Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) clashed with Trump administration intelligence officials as they asserted that information on U.S. war plans for Yemen did not include intelligence information.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard initially declined to say whether she was a party in a Signal group chat exposed by Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg after he was apparently inadvertently included in the group chat.
Gabbard repeatedly said she was “not going to get into” the matter, telling Warner it was “currently under review.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe, however, confirmed he was on the group chat.
But the two sparred with Warner, rebuffing his demands to turn over the Signal messages amid questions about whether the chats included classified information. The Trump administration has repeatedly warned it plans to crack down on leaks of classified information.
“Senator, I’ll reiterate that there was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard said.
Goldberg described the sharing of “operational details” such as what targets the U.S. would strike, which would likely be classified, as well as the name of an intelligence officer.
“If there was no classified material, share it with the committee. You can’t have it both ways,” Warner told Gabbard.
“These are important jobs. This is our national security bobbing and weaving and trying to filibuster.”
Warner then pointed out that Gabbard recently tweeted that “unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
Gabbard then responded that “there’s a difference between inadvertent release versus careless and sloppy, malicious leaks of classified information. The second point is, there was no classified information that was” shared.
Ratcliffe told lawmakers that his use of Signal to discuss the plans was authorized.
“When I was confirmed as CIA director, Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA as it is for most CIA officers. One of the things that I was briefed on very early, senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use,” Ratcliffe said.
