March 24th, 2025. Today, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg dropped the story that senior members of the Trump administration planned the March 15th U.S. attack on the Houthis in Yemen over Signal, a widely available

encrypted app that is most decidedly not part of the United States national security system.

The decision to steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide conversations,

since the app was set to erase some messages

after a week and others after four weeks. By law, government communications must be archived.

According to Goldberg, the use of signal may also have violated the Espionage Act, which establishes how officials

must handle information about the national defense.

The app is not approved for national security use, and officials are supposed either to discuss

military activity in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or a skiff, or to use approved government equipment.

The use of signal to plan a military attack on Yemen was itself an astonishingly dangerous breach.

But what comes next is simply mind-boggling.

The reason Goldberg could report on the conversation is that the person

setting it up included Goldberg, a reporter without security clearance in it. Goldberg reports that on

March 11th he received a connection request from someone named Michael Wals, although he did not believe

the actual Michael Wals, who he did not believe the actual Michael

Walls, who was Trump's national security advisor, would be writing to him. He thought it was likely

someone trying to entrap him, although he thought perhaps it could be the real Walls with some

information. Two days later, he was included in the Houthi PC small group, along with a message that the chat would be for a principal's group for coordination on Houthis.

As Goldberg reports, a principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior most national security officials, including the

Secretaries of Defense, State, and the Treasury, as well as the director of the CIA.

It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that I have never been invited to a White

House Principals Committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on

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