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Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Signal chat fiasco reveals a cabinet of dilettantes

What were they all doing on that Signal Houthi PC small group chat in the first place? I don't think that question has received near enough attention. I mean, why did Suzy Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, Joe Kent, Tulsi Gabbard's chief of staff, and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, need to know that an F-18 was about to attack a specific target in Yemen 30 minutes ahead of time? Why, really?



Even if I had not read the Tom Clancy books, and only seen a few of the movies, I would still know that rule #1 of operational security is: Information is distributed on a need to know basis.

IF YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW, YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW!   

I don't care whether you call them war plans, attack plans, operations plans, or a recipe for disaster, you don't go blabbing all over the place what you plan to do and when you plan to do it unless you are a fool. You don't start bragging to the girl you want to impress just because she has a security clearance. Just because they have the credentials to know that doesn't mean they have the need to know. 

Whenever you are planning an attack or other secret mission, operational details should be limited to those that need them for the success of the operation, and then only those details that that individual or unit needs to know for the success of the operation. That's how you keep your people and operations safe. Anything else is malpractice. 

And people have been killed by these attacks on the poorest country in the Middle East, and not just terrorists. On the US strike on Yemen the following Monday, the BBC writes:

Updating an earlier death toll, Houthi health ministry spokesperson Anis al-Asbahi posted on X that 53 people had been killed including "five children and two women", and that 98 people had been wounded.

So, this is serious business. So, let us be serious, the Houthi PC small group had not been assembled to consult on this operation, or make any real-time decisions about its execution. They had been assembled by Mike Waltz to watch and be entertained. They were there as dilettantes, not as government workers essential to the success of a life and death mission.

They wanted to play a scene like these guys in the Tom Clancy movie "Patriot Games" only they were too lazy to all assemble in a War Room, so they did it over Signal.

Patriot Games - watching SF raid in Libya
Patriot Games - same scene, different angle
Those hoping to understand how Jeffrey Goldberg was able to publish such sensitive operational communications in the Atlantic, must begin by understanding what was really going on here. Only then can they asked the right question:

Why was Jeffrey Goldberg invited to the party? 

Clay Claiborne
26 March 2025

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