Signal War Plans Messages Disappear from CIA Director's Phone [View all]

Source: Newsweek

Published Apr 15, 2025 at 3:52 AM EDT | Updated Apr 15, 2025 at 7:19 AM EDT


Signal messages discussing sensitive U.S. military plans were not on CIA director John Ratcliffe's phone when the CIA reviewed them, the CIA's Chief Data Officer has said.

In a court document submitted Monday as part of a lawsuit between nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight and White House officials, Hurley V. Blankenship said that when the CIA reviewed a sensitive Signal group chat on March 31, days after news broke that a journalist had been erroneously added to it, "substantive messages" were not present and instead the chat showed only its group name and administrative settings. Newsweek contacted Ratcliffe for comment via website form outside of normal office hours on Tuesday.

Why It Matters

Administration officials allegedly discussed U.S. military plans in Yemen on a Signal chat group on March 24 that included The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. Officials on the chat group faced bipartisan criticism including the lawsuit, which alleged breaches of the Federal Records Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by conducting government business on a platform which erases communications.

Federal Judge James Boasberg, the chief U.S. district judge in Washington, on March 27 ordered Ratcliffe—along with other members of the group chat Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—to preserve all messages from March 11 to 15 in the chat group.

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/signal-war-plans-cia-director-john-ratcliffe-messages-disappear-phone-2059775