David French wrote that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Heegseth squandered his credibility as a military leader and can no longer face the troops due to his grave security breach. This incident calls for immediate consequences, such as removal from command, followed by a comprehensive investigation and possibly criminal charges.
اضافة اعلان
In his column for The New York Times, French discussed how journalist Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic published one of the strangest stories, explaining that Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump, accidentally invited him to join a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal. The chat appeared to include many senior Trump officials, including Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Pete Heegseth.
No one apparently noticed that Goldberg, the journalist, was in the group, and according to the article, during a discussion about Trump's decision to strike the Yemeni Houthi group, at 11:44 AM on March 15, a message was sent from an account named "Pete Heegseth." The message contained "operational details of the upcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, the weapons to be deployed by the U.S., and the sequence of attacks."
French emphasized that this was a catastrophic security breach. He said, "As a former officer in the military prosecutor's office, I helped investigate numerous claims of leaking classified information, and I have never heard of an incident this severe— a defense secretary deliberately using a civilian messaging app to share sensitive war plans, without even noticing a journalist in the chat."
The writer pointed out how serious this breach was, explaining that it usually leads to removal from command, followed by a thorough investigation and potentially criminal charges. This is because federal law criminalizes the act of removing "national defense-related" information from its rightful place, or providing, losing, stealing, taking, or destroying it.
French also highlighted that nothing destroys a leader's credibility with their soldiers more than hypocrisy or double standards. When leaders break the rules they impose on their soldiers, they shatter the trust bond between them. The best leaders he knew never asked soldiers to comply with rules that did not apply to them, as they led by example. (Al Jazeera)
