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The inclusion of a magazine editor on what our foreign policy team thought was a secure channel, the strong possibility that classified material was posted on this private chat, and the ever-changing stories and competing claims by those involved shows why our U.S. Congress needs to do its job, and investigate what happened. Otherwise, our government will continue to make such blunders, making it easier for our adversaries to find out exactly what we’re doing.

The use of Congressional investigations goes back to our earliest days as a republic. Congress investigated George Washington’s Administration for the performance of our military after our humiliating defeat at the Battle of the Wabash. No administration is above the law, and no president walks on water.

As Tara Copp with AP reports on questions people have “Among them are whether federal laws were violated, whether classified information was exposed on the commercial messaging app, and whether anyone will face consequences for the leaks.”

Copp adds “Signal is a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications, but it can be hacked. It is not approved for carrying classified information. On March 14, one day before the strikes, the Defense Department cautioned personnel about the vulnerability of Signal, specifically that Russia was attempting to hack the app, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak to the press and spoke on the condition of anonymity. One known vulnerability is that a malicious actor, if they have access to a person’s phone, can link their own device to the user’s Signal — and essentially monitor messages remotely in real time.”

I would report on what our foreign policy team has said since the scandal broke, but it seems to change every day. And that is part of the problem. A full accounting needs to be made, with key players officially testifying what they did or did not do. And I’d insist that questions deal with whether classified material, like timing and means of attack, were posted on this site that the Defense Department warned its members about.

The American people don’t see this as a “nothingburger” either, according to Gustaf Kilander with The Independent. “The pollster YouGov has found that Americans view the Signal leak as at least as problematic as Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state in the Obama administration. In September 2022, 62 percent of Americans said the use of the private server was either very serious or somewhat serious. That included 40 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Republicans. Several of the top officials who mistakenly included a reporter in their chat discussing sensitive attack plans also criticized Clinton for her use of a private email server. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed Clinton on Fox News in late 2016, saying, ‘Any security professional, military, government or otherwise, would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information.’”

Kilander adds “Among Republicans, 60 percent said it was either a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem, according to the poll of nearly 6,000 U.S. adults. The same was true for 89 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Independents.”

This cannot be swept under the rug, stonewalled, or “moved on from,” given the combination of the seriousness of war plans being leaked, the lack of accountability from those involved, and the strong likelihood of such a disaster being repeated, likely for more serious items. Only Congress showing it takes this issue seriously will there be a chance for improvement and reform in the security of our nation’s most valuable intelligence secrets.