BY C STONE | STONE NEWS NETWORK ||| WASHINGTON, D.C.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing fiery hell after it was found he shared a top secret military plan to attack targets in Yemen: Pete Hegseth created a Signal chat with his wife, personal lawyer, and a few other people - and posted sensitive military information to it.
Sent on the 15th of March, it included flight schedules for American F/A-18 Hornets which carried out attacks on Houthi targets. The White House said in a statement to the New York Times that it said no classified information was shared.
It should be noted that Hegseth's wife holds no official position in the Pentago, and is a former Fox News producer. In other words, she had no legal or ethical business knowing top-secret military plans as it's outside her scope of knowledge.
Critics of Hegseth question the authority he had to share sensitive military information with civilians who had no authority to receive this information. In a worst-case scenario, the Houthis could have known about the attack, planned extensive anti-aircraft battlements, and quickly taken down the FA/18's.
And although Signal uses end-to-end encryption, the type of information disclosed into the application was never legally allowed to be there. This is considered a high level of security that even private applications cannot match.
These communications normally take place in government-controlled locations, rather than official's private cell phones.
From the bbc:
The existence of the second Signal group is the latest controversy surrounding the head of the Pentagon, who this year is controlling a budget of $892bn (£670bn).
Hegseth last week fired three top officials for an "unauthorised disclosure" - an accusation the officials said was "baseless".
In an op-ed for Politico magazine published on Sunday, John Ullyot, a former top Pentagon spokesperson who resigned last week, wrote that the department was in "total chaos".
"The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president - who deserves better from his senior leadership," Ullyot added.
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