Security Officials Heads Should Roll. They Can’t Be Trusted after the Signal Blunder.

By William Swan, a retired Fighter Pilot with 3,000 flight hours. He was a Lt. Colonel with 28 years of active USAF and reserve duty.

Put yourself at the front end of an F/A-18 fighter jet, loaded to go to war and ready to put your life on the line in defense of your country, only to learn that your attack is being released to a magazine editor and God knows who else before you take off. I bet you would still take off and do your best job possible, and then you would raise holy hell when you returned to base.

Put yourself in the shoes of the Captain of a US warship in the Red Sea, preparing to launch missiles at targets in an act of war and trying to make sure all your defenses are manned and ready for any enemy.

Then, you learn about the Signal group chat bungled by Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser. Again, if given the execution order, I’m sure the Captain and all under their command would do their jobs. Then, when the smoke clears, the Captain would ask, “Who are these guys to put my people at risk like that? We can’t risk our ships and, more importantly, the lives of all our warfighters like this again. No way.”

I have some personal experience with this. In the late 1970s, along with 23 other fighters and four tankers, I flew a fully armed fighter jet, ordered by the President, on a top-secret mission to South Korea. We were called in the day before and told to go home, get a good night’s sleep (yeah, right!), and come in at O Dark Thirty.

We didn’t know where we were going or why. We were told to pack for a long trip but not to tell your family anything except that you were going in to fly the next morning and didn’t expect us home “for a while.”

Lives were at stake

Operational security (OPSEC) was the most important part of our preparation. Lives were at stake. We were sent non-stop to South Korea as a show of force, 48 hours after the North Koreans had killed a couple of Marines in the Demilitarized Zone. Tensions were high on the peninsula and on a war footing.

I could not imagine if “our enemy” had been given a two-hour warning of our flight by a group of presidential appointees. Would the North Koreans have engaged us to prevent our deployment? Luckily, our OPSEC held, and we landed without incident. We stayed for two months, training and ready every day, with our allies, to attack North Korean targets should the war start. Tensions reduced, and we came home.

Years later, I was trusted to work from the most secure rooms in the Pentagon, having undergone an incredible vetting process on two different occasions. At the same time, we helped prepare military options for the President against Libya in 1985 and Iraq in 1990. OPSEC could not have been more important.

We did everything but give blood to be included in the super secret preparations of options for the President. We didn’t talk to anyone outside the secure rooms about what we were doing — not to our comrades in uniform, nor best friends or wives. Because we knew the most important thing: The lives of our warfighters would be at risk should we breach OPSEC (and probably be court marshaled). What if Saddam Hussein had two hours’ warning of our attack in January 1991?

Atlantic exposes lies about security

Fast-forward to this week, as Jeff Goldberg, Editor of The Atlantic magazine, exposed the Vice President, Secretary of Defense (SecDef), National Security Advisor, and numerous others in a Signal chat discussing future operational attacks on Houthi targets, such as sequence, times over target, and types of weapon systems. It is as simple as this: They put American warfighters’ lives at risk. Period, end of argument.

If our enemies had access to this chat, they could have prepared for the attacks and possibly been able to defend their land and shoot down US Navy pilots during the attack. They could also have directed their sea-borne assets to seek out and attack our cruise missile ships. It’s like the Secretary of Defence was play-acting his role, not being the SecDef. What were they thinking? What more proof do we need to know they can’t be trusted?

 What would the 4-star Central Commander (CENTCOM) have done had he known of the loss of OPSEC? It is a heavy responsibility to order young men and women to risk their lives to defend our country. I know they put themself in those cockpits and aboard the warships and worry about the safety of their troops when ordering them to carry out the orders from the President. I have heard them discuss it. I don’t know what CENTCOM would have done had he known his mission to attack Houthi targets had been compromised on that Signal Chat before launch. I bet that CENTCOM would have rescheduled it to another time when his OPSEC was totally secure and not being advertised on an unsecure group chat.

Jeff Goldberg’s piece in the Atlantic brought tears to my eyes because of the senseless and unnecessary risk to our warfighters. It is shocking that they think so little of our pilots who are risking their lives every day to be prepared for when “the order” comes, knowing they might not come home. But they do it anyway. Because they are warriors who took an oath to defend the Constitution against our enemies, foreign or domestic, they believe their leaders know what they are asking of them and have their backs.

Trump flunkies can’t be trusted

But we know that the Trump flunkies in DC today who are ordering our warfighters to go to war can’t be trusted. And don’t have their backs. More importantly, our warfighters know it, too. Everyone on that group chat acted in a cavalier manner with the most sensitive military information concerning future attacks, putting American lives at risk. Reluctantly, Jeff Goldberg proved it.

And now, everyone in the DC chain of command, from the President on down, is lying to cover up their gross dereliction of duty. And the troops know it, too.

Heads should roll. They can’t be trusted. They should be replaced with professionals who can handle the responsibility of putting our young men and women at risk. It is the only way to repair the confidence of our warfighters. So when asked to risk their lives to defend our country, they know “the higher-ups” have their back. Today, they don’t.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of William Swan and do not reflect the position of the USAF or any others.