AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Today, senators grilled top U.S. intelligence officials on Capitol Hill. This, after The Atlantic reported that the magazine's top editor was added to a group chat on the widely available messaging app Signal, where top national security officials for the Trump administration were sharing details about military plans to bomb Yemen. We should note that NPR's CEO Katherine Maher is chair of the board of Signal Foundation, which runs the Signal messaging app. At the Senate hearing today, here is what Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff said.
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JON OSSOFF: This is utterly unprofessional. There's been no apology. There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error.
CHANG: The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, slammed the incident as mind-boggling. Senator Warner joins us now. Welcome.
MARK WARNER: Thank you so much.
CHANG: OK, so you and your fellow Democrats, as expected, had pretty sharp words today for the director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA. Notably, none of your Republican colleagues seemed intent on focusing at all on this whole Signal episode. Do you have a sense of whether any of those Republicans share your concerns?
WARNER: I think they do, and I think it was extraordinarily telling that none of my Republican colleagues came to these folks' defense. Let's - if anybody hasn't heard, let's just review very quickly. You know, there was a - Signal is a good encrypted application, but it is not a classified means of transmitting information. Matter of fact...
CHANG: Right.
WARNER: ...We have evidence that Russia and China have tried to break into Signal-based systems. Two, you've got this senior level of individuals communicating on this nonclassified channel and, plain sloppiness, put a journalist on. And nobody bothered to check, who's this other person on the line?
CHANG: But I ask you...
WARNER: Now...
CHANG: ...If none of your Republican colleagues are willing to speak out against what happened, without their support and seeking accountability, are we going to see any accountability?
WARNER: Well, I think we will. Listen, I think we're going to...
CHANG: Yeah.
WARNER: ...See this - the full text. I think the journalist is thinking about releasing it. And if they said - Gabbard said today, there's nothing classified. Well, if there's nothing classified, there's no reason why it shouldn't be released.
CHANG: Right.
WARNER: Matter of fact, though...
CHANG: You said, OK.
WARNER: ...She refused...
CHANG: Share it with the committee.
WARNER: She refused to acknowledge whether...
CHANG: At first.
WARNER: ...She was using her phone, a government phone. But just, Ailsa, step back for a moment. Even with what we know right now, we have the vice president of the United States disagreeing with others about an imminent bombing. Having that information, if it had gone out ahead of time, I can tell you that Russia and China, Iran - that's what their spies would love to have. That very information alone, in any traditional way, would be viewed as classified and not supposed to be disclosed.
CHANG: Let's talk about the classified nature or nonclassified nature of the information, because you're right. Gabbard said that there was no classified material shared on that chat. But if Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting is correct, that text thread included the name of a CIA officer and information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, attack sequencing. Are there any conceivable circumstances where none of that information would be classified? You tell me.
WARNER: There was no conceivable circumstance. And let me acknowledge we overclassify in this country, but they shouldn't be changing the rules. And the hypocrisy here of the director of National Intelligence, who literally 11 days ago tweeted out, like, we're going to go after every leaker, and anybody that leaks, we're going to pursue to the full extent of the law. And then to be so cavalier and treat this information - 'cause if it had gotten out, Americans could have died in terms of the Houthis being able to reconfigure or redirect their defensive capabilities. This is kind of security 101. If this had been a military officer or a CIA case officer, they would be fired with this kind of behavior, without question.
CHANG: If it turns out that Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic decide not to release further content of what Goldberg saw on that group chat, you did ask Gabbard today - you said, well, if nothing's classified, then share the contents with the committee. How do you proceed at that point if you want to see those contents that are apparently nonclassified? - according to her.
WARNER: One of the things I've loved about the Intelligence Committee - I was chair under the last administration, I'm vice chair now - is that we have a tendency of almost always being bipartisan. I absolutely believe if the administration tries to stonewall this, we will have bipartisan support. For us, as the Intelligence Committee, the Oversight Committee that's supposed to be making sure things are appropriate, will get a look at this transcript.
CHANG: But let me ask you this. If she is...
WARNER: And just - let me just add...
CHANG: ...Open...
WARNER: ...One quick thing.
CHANG: Yes.
WARNER: Can I just add...
CHANG: Yes.
WARNER: ...One last quick thing here on this? If this was the first time it would still be awful, but it wouldn't be as awful as it is right now. This is the same administration that, a couple weeks in, inadvertently released the names of 200 CIA new agents, many of those who now can't be deployed. And this is the administration that Elon Musk and his so-called DOGE boys released classified information almost on a daily basis.
CHANG: All right, well, we are now...
WARNER: Not the first time.
CHANG: ...Out of time. Thank you so much. That is Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was good to talk to you.
WARNER: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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