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00:00What I saw coming over my phone was, to some degree, a group of people, mainly Hegseth,
00:09cosplaying at running the country and running the national security apparatus of the country.
00:15This is why they were sort of putting things on signal like, the bombers, leave it, whatever.
00:20You know, it's like, and you know what the thought I had when I was seeing it?
00:23The thought I had was, dude, you don't have to cosplay being Secretary of Defense.
00:30You are Secretary of Defense.
00:33We're good. We're good. I got it. You're cool.
00:37As a shaky ceasefire holds between Israel and Iran, I sit down with the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
00:44We discuss the moment he learned he was included in a secret chat about military action in Yemen,
00:50his thoughts on the recent U.S. strikes in Iran, and why he believes World War III may have already started.
00:57Stay with us.
01:02Hey, this is Al, and before we start the show, I wanted to talk to you directly, just you and I.
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02:14This is more to the story.
02:25I'm Al Letson.
02:27Back in March, Jeffrey Goldberg looked at his phone and couldn't believe what he was seeing.
02:32Messages from U.S. national security leaders about imminent military strikes in the Middle East.
02:38A White House official had inadvertently added the Atlantic's editor-in-chief to an internal signal chat.
02:45The scandal called into question President Trump's national security team
02:49and how administration officials handle America's military secrets.
02:53Today, many of those same leaders are heading up military operations against Iran.
02:58And Jeffrey, more than most journalists, has seen how they make decisions up close.
03:03Jeffrey, thanks so much for joining me today.
03:05Thanks for having me on.
03:07So, after the U.S. bombed Iran, I've seen all over the place that people feel like this could be the beginning of World War III.
03:14What are your thoughts?
03:16Yeah, I see that and I read it.
03:18I just, no one's explained to me how this leads to World War III yet.
03:23That is not to say that things can't spin out of control in the Middle East.
03:26The Middle East, the only constant in the Middle East is sudden and dramatic change.
03:29So, something can go off the rails even as we're speaking.
03:33There's a larger point, and sorry to give you this lengthy answer, but I actually think that we're in World War III and we've been in World War III since the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
03:47And by that, I mean when you have a situation in which Russia, aided by North Korean troops and Iranian drones and supported diplomatically by China, is invading a neighboring country that is supported by Western Europe and, until today at least, the United States, that seems like a low-grade world war, right?
04:13It's controlled, it's conventional, it's mostly done through proxies, at least from the Western side, it's done through proxies.
04:22But we're having all of these eruptions all the time now, and the world is not at peace because the major powers are battling it out through proxies and in other ways.
04:37I think what has been a little bit surprising for me with this new front or change in the Middle East when it comes to Iran and Israel is seeing that some people on the right are really against American intervention with Iran.
04:57And I'm thinking specifically about, you know, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
05:03Yeah.
05:04I saw her saying that she thought that this was going to become a nuclear war.
05:07And then you've got Tucker Carlson, who really grilled Ted Cruz and brought his thoughts to the forefront.
05:15I just, I don't know, I just did not expect to see that happen.
05:19And I'm going to go deep here for a second, and I'm going to argue against the idea that Americans don't like wars.
05:28I think Americans are fine with wars as long as they're short wars that we win.
05:34Agree.
05:34So I think, look, you know, one of the differences, and I just wrote a piece about this, one of the, I covered Barack Obama and his foreign policy, national security policy in depth.
05:43I know something about that, and I know something about Donald Trump.
05:47Barack Obama was interesting because he would study the second and third and fourth order consequences of actions America could take.
05:58And that would frequently paralyze him into not taking any action.
06:03Remember, the Syrian red line controversy is a good example.
06:07Donald Trump, I don't think, understands intellectually the idea that there's consequences to actions, right?
06:14And so they're wildly different.
06:16And so when you have somebody like that, like Donald Trump, who doesn't really ask analytically, what could happen down the road if I do X or Y or Z, you're really rolling the dice.
06:30I think maybe more than any journalist, you have seen up close the incompetence of the Trump administration.
06:39Oh, I wouldn't go that far.
06:40I don't know.
06:41I mean, you were added to a top secret group chat about a bombing.
06:47I think I would stand by my statement just for that.
06:51Okay.
06:51Maybe, maybe, maybe, yes.
06:53In the sense that it was coming in on my phone, yes.
06:56Yeah, I would, yes, I would say.
06:58I was getting, I was getting a firsthand glimpse.
07:01You're, you're, I'm not going to argue the point.
07:03Okay, so, so, so with that being said, how much confidence do you have in this team?
07:11And I'm talking about Secretary of Defense, Hexeth.
07:15I'm talking about Trump.
07:16I'm talking about all the people that are around these decisions.
07:19How confident are you in their ability to execute a plan and to, you know, protect American lives?
07:26Yeah, to manage it, yep.
07:28Yeah.
07:29I have confidence in, let me put it this way, you know, the, the, the general in charge of
07:36Central Command, General Carrilla, who oversaw this operation.
07:40Highly competent.
07:41There's a lot of competent people still in government.
07:44I have no confidence in Pete Hexeth's management or analytic or moral capabilities.
07:51Marco Rubio is a mystery to me because I knew Marco Rubio a bit and I was an admirer of his
07:58brain and many of his policy ideas.
08:01And now he's completely done one of these invasion of the body snatchers things where
08:05he's just whatever Trump says is, is the thing.
08:08Trump himself tweets or truth socials or whatever the verb is for posting on truth social, a kind
08:16of goading text about Russia and its nuclear capabilities.
08:23And I worry about Trump's understanding of the way the national security systems of autocracies work.
08:35And I worry that, I mean, it would be probably, it would be the greatest irony of them all.
08:41It would be sort of a, that's a hell of a way to destroy the planet.
08:44If the planet were eventually destroyed because Donald Trump put something on truth social that
08:50was misinterpreted by a nuclear armed enemy of the United States who felt as if they had
08:56to respond by escalating.
08:58I don't think Donald Trump wants a nuclear war.
09:01Donald Trump has actually been very interesting on the subject of nuclear war and warfare in
09:05general.
09:05And he is a, as you know, he's, he's not very much into generally speaking into foreign
09:11adventures, or at least he's said as much.
09:13Um, I worry that he doesn't have the self-restraint, maturity, analytic ability, and today the
09:22advisors to keep us out of an escalatory cycle with a major power.
09:29Iran is a minor power, but I'm talking about China and Russia, North Korea to some extent,
09:34because they already have a nuclear weapons.
09:36So that's what I worry about.
09:38You know, you, you want somebody in that office who's not impetuous and who is not reactionary.
09:47I don't mean reactionary in the political sense.
09:49I mean reactionary in the characterological sense, like is easily poked, you know, somebody
09:55who's chill.
09:57I mean, if you remember, he was goading the leader of North Korea.
10:01This was eight years ago, little rocket man, and my button is bigger than your button.
10:06It's like, you don't have to be, you don't have to spend years in grad school studying
10:11nuclear weapons doctrine to know that ridiculing and threatening people with nuclear weapons
10:18is not a great idea.
10:20And so if the question is how worried I am that this is the man in charge of our nuclear
10:28weapons, and remember, even though we are a democracy, the president of the United States
10:34is an absolute nuclear monarch.
10:36The president of the United States can use a nuclear weapon when he wants to.
10:41So I don't feel great about the match of the responsibility that the president has and
10:47this particular person in the role.
10:48The foreign power that I think about, the conflict that could be coming, I worry a lot about China
10:55and Taiwan and how President Trump would respond to any aggression from China towards Taiwan.
11:03And I, you know, I mean, because, you know, I don't know if you can say that this administration
11:09has a definable foreign policy because you can't really tell what they're going to do from
11:14one day to the next.
11:15You know, I wonder, like, like, all bets are off the table if China moves in on Taiwan.
11:23Yeah.
11:23You know, that's interesting.
11:24By the way, there's an argument to be made that a president who is unpredictable is useful
11:30in terms of managing adversaries.
11:33Sure.
11:33It's, you know, known in foreign policy as the crazy Nixon approach.
11:37You know, Kissinger would tell the Russians, look, I understand what you're talking about,
11:41but my boss, he's a little bit nuts.
11:43We don't know what he's going to do.
11:44The problem with that is for the crazy Nixon approach to work, the president can't actually
11:50be crazy.
11:51It seems to me that this administration, specifically this president, if you whisper sweet nothing's
12:01in his ear and find a way to get money into his coffers, aggression seems to go away.
12:09Yes.
12:10And I mean, the Iranians didn't try to be fair, so we don't know.
12:14Right.
12:15I mean, you know, the joke in the first term, or at least the joke that I heard was that,
12:19you know, either the Trump presidency ends with Trump bombing Iran or building a casino
12:25in Tehran.
12:25Like, you don't know, right?
12:27You don't know which way anything's going to go.
12:28On the Taiwan issue, I would ask you what you think, because I have no idea of knowing
12:35whether when push comes to shove, Donald Trump would go and defend Taiwan or not.
12:40He's a very transactional person.
12:43He wants to do business with China on the one hand.
12:46He sees China as an adversary, as another.
12:49Does he care who runs Taiwan?
12:52No.
12:52He cares who's in control of the smooth flow of semiconductors out of Taiwan into American
12:58manufacturing facilities, right?
13:01So I don't know what he would do.
13:04On the one hand, he's transactional and quasi-isolationist, so he doesn't seem to be the sort of person
13:09who's going to commit U.S. bodies, meaning soldiers, to a fight to defend Taiwan.
13:14On the other hand, he's very reactive, right?
13:18Like we were talking.
13:19And so maybe he would be like, China doesn't get to do that.
13:24Only I get to do that sort of thing.
13:25So I'm going to go defend Taiwan.
13:27I don't know.
13:28Do you have any insight into it?
13:30I have zero insight into it.
13:32I think the thing that I think about a lot is that there's two paths, right?
13:36There's a path that he says, I don't really care.
13:39As long as we get the superconductors, who cares?
13:42There's the other path where maybe China has a little bluster in their step and says something
13:48like challenging the United States.
13:51Then anything could happen at that point.
13:53So who knows?
13:53That's what I mean about someone who's who is emotions based in these in these situations.
14:00No, I mean, if you're Taiwan, if you're Poland, if you're the Baltic states, you know, you have
14:07to be asking, especially with the Europeans, because he obviously has a softer spot for
14:11Putin than he has for Xi.
14:12If you're the Europeans, you have to say, I don't know if this guy's going to actually
14:17come in and save us if we need saving.
14:21But on the particular issue of Hegseth and SignalGate, obviously what I saw coming over
14:29my phone was to some degree, a group of people, mainly Hegseth, cosplaying at running the country
14:36and running the national security apparatus of the country.
14:39This is why they were sort of putting things on signal, like the bombers leave it, whatever.
14:44You know, it's like, and you know what the thought I had when I was seeing it, the thought
14:48I had was, dude, you don't have to cosplay being secretary of defense.
14:55You are secretary of defense.
14:56Exactly.
14:57We're good.
14:58We're good.
14:59I got it.
15:00You're cool.
15:01You got all the bombers.
15:03That's great.
15:03Like, you don't have to show.
15:05I mean, I almost felt like at a very basic level, he was showing off for the vice president
15:09who was also in the chat, you know, and I was like, oh, this is not, you just want
15:15people in government, the people who have life and death responsibilities to be calm,
15:23cool, a lot of cool is necessary, mature, analytic.
15:29They don't take things personally.
15:31They're not getting tattoos to show how cool they are.
15:35You want smooth professionals who aren't looking for glory.
15:40They just want to do their job because they believe that they have a responsibility to their
15:45country.
15:49Coming up, Jeffrey talks about what this chaotic moment in time means for the country.
15:55You know, in my mind, we're either experiencing a midlife crisis, a nervous breakdown or a terminal
16:03illness.
16:04I know we're going through something.
16:06We're going through something.
16:08Social media, reality TV before it and the coming AI, it created a situation in which one
16:16of these things could happen.
16:17I don't even know if democracy can survive in an age of social media.
16:21The fact that you are listening to this podcast right now tells me that you like deep conversations
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16:47Okay.
16:47More from Jeffrey Goldberg coming up.
16:51Following the Project 2025 playbook to the letter, the Christian nationalists wielding
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19:01And thanks.
19:03It's more to the story.
19:11I'm Al Edson, back with more of my conversation with the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
19:17Take me back to that moment when you first got the signal message.
19:20Where were you, and what did you think when you realized exactly what was happening?
19:26Well, I didn't realize what was happening until it was happening.
19:29What happened was I got a, you know, a connection request from Mike Waltz, who, despite what Mike Waltz later said, I do know.
19:38I have met.
19:39My phone number would be in his phone.
19:42It's not an impossible thing.
19:43And so I thought, oh, wow, Mike Waltz wants to chat.
19:47I haven't talked to that guy in a long time.
19:49Maybe he wants to open up a channel.
19:51That's great.
19:51So I accepted it.
19:53And then I was the next day or two days after that, I was added to the, I think, PC Houthi small group, it was called.
20:00And I thought, oh, this is somebody's, like, punking me.
20:04Like, this is obviously some kind of scam.
20:07And then it continued in that vein until the actual messages about the bombing started coming in.
20:15And I thought, well, if this is real, then we're about to see some bombing in Yemen.
20:20And sure enough, it was real.
20:22And this is a couple of months ago already, and when I do think about it, it still seems absurd.
20:31Yeah.
20:31Because I was in the middle of this, and it's not that common, as you know, for a reporter to be part of the story in the way that I became part of that story for a week.
20:43So in the middle of that swirl, I didn't really contemplate just how amazingly stupid the whole thing was.
20:50Like, what are the chances of that happening, right?
20:54And that goes back to your original question, which is, like, are these guys good at their jobs?
21:01In this case, they weren't very good at their jobs.
21:05Why did you decide to take yourself out of the chat?
21:10You're making an assumption that I was making decisions alone.
21:13All I can say is that I had a great number of very, very skilled lawyers assisting me through this process because none of them had ever seen anything like this before.
21:30And so the prudent course of action was to remove myself from the chat.
21:37And obviously, we thought that that would trigger, you know, when you leave a signal chat, the rest of the people on the chat are told that you've left the signal chat.
21:46So we were expecting all kinds of hijinks to ensue.
21:50They didn't because it seemed like nobody noticed that I had left the chat.
21:53What I would say is, apart from various legal exposures and all the rest, I didn't want to be in that chat.
22:04I have to be honest with you.
22:05I don't—I want to know as much as I can about the decision-making process and the arguments and the strategy of the United States National Security Complex.
22:17I do not, as a civilian, want to know when the bombers are taking off, from what base they're taking off, what ships are firing, what missiles at what targets.
22:28I don't want to know.
22:30I am not qualified to have that information.
22:33I don't think it's the place of a journalist to have that.
22:36I'm happy to find out later.
22:38But I don't want specific tactical information to be coming to me, and not just because of all the exposure that would open up—you know, it would open you up to all kinds of Espionage Act issues.
22:49I don't need to know what kind of gun the soldiers are using.
22:55Well, it's also a heavy responsibility, right?
22:57That's what I mean.
22:58Like, it's not my—like, that's not what I—
23:01Yeah, I don't want to know that.
23:02I don't want to know that.
23:03And, like, I am—I have no problem with this.
23:05I've gotten into this argument subsequently.
23:07You know, it's like, what is your role as a journalist in these kind of circumstances?
23:11And I don't—for some people, for a lot of people, by staying in the chat at all and writing about it, I was a traitor and I was violating something.
23:21I don't know what I was violating.
23:23To them, I say, look, my job is to figure out what powerful people are doing on our behalf.
23:28And so, if they wanted to invite me to the chat, I'm in the chat.
23:32And I'm going to tell the readers of The Atlantic what's going on.
23:35There's some people said, like, you know, you should stay in the chat forever and then report out immediately what they're attacking.
23:42And it's like, look, I'm an American journalist, right?
23:45I'm a patriotic American.
23:47I'm not doing anything.
23:48I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do anything that endangers the lives of another American.
23:54So, what went into your decision to publish the chat?
23:58Well, there are two phases.
24:00One, I wasn't going to—you know, we—a lot of the stuff, as you know, was—seemed to me to be obviously classified secret information.
24:08You know, what kind of missiles, when they're going to leave, when they're going to land, who they're targeting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
24:13What I did with all that information is, you know, along with colleagues, we measured the question of publishing.
24:21What benefit would come from publishing that specific information and what harm could ensue?
24:25So, I willingly held back information that I thought was operational because it's not my interest to provide operational details to stated sworn adversaries of America.
24:39And remember, the Houthi slogan is, death to America, death to the Jews, or whatever.
24:43I'm like all the categories, right?
24:45I mean, like, death to left-handed Yankees fans, you know?
24:50I'd be like, oh, my God, they really know me, you know?
24:54And so, like, I have no interest in sharing that kind of information.
25:00They come out and call me all kinds of names and say that I'm lying and that there was nothing in the chat that was secret.
25:07And so, they actually kind of weirdly forced my hand.
25:10So, we spent the day after the first story appeared vetting again the information that I had that I had not published and making sure that no American would be harmed by the publication of that information.
25:23And then we went to all the different agencies and said, look, this is what I'm going to put in the Atlantic tomorrow.
25:30If you can make a compelling case why I shouldn't publish this, make it now.
25:35So, the CIA came back and asked that we not publish one specific thing about a specific person, and I said yes because my interest is not harming that specific person.
25:44Other than that, they were like, nope, you know, we're not raising objections.
25:49So, then I published it.
25:50They could have had this become a two-day story by simply saying, and look, this is what an ideal administration or even a normal administration might have done.
26:00They might have said, oh, wow, that was a doozy.
26:04We really shouldn't have been communicating on Signal.
26:07From now on, we're not going to communicate on Signal anymore, and we're going to investigate how this happened and investigate how this journalist was brought in.
26:15And for whatever reason, their impulse was to attack me and say that I'm lying and call me a scumbag and call me – I mean, Mike Waltz literally called me a loser.
26:25Like, what – and the funniest part of that is that I didn't ask you to send me all this stuff.
26:31Right.
26:32Like, you – you added me.
26:35I was literally – I mean, I was literally sitting in a supermarket when I got – I was just shopping.
26:41Yeah.
26:42You know, and I'm getting all this stuff, and it's like, well, you know, you could call me a loser, but at least I know how to text.
26:49Right.
26:49You know?
26:50Right.
26:51You know, I think in normal times, though, it wouldn't just be we're not going to use Signal again.
26:58It would be we're not going to use Signal again, and someone's going to be held accountable.
27:01Like, we're going to, you know, fire somebody, and really – like, that didn't happen here.
27:07Like, this administration just kind of doubled down and said, you know, Jeff is stupid, and that's where it ends.
27:15Jeff is stupid.
27:16No, but here's a serious thing.
27:18And anyone who is active due to military or works in the intelligence community who's listening to this or any veteran is going to understand what I'm saying immediately.
27:28You can get in serious trouble if you're a soldier for revealing the fact that you're in a truck moving from X base to Y base, right?
27:44You can get into trouble for – the government overclassifies.
27:48Let's stipulate that they classify everything.
27:50But let's also stipulate that there's some stuff that's worth classifying, baking secret.
27:54There are so many soldiers who've been punished, including jail time, for revealing things that are so much less serious than the stuff that was revealed in the Signal chat.
28:06And what I heard from nonpolitical rank-and-file soldiers, veterans, et cetera, was I would have gone to jail for that.
28:18These guys don't even lose a day's pay, but I would have gone to jail.
28:23And that hypocrisy, you know, let's talk about what leadership is, right?
28:29That's that on the part of Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, et cetera.
28:34That is not modeling good leadership for the people who report to you.
28:40Yeah.
28:41Are you scared for this country where we are right now?
28:46You know, in my mind, we're either experiencing a midlife crisis, a nervous breakdown, or a terminal illness.
28:56I know we're going through something.
28:59We're going through something.
29:00Social media, reality TV before it, and the coming AI.
29:05It created a situation in which one of these things could happen.
29:10And I don't even know if democracy can survive in an age of social media.
29:14That's a large question for another day.
29:17But I literally don't know if we're going through a thing where it's like, all we need to do is buy a sports car and we're going to be fine.
29:23Or we just need a little bit of rest and relaxation and maybe some drugs and we'll be fine.
29:29Or if the American experiment is under such pressure that maybe it doesn't make it.
29:36I would note, a colleague of mine, Yoni Applebaum, has noted this in writing in the past, that there's never been this sort of experiment before in human history.
29:45A large, very large, multi-ethnic democracy has never flourished before over the long term.
29:54And I do think that, you know, introducing social media and conspiracism and the fakery of AI and all the rest has really affected our ability to keep it together.
30:08But I just don't know.
30:10Obviously, I'm hoping for the best.
30:12I do think that America is a great country.
30:14I think that we're an indispensable nation.
30:16I think we are a force for good more than we're a force for bad in the world, especially when you look around the world and see what actually is out there.
30:22I've got kids.
30:24I want them to live in a flourishing country.
30:27But I don't know where we're at.
30:32Yeah.
30:32I do know this.
30:33I do know that passivity in the face of outrage is not going to get us anywhere.
30:41And I do know that there are some people who believe that as long as we shovel enough cheap calories at Americans and multifarious forms of entertainment will keep them quiet and quiescent.
30:56And I think that people need to really contemplate what we have and what our system is and think about ways to make it better and not just let it get destroyed by people who don't care about our democratic experiment.
31:15Sorry, I didn't mean to start giving you a big speech there, but I really feel this.
31:22I feel like there's a lot of passivity right now about things.
31:28I agree with you.
31:28I think passivity and I think that in a lot of ways, so many things, social media, the media we consume, all of it brings us further away from our humanity.
31:41Look at the way people talk to each other in this country.
31:45Exactly.
31:46The way we talk to each other.
31:47Also, the fact that we've just lost touch with having empathy for people who aren't in our immediate circle.
31:55Well, this goes to my exact point.
31:57It's like, you know what I call MAGA supporters?
32:00Americans.
32:01I want them to call us Americans, too.
32:04I want people to look at journalists as patriots and not as traitors.
32:10I want people to operate within the boundaries of decent behavior and self-restraint because we're going to be living here together no matter what, so it might as well work.
32:24And on that note, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, thank you so much for coming in and talking to me.
32:34Is that good?
32:36That was great.
32:37Did you tape it?
32:38Do we have to do it again?
32:39No.
32:41That was The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
32:44If you like this conversation, check out our reveal episode called In Fallujah, We Destroyed Part of Ourselves.
32:50It's about George W. Bush's decision to take military action in Iraq and what it meant for the Marines on the front lines.
32:58Lastly, just a reminder, we are listener-supported.
33:01That means listeners like you.
33:03You can help us thrive by making a gift today.
33:06Just go to revealnews.org slash gift.
33:09Again, that's revealnews.org slash gift.
33:12And thank you.
33:13This episode was produced by Josh Sam Byrne, Stephen Rascone, and Cara McGurk-Allison.
33:18Theme music and engineering help by Fernando, my man, Yo Arruda, and Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs.
33:23I'm Al Edson, and you know, let's do this again next week.
33:26This is more to the story.
33:28From PRX.
33:50Let's do this.
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