Transcript
National security breaches like this should worry us all (Hour 2)
The Dom Salvia Show · Tue Mar 25, 2025
Um,
We have Senator Mark Warner.
He is the minority on this committee and Senator John Ossoff.
I thought did a great job We're gonna get to some of this sound eight five five seven five two four eight four two The continued playing down of the seriousness of this by this administration.
They can't deny it didn't happen, right?
They can attack.
send it out now?
Yeah,
want to first of all address the recent story that is broken in the news.
Yesterday, we stunningly learned that senior members of this administration, and according to reports, two of our witnesses here today were members of a group chat that discussed highly sensitive and likely classified information that supposedly even included weapons, packages, targets, and timing, and included the name of an active CIA agent.
Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system.
It's also just mind-boggling to me, but all these senior folks were on this line and nobody bothered to even check Security Hygiene 101.
Who are all the names?
Who are they?
Well, it apparently included a journalist.
And no matter how much the Secretary of Defense or others wanted to disparage him, this journalist had at least the ethics
to not report, I think, everything he heard.
The question I raise is like, you know, everybody on this committee gets briefed on security protocols.
They're told you don't make calls outside of skis of this kind of classified nature.
never
That this is not a one off or a first time
Let me take a couple of minutes and review some of the other reckless choices that this administration has made regarding our national security.
We all recall it seems like it wasn't that long ago, but less than two months ago.
In the first two weeks, the administration canceled all U.S.
foreign assistance.
Now, some may say, how can bad can that be?
It's foreign assistance.
Well, U.S.
foreign assistance paid for the units in Ukraine that provide air defense to civilian cities being attacked by Russia.
Foreign assistance paid for guarding camps in Syria
where ISIS fighters are detained.
Foreign assistance paid for programs abroad that ensure that diseases like Ebola don't come home.
And until recently it paid for the construction of a railway in Africa that would have helped given the United States much needed access to critical minerals in Congo.
Now that project, China's gonna try to finance it.
In the first two weeks, Dr. Patel, the administration fired several of our most experienced FBI agents, including the head of the Criminal Investigation Division, the head of the Intelligence Division, the head of the Counterterrorism Division, the heads of the New York, Washington.
and Miami field office, all individuals who were distinctly and directly responsible for helping to keep America safe.
The irony in a little bit was the currently or the recently dismissed head of the counter-terrorism division was involved in disrupting the ISIS attacks plan for Oklahoma City and Philadelphia and helped lead the effort to bring to justice the key planner of the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan.
to kill 13 U.S.
servicemen and 150 civilians.
That very abigate effort was actually praised by the President in his State of the Union address.
If the response, the administration's response to these agents, I believe, good works and years of service was to force these folks out.
It's hard to imagine how that makes our country safer.
got to stand
Radcliffe is the CIA director, I believe.
Correct.
And I thought this, for real, is some of the most pointed question and answer.
Certainly good questions.
All you can do is ask the questions.
But I think the demeanor of both men here, and you can you can hear it in their voices.
John Ossoff is not messing around.
And John Ratcliffe doesn't want to talk about it.
Thank you all for joining us and for your service just to make sure I understand some of the basics here So director Radcliffe you were a member of the Hootie PC small group signal chain correct I Was yeah, and so were the vice president the secretaries of state and defense the national security advisor
all the coffee
boys Gabba correct.
I believe so.
I don't have a list of Who was invited and so was national political reporter Jeffrey Goldberg correct?
I don't know that
what?
Yes, you do.
I don't know Jeffrey Goldberg and I don't have already testified.
I don't know
whether or how he was at it.
Okay, well, he was a member of the signal chain and the discussion included the vice president's private opinion on the wisdom of proposed US strikes
in Yemen,
correct?
I don't recall.
Vance quote I think we are making a mistake I am not sure the president is aware of how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now There was a strong argument for delaying this a month You don't recall I don't I as you as you don't recall seeing that read that I don't It included the private opinions of a secretary of defense on the timing of strikes in Yemen, correct?
I don't recall
Director Radcliffe, surely you prepared for this hearing today.
Maybe not.
Part of a group of principals, senior echelons of the US government in now a widely publicized breach of sensitive information.
You don't recall whether the vice president opined on the wisdom of the strikes.
That's your testimony today under oath.
In that setting, I don't recall.
Here's what Secretary Hegzeff said, quote, waiting a few weeks or months does not fundamentally change the calculus.
Two immediate risks on waiting.
One, this leaks, and we look indecisive.
Leak.
Two, Israel takes an action first, or Gaza sees fire falls apart, and we don't get to start this on our own terms.
Your testimonies, you don't recall the Secretary of Defense sending that message or reading it?
I recall there being an exchange.
I don't recall the specifics as you're reading it.
sure Well, let's put it this way direct direct lift a discussion by senior US officials on the timing and risks of a proposed military campaign and Disagreements between the president and the vice president about US plans and intentions would be of obvious interest to foreign intelligence services.
Would it not?
Yes, and they were discussing the timing
of sending U.S.
air crews into enemy airspace where they faced an air defense threat, correct?
I'm going to, Senator, defer to the other principles that you're referring to about what the meaning and the context of what they were on it.
They're talking
about the timing of U.S.
airstrikes, correct?
Yes, yes, and therefore the timing of sending U.S.
air crews into hostile airspace, correct?
Yes, and therefore the time period during which enemy air defenses could target US aircrews flying in enemy airspace, correct?
I don't know that.
You do know that.
Yeah.
I don't know that.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You don't know.
You're the director of the CIA.
This is your job.
You don't know.
Donald Trump doesn't know.
Nobody knows.
Nobody knows.
I don't know.
My old man, I'm confused.
You got to be kidding me.
You got to be kidding me.
We're going to come back and hear more of Senator John Ossoff.
And you could see as he's lining this up, talking about the timing, talking about the risks, talking about the different ideas or the disagreements within the administration, talking about whether or not these things would be valuable to our adversaries, whether or not these issues, these conversations, this information would put our service members at greater risk.
When we come back, Senator John Ossoff, he's going to get more.
He's going to ask another general, Timothy Hogg, on the value of the information on the signal thread.
Come back with us.
More of your calls as well.
855-752-4842.
Welcome back to the Dom Salvi show eight by five seven five two four eight four two eight five five seven five civic Senate Intelligent Senate Intelligent Committee hearing today.
We're playing some sound right now Senator John Ossoff going after CIA director John Ratcliffe who
barely doesn't know a lot of things, but he is in charge of the CIA.
So that's great.
So reassuring talking about the timing, the risks, uh, to, to the disagreements within the administration.
Would this be valuable to our adversaries?
Of course it would be not.
Right.
Fairly didn't know if it would be or not.
So enter general Timothy hog.
Now, he's asked about this question as well.
Let's play cut number three, please.
Let me ask this question, General Hawk.
You lead America's Signals Intelligence Collection.
Would the private deliberation of foreign senior officials about the wisdom and timing of potential military action be a collection priority for you and the US intelligence community?
Great question.
Senator it's our job to do indications and warning for both the plans and intentions of adversary leaders and for military commanders
and Would not information about the timing of air strikes Allow a military to preposition or cue air defense systems to shoot down enemy aircraft
I think senator the
from our perspective, any advanced warning is something that we certainly are trying to protect.
Right.
Yes.
And just let me just throw this out there before I think about one more cut from Senator Ossoff.
Indeed.
CBS News reporting.
President Trump's UK and Middle East envoy Steve Whitcoff was in Moscow or he met with Russian president Vladimir Putin when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen
other administration
officials including the journalist Now apparently according to CBS Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise signal a popular commercial messaging platform that many were shocked shocked.
I tell you to learn
Senior Trump administration officials had used to discuss military planning Wittkopf rise in Moscow shortly before noon local time on March 13th according to data from the flight tracking website flight radar 24 in russian state media broadcast It was motorcade arriving at the airport.
Certainly after 12 hours later.
He was added to the hootie PC called group chat on signal along with other Trump top Trump administration officials to discuss this operation He would do is in Russia
Now, Goldberg has not recounted Whitcoff making any comments in the chat until Saturday after he left Russia and returned to the U.S.
where they stopped in Azerbaijan.
It is unclear whether a phone issued to Whitcoff by the U.S.
government or a personal device was included in the signal chat and or whether he had the device with him in Russia, but U.S.
officials have discouraged
from our have been discurs from using the messaging app on government devices including by the Department of Defense what last week yeah fairly recently so yeah right off the bat one of the cats is in Russia man you know they got everything they got pointed at that dude uh everything they that's what they do that's what that's what this talked about the general that's what we do that's what they
That's what everybody does.
That's why you don't use a signal app.
And he certainly don't include a journalist on it.
And again, the bigger overriding question is, if they're using that for this, what else are they using it for?
What other, and you can set this to delete, what about government records and retention of those records?
Well, of course, they're skirting that.
They don't want you to know what they're doing.
They don't want to preserve it for history.
They want it to just all go away.
Let's hear, I believe one more cut, Senator.
Ossoff getting back to CIA director John Radcliffe cut for please
So just
director Radcliffe.
This was a huge mistake correct No
A national... Hold on.
No, no,
you hold on.
You hold on.
or
no question, and now you hold on.
A national political reporter... You can
characterize it
how you want.
...was made privy
to sensitive information about imminent military operations against a
foreign
terrorist organization.
An inadvertent mistake of adding a reporter... And that wasn't a huge mistake.
That wasn't a huge mistake.
They characterized
it as a mistake.
This is a
mistake.
This is utterly unprofessional.
There's been no apology.
There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error.
And by the way, we will get the full transcript of this chain and your testimony will be measured carefully against its content.
Thank you, Mr.
I'd be very curious to know if anyone inquired,
to the CIA director Ratcliffe or anybody else in the room.
Hey, what else do you use this for?
Yeah.
How many times have you used Signal?
I'm not even going to get into the content of your super secret, whatever, whatever.
Oh, there we go.
All
Hey
The dog was pissed and he kind of opened the window or sorry, the refrigerator, you know, same thing.
Um, Hey, so there's one other detail that's, um, missing inside of this in X, um, aid to, uh, the Kremlin, Sergei Markov.
He, uh, he posted on telegram, um, showing that our, uh, senator or a gentleman to have woke off.
Sorry.
I'm not on my computer right now.
I usually put on notes, but.
What cough?
What cough?
Yeah, thank you.
What cough didn't leave the Kremlin until like 1.30 AM or a little bit around 2 AM in their local time.
And that means that when they were sending that information back and forth, he had it while he was talking to Putin.
I'm just saying there's so much to unpack here sloppy by this administration Most certainly and again the fact of there's no contritions.
No apology.
No acknowledgement.
No punishment.
Well, what would stop them from doing it again?
Come back with us eight five five seven five two four eight four two
Salvia show eight five five seven five two four eight four two eight five five seven five seven It is not let's call around here.
We got a whole another half hour and we end this fine program Tell us something good.
That's wrap up the day with a smile on our face Join us eight five five seven five two four eight four two Okay Pete Hankseth
Wasn't me.
Remember the song?
It was a shaggy.
Wasn't me.
Wasn't me.
Of course, that was the takeoff of Eddie Murphy.
Maybe raw, I believe it was, 87.
wasn't me.
I saw you and I saw you.
Nope.
Wasn't me.
Wasn't me.
I guess it wasn't you.
You keep saying it enough.
Maybe people will believe it.
I'm not buying it.
I don't believe it.
I, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta BS alert man.
I get it.
You just know, I mean, I, I've given my own here and there.
So you got to take someone to know one, right?
I'll take that.
I resemble that remark.
Um,
Hagsep spoke briefly to reporters after landing in Hawaii on Monday, lashed out at Goldberg for the Atlantic's history of publishing negative stories.
All right, let's, let's get to, you know, blame the messenger.
That's that's, that's what every innocent, totally, totally honest person
does.
all
Cut one.
information about war plans against the Houthis in Yemen was shared with a journalist in the Atlantic.
And were those details classified?
So you're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoaxes.
or suckers and losers hoax.
So this is the guy that pedals in garbage.
This is what he does.
Number two, attacks the journalist.
And number three is factually wrong.
And I'll point you out to NBC News report from let's see, what is this?
I don't have a date here.
Oh, NBC News report.
This is from October 3 of 2023.
The suckers and losers.
Well,
John Kelly confirmed that who's John Kelly while he was, but the former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump.
But what would he know?
Well, here's what John Kelly said in a statement to CNN.
Again, this is back in 03.
Kelly delivered a scathing criticism of Trump while confirming reporting in the Atlantic in 2020, the detail, the comments he made during his presidency.
Pete Haig said, is your Google broke, man?
Or are you just trying to gaslight everyone?
Yes.
Quote, a person who thinks
Those who defend their country in uniform or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat or spend years being tortured as POWs are all suckers because quote there is nothing in it for them Kelly said of Trump a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of the military amputees because it doesn't look good for me a person who demonstrated open contempt for a gold star family for all gold star families on TV during the 2016 campaign and rants that are most precious heroes who gave
their lives in America's defense are losers and wouldn't visit their graves in France.
That, hey Seth, is John Kelly.
John Kelly was a former Trump White House chief of staff confirming that story that you just ranted about in the Atlantic.
I mean, people, are you listening here?
Do you understand this man is lying to your face, not addressing the question, and certainly doesn't think he did anything wrong.
Let's hear more.
From the Defense Secretary?
Sure.
Why
were those details shared on Signal and how did you learn that a journalist was privy to the targets, the types of weapons used?
I've heard
all
right?
She is.
This starts out with Pete Hexeth.
It's literally the most unqualified secretary of defense in history.
And this is further demonstrating his incompetence.
And by he's literally leaking classified war plans via group chat, right?
He's the guy who actually uploaded.
He knew this was classified information.
He uploaded it.
It's a stunning breach of our national security by Pete Hexeth and Trump administration.
They've done this before, and frankly,
This puts the lives of our servicemen and women in danger.
And I have to ask the same question that you just asked.
Don't they care?
Don't they care about the men and women in uniform who are going to be flying those missions?
And by the way, if you were our allies, I would be thinking twice about sharing classified information with the United States for future missions.
And that could put our men and women in uniform or in harm's way right now.
in danger.
Shame on them.
All these people need to lose their jobs.
They
Thank you, Senator Duckworth, for articulating that.
You're damn right.
I mean, when our friend, and I don't
Hey, you know when our friends stopped sharing information with us That's not a great sign and that fact alone if that were to be the case if all of a sudden people are going man in America Yeah, they're gonna look crazy over there.
You see up there.
I'm not we're not doing that.
We're gonna put we're gonna put we're gonna put we're not gonna give them this information We don't know what they're gonna do with it right and because what they do with it could potentially put
Our friendly countries, our allies, also at risk.
If you are that laxadaisical with this type of information, why on earth would you share that with Pete Hakeseth?
Good old
Thank you, Dana from La Crosse.
Dana, I like it.
Whiskey leaks.
Uncle Tony, he texts in, I guess like a screenshot from Ice Smoke Tutti's PC small group chat.
Come on, Democrats.
The Secretary of Defense was drug texting plans of a highly classified military operation.
Get on TV, call it treason, demand a criminal investigation, call for resignation.
So when they cover it up, call for the public to support impeachment.
This is a slam dunk.
8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2.
I think it'd be a stretch for Theresa, but certainly it could be considered criminal.
And if this is the behavior of this administration using unsanctioned, unsafe, encrypted apps to communicate illegally about their plans, number one, and number two, to not have a record, to avoid all sorts of freedom of information, to avoid the scrutiny of the public, of the people they claim to serve.
That's problematic
Uh, and also, uh, before we get to the calls, eight, five, five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two, Jeffrey Goldberg.
Again, this is the guy who got this information said he could be open to sharing more details from a signal group chat.
He was mistakenly added.
Uh, I get the defensive reaction.
He said Tuesday during an interview with the bulwark, but my obligation I feel is to the idea that we take national security information seriously.
Yeah.
Maybe in the coming days, I will be able to say, okay, I have a plan to make this material vetted publicly.
Goldberg said, but I'm not going to say that now.
The guys took out the information.
Right.
Boom.
I believe we have the most dangerous president this country's ever had.
He's a Russian agent.
The reason that these people were visiting with Russia or with Putin at the time, I believe, was they needed to get permission to do it.
When you're an agent of Russia, why would you have these people sitting in front of Russia, the Russian, you know, Putin, and why would you send it to him at the time, unless you expected them to forward it to somebody?
And then the next part was, why do you, we are not going to admit to anything.
This is Donald Trump.
You will throw everybody like he said, throw the victim under the bus.
In this case, if the poor reporter became a victim because he happened to be doing his job.
And now they're going to blame him because he did something and now he's actually reporting on what he's supposed to do.
And we can't really decide until we see what's released because we're listening to what they're saying, but we don't really know what was released, which brings up another thing.
I guess if you did something illegal, you're not going to admit what you did
we know the president, the Supreme Court has given Donald Trump immunity to everything in the world.
But guess what?
Everybody underneath them doesn't have immunity.
That's right.
We can still go after those people and they better watch themselves because those are the people that are gonna end up being locked up later on
Yes a great point.
Thank you for calling the president may have this new expanded King like authority and immunity granted to him by the Supreme Court But but but nobody else does now he can you know He can deal all pardons like cards if he wants to but I mean he's already done that
So what would we left with eight five five seven five two four eight four two a couple more collars That's what we're left with Neil from Glendale.
You are next.
Welcome Neil.
What do you got for us?
Well, I'm just wondering are these the same people who would have skewered Obama and Biden?
Oh, yeah Still yelling locker up.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yes We are definitely living in the bizarro world
What an embarrassing time to be an American.
It just is beyond comprehension.
The fraud, the cover-up, and the lies.
If anything close to this would have happened during the Obama or Biden administration.
You'd see blood coming from their teeth.
I certainly don't like their politics.
Okay, fair enough.
But number one, this is our country, we, the people, and these folks are using
systems that circumvent our ability to make sure that they're doing the people's job.
for freedom of information acts, for example.
Let alone the fact that they threw this guy on.
This is, this is not a political issue.
This is literally a national insecurity issue.
This is about competency.
And of course it goes to character.
What do we see?
They attack.
Hexeth, he's attacks.
Even though during his attack he doesn't answer the question.
He attacks the journalist and then he throws out all this other, all these other fraud or lies that was perpetrated by the Atlantic.
Like, I don't know, quoting John Kelly.
The former chief of staff for the president talking about suckers and losers that literally happened.
He went on the record and said that hate set
I Got some ideas and suggestions from my knowledge of Watergate.
All
through it We need it We need to get some judges to stand up on the bench and get some of these little guys so we can
get them under oath and get, uh, maybe a John Dean that won't take the bribe and won't sit in jail.
I just think maybe it could happen.
I
mean, they, they are, and I think justifiably pushing back, uh, because some of these, these actions by this administration are certainly unconstitutional.
You cannot buy executive fiat.
you know, just automatically change the entirety of this country.
Now, the president certainly has lots of powers with the executive orders under in his administration.
He can change things within that administration to a degree.
But again, the overreach by this administration, the effort, I mean, we have 130 lawsuits
right now
Okay.
You know, that's why we go through this process.
But man, if our only hope is to rely on the judges, folks, you know, what are we doing?
What are we doing?
I know what you're doing.
You're coming back.
Well, that's gonna tell us something good.
We got one final segment.
We'll take your calls or whatever your topics may be.
We'll certainly get to them.
But, but, but, you know, just as rule, you got to start by telling us something good.
Join us 855-752-4842.
Come back.
And welcome back to the Dom salvia show last segment of the day if you got something to say hit us up right now eight five five seven five two four eight four two eight five five seven five Civic it's a phone line.
It's a text line and you know how we roll in the last segment of the day Tell us something good
and
Hey, good afternoon Dom great show today by the way very interesting my good is the
Mark Johnson and the Wisconsin women's NCAA team hockey team winning the national yeah man seven seven time that's just totally awesome someday there'll be a statue and him on front of the bottom arena there so thanks thanks for the great show and Badger hockey women's team is awesome
So.
And I was looking for some new prog rock or some old prog rock recommendations, and he recommended Dream Theater to me.
And I listened to their album, Awake.
Start to finish while I was making dinner last night.
And it was just a really excellent way to decompress from the day, enjoy some music, and just be.
So if any of y'all are looking for a nice little music rec, I think it's like a 1994 album, it's older than I am.
Leslie believes a cat his tortoise shell cat Millie is the oldest living feline Now the quote here was kind of sad.
Here's what he said.
I had a birthday cake made with her face on it It was such a hot day.
She was licking all the ice cream off my life ambition is to get her in the Guinness Book of World Records But I can't prove her age the only person who can do that is my late wife who sadly died five years ago
Aw, aw, Leslie.
So congratulations.
got?
Yeah, my wife, the artist is leaving this weekend.
That is to say, she and my stepdaughter are going on a retreat at the Georgia O'Keefe Museum down in...
New Mexico.
Nice.
So that's a thing.
Oh, I'll probably sit in and do a few tunes at some jazz club.
But I like what you're saying.
You got to reach out and get some new ones in a while.
Yeah, absolutely.
Meanwhile, I've been.
I've been going back to the James game.
You know, something about that seventies rock, man.
It was this little dirtier back then.
Hey folks, thank you so much for hanging out with us and listening today.
We certainly appreciate it.
Um, tomorrow, Matt Rothschild is going to join us again tomorrow.
We'll get you all caught up on the news of the day and the continued.
follow up from this