CIA director John Ratcliffe acknowledged that he was part of the Signal group chats from which have been leaked in a major security breach that the Donald Trump administration played down. Ratcliffe faced intense grilling as he, Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel appeared in a Senate hearing on a different issue, but the ‘war plan’ chat leak dominated the discussion.
DNI Tulsi Gabbard initially refused to address any question regarding the chat leak, and FBI chief Kash Patel, who was not on the Signal group, sidestepped a question on whether his agency would look into the chat leak.
Ratcliffe said nothing classified was shared in the group chat in the line of the administration. He said his part of the conversation was “entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.” Ratcliffe also said the inclusion of a journalist in a sensitive Signal group chat among Trump administration officials discussing war plans was “of course not” appropriate.
The comment from Ratcliffe came as Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet pressed him on the CIA’s rules regarding the handling of classified information and whether those rules were followed in the Signal chat.“Does the CIA have any rules about handling of classified information? Yes or no,” Bennet asked, prompting an affirmative answer from Ratcliffe.
Bennet then asked Ratcliffe whether he agreed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s view of the journalist who reported on the chat as “deceitful and highly discredited.” Ratcliffe responded that he didn’t know the journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, and didn’t have an opinion about him as a person.
Editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg reported Monday that he had been accidentally added to the chat, titled “Houthi PC small group,” ahead of a U.S. attack on Iran-backed Houthi sites in Yemen on March 15.
