were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Ratcliffe, among others.
Ratcliffe told the Senate Intelligence Committee that on his first day, CIA officials loaded the Signal messaging program onto his work computer.
“That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration,” he said.
However, experts told Politico this week that Signal is not an app typically allowed on government-issued devices.
A former Biden administration official is also denying that they used Signal on their government phones.
“We were not allowed to have any messaging apps on our work phones,” said one former top national security official. “And under no circumstances were unclassified messaging apps allowed to be used for transmission of classified material. This is misdirection at its worst.”
Trump administration officials’ attempt to deflect comes after the National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees last month warning them of vulnerabilities in using Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News.
“A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application. The use of Signal by common targets of surveillance and espionage activity has made the application a high value target to intercept sensitive information,” the advisory read.
“Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ feature to spy on encrypted conversations,” it added.
