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Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) is Interviewed about the Signal Chat; White House Says Chat Wasn't War Plans. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired March 26, 2025 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:30:00]

BRIAN STELTER, CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: The home page. People can read these text messages in detail.

But it is notable, Leavitt, really in a desperate way, I would say, trying to discredit this story, claiming it's even a hoax, and trying to attack the messenger rather than deal with the message.

It is really notable here as we talk about this shocking leak of war plans that multiple Trump administration agencies are currently investigating leaks. The Department of Defense is investigating a leak. The Department of Justice is investigating a leak. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating leaks of information. So, you have all these agencies that are currently investigating leaks, and some of the top officials in the government have now been part of a leak to "The Atlantic."

Just the other day, Tulsi Gabbard said, quote, "any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such." And on the day Gabbard sent out that message, trying to show how tough she was being, she was in the Signal chat where information was being leaked to a reporter.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, and this is not a hoax. I mean, these are the text messages that were published by "The Atlantic," and the administration did say that the group chat existed. So, the question is why they are trying to call it a hoax when it is right in plain English, in front of all of our faces now.

Brian Stelter, it is always a pleasure. Thank you so much.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, continuing with our breaking news. Joining us right now is the Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. She sits on Armed Services, sits on House Intelligence, the committee that DNI and the CIA director are about to hear before. And also the congresswoman, of course, is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

Congresswoman, if you can sit with me for a second, I'm just going to read some of CNN's new reporting around all of this that has just come into my email, and it is quite relevant. This coming from Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen, my colleagues.

And here is what they say. "The information Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disclosed in the Signal chat were - was highly classified at the time he wrote it, especially because the operation had not even started yet." This is according to a U.S. defense official familiar with the operation and another source who was briefed on it afterward.

And that's just the beginning of their reporting.

Congresswoman, your reaction now seeing these messages put out?

REP. CHRISSY HOULAHAN (D-PA): Well, clearly, these folks have been caught in a huge lie. And we knew it was a lie because we knew that the reporter had spoken about what was included in these text messages, which was weapon systems, which was targeting, which was timing. You know, here it says 12:15, F-18 launch, 13:45, trigger based F-15 launch at target at his known location. How much more specific can you get in terms of things that would absolutely be classified information on a channel that they absolutely know are willfully aware is not a communication channel that they should be allowed to share this sort of information on.

And so, heads should roll, people should be fired. Frankly, people should have resigned long ago.

I served in the military, had a TS/SCI clearance. And had I done something as stupid as this and as irresponsible as this, I would be walking into my commanding officer and resigning long ago.

BOLDUAN: Can I also ask you, I had one of your colleagues, Republican Congressman Warren Davidson, on just as - just a moment ago, reading the same exact message that you were reading. And I asked him, as he's also a former - former Army Ranger. And I asked him if he would be OK and comfortable if a TikTok like this was released 30 minutes before - before planes were about to launch for a strike. And he said, "what I've heard you report, I don't know how you would say you know exactly what the target is going to be or even who the target is going to be." He says - he says, "I do not think that's very precise information."

You -

HOULAHAN: Oh, for God's sake. You know, there's absolutely no way that this can be a responsible way for him to have responded. I was standing here when he said that, and my eyes were rolling into the back of my head. If - if he had been that person flying that F-18, if he had been aware of all the work that had been done to try to figure out where that target is and to locate them, that person at their girlfriend's house, he absolutely knows how toxic and dangerous and deadly that sort of information is. And he's lying to himself. He's lying to the American people.

And it's important, you know, when I - I make decisions here every day of what to do and what to say. I was one of the people who called out President Biden for what I thought was an irresponsible withdrawal from Afghanistan. I'm a Democrat. We need to do the right thing. We need to lead and be the right kind of leaders here and say the right thing.

It's not OK to back channel your disappointment and your anxiety about this. You have to be public about it. And I'm challenging my Republican colleagues to do the right thing, to call for the resignation of the many people who shared this information in channels that they knew to be illegal channels to share this information.

[09:35:06]

BOLDUAN: And I'll also say, it is noteworthy because I was going to say, you are often a moderating voice. You are - you are often more right down the middle, calling many balls and strikes, especially when it comes to matters of the military and our armed forces.

As I mentioned, you're a veteran of the Air Force. The Air Force was part of this mission. These were manned missions. This was not a drone mission.

If Hegseth or Waltz admits they have made a mistake, if they apologize and say that it won't happen again, is that enough for you?

HOULAHAN: No, absolutely not. This is a career-ending decision on the part of anybody who did this sort of mistake. If I were a junior enlisted or a junior officer, as I was, and I had made this sort of mistake, I would absolutely have resigned, been fired, been court martialed, and possibly been sent to jail because these things are absolutely, 100 percent illegal.

BOLDUAN: Given what we now see, and also given what you heard in the worldwide threats hearing yesterday in the Senate, how will you be approaching the director of national intelligence and the CIA director possibly differently today?

HOULAHAN: Well, now we have the - the smoking gun, so to speak. We probably didn't even need it. We probably have - correctly assumed that the only responsible person in that chat room seems to have been the reporter who didn't report on these things. And I will absolutely be starting with the supposition, which I don't believe even to be a supposition, that the - the worldwide threats are in the room. The call is coming from inside the House. The people who are most responsible, most dangerous to the American people, and the safety of the American people, and our men and women in uniform, are the very people who will sit across the dais from me in just a few minutes.

BOLDUAN: Do you get any sense that - and it may change after this has all come out. Do you get any sense that there will be congressional oversight, there will be congressional action in the face of this?

HOULAHAN: I hear whispers, you know. The person, as you mentioned, who just was right before me, mentioned that there should be possibly, maybe, sort of congressional action in this area. And that was sort of the best that I can expect, frankly, from my Republican colleagues on this. And a very disappointing, mealy-mouthed, you know, response.

I'm hoping that the American public will hear and see what I hear and see, and will make the phone calls that they need to make to their representatives on both sides of the aisle to say, men and women were in peril that evening. American men and women were in peril that evening. And regardless of what side of the aisle you sit on, it's your responsibility to - it's your constitutional obligation to demand the oversight that we have on the Armed Services Committee, on the Intel Committee, and, frankly, everywhere else to make sure we get to the bottom of this. And not that this never happens again, and that this is a wrist slap, and - and he learned his lesson. Those are some of the awful things that have been coming out of the president's office recently, but rather that there should be no people who serve in these very important positions who are so flippant with the information that they have, and who believe that they're above the law. And those people should no longer be part of this administration.

BOLDUAN: Just really quick, because people will read these messages and, you know, it's in - maybe in jargon a lot of people don't understand, that seems kind of beyond them. But you've - not only are you a vet, you've lived this since you were a child. You've lived in this world. Is it - is it hard to not - to - is it hard to get this right when it comes to operational security? Is it hard to not get this wrong?

HOULAHAN: So, this is beaten into you if you are in the - in the military. And this is one of the things that's frustrating to me about being here in -in this body, is that we don't have the equivalent training that many of us who served in the military do about how important it is to manage classified information appropriately.

As you mentioned, I was a child of a naval officer who worked directly for the secretary of defense under Mr. Carter, President Carter. We had a red phone under my father's bed that I was instructed, under no circumstances, ever to touch because that was the communication device that went directly to Secretary Brown's office. Now, we, of course, technology has evolved, and there are many different ways that people have to securely communicate with one another in their houses, on their airplanes, in their offices. Any number of those would have been OK for them to communicate in a group fashion. And yet they chose something that was compromised. They themselves said a week ago that there was compromise or possible compromise with Signal, and yet they chose, actively chose to participate in a group chat with two dozen, as near as I can tell, people.

[09:40:01]

And not one of them, apparently, according to the transcript, ever said, hey, you know what, hey, guys, we got to take this to the high side. We got to take this up a level because what's being discussed here is classified.

And remember, classification can be at all kinds of different levels. It can be at the secret level. It can be at the top-secret level. It can be at the compartmented level. And any of these kinds of things that we're talking about are 100 percent classified. It completely is a classified conversation, and there's no way to back yourself out of this and justify what just happened here.

BOLDUAN: Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan, thank you for coming in.

We're going to take a - we're going to continue to follow this breaking news. We are going to reset. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back right after this.

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[09:45:26]

SIDNER: All right, we've got breaking news on what is being called Signal-gate. And I just want to read what we got from the vice president, who just tweeted or X-ed or whatever we're calling it now. J.D. Vance saying, "it was very clear, Goldberg," who was the reporter that was added onto that chat, who got all of these group text messages about a strike that was imminent in Yemen, he says, "it was very clear Goldberg oversold what he had."

But one thing in particular really stands out. Remember when he was attacking Ratcliffe for blowing the cover of a CIA agent? Turns out Ratcliffe was simply naming his chief of staff.

So, the vice president saying he doesn't believe that this is anything, that this reporting was oversold. And yet we have what appear to be, at least what are strike plans, if not war plans, from inside of the department of defense and a whole bunch of other top level cabinet members.

CNN's Zach Cohen has new reporting as well for us in this breaking news.

What are you learning about what has been published when you hear J.D. Vance saying, this was oversold by Goldberg?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Sara, sources are telling me and our colleague, Natasha Bertrand, effectively the exact opposite, and that the information that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted in this group chat was highly classified at the time. And that's especially because at that moment the operation had not even started yet. One of our sources, a U.S. defense official, says that the operational plans that are highly - these are our operational plans that are highly classified in order to protect service members, the ones that were, obviously, helping carry out the strike that is really laid out in a detailed timeline in these messages posted by "The Atlantic" today.

And look, these are the kind of updates that would be given to the president in a highly classified setting in real time as the operation unfolded. Our sources are really stressing that, of course, this information was as sensitive as it appeared to be. And there's been some hints as to that being the fact, including yesterday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe was asked a hypothetical about whether or not pre-decisional planning deliberations, like what's detailed in these messages, should be delivered in a classified setting. And he said, of course they should.

And look, this is something that Donald Trump himself said yesterday when he was asked that there was no information in these chats - or in this chat that was classified. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth actually sort of declined to address a question whether or not he declassified the information that he posted. But we're learning today now that the details and the information that Hegseth specifically posted to this group chat was, in fact, classified at the time that he wrote it.

SIDNER: Zach Cohen, thank you so much.

We're just getting more information that just came in. Now we're seeing the national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who on the text messages shows that he is the one that added Jeffrey Goldberg apparently into this particular group chat, saying that - he now is downplaying the new information contained in the Signal chat that the entire country can now look at. It says, "no locations, no sources and methods, no war plans." Doubling down on the idea that the administration and that this group chat was not about war plans when there was clearly a plan that was spelled out in these text messages.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, with us now, Kimberly Dozier, CNN global affairs analyst, Colonel Cedric Leighton, Sabrina Singh, former deputy Pentagon press secretary, and Mark Zaid, national security attorney.

And, Mark, I want to start with you, because what we are clearly seeing over the last few minutes, based on what we just heard from the national security adviser and the vice president is sort of wish casting from inside the administration to wish cast this into something that wasn't that big of a deal.

Yesterday you called this a major op-sec failure, operational security failure. That was before you saw the text messages on Signal. You deal in classified information in your law practice. What do you think now that you've seen the messages?

MARK ZAID, NATIONAL SECURITY ATTORNEY: I can't believe how anyone would think it wasn't classified at the time, which I guess is what they are at least acknowledging.

I actually wish that Jeffrey Goldberg had given these text messages first to the intelligence committees to examine before putting them out there, but the administration gave him that opening, without a doubt, by their doubling down on what they say wasn't in there.

This was a horrible blunder. The administration is doing, unfortunately, what it generally does, which is attack the messenger, deflect from what the actual issues are, rather than just acknowledge, you made a big mistake. You had - from what I understand, a good operation that should be applauded. But from a security standpoint, this is just another example of how, frankly, incompetent this administration has been in handling national security issues.

[09:50:09]

BOLDUAN: And, Sabrina, let me bring you in on this. You, of course, were - worked in communications at the - at the Pentagon under Lloyd Austin until just a short time ago. The description, the kind of opposing descriptions that we are getting from the reporting, the messages and the response from Mike Waltz and others on what they see. What do you see?

SABRINA SINGH, FORMER DEPUTY PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Yes, it's pretty clear what's here in those text messages. What we see is a pretty concise tick tock of events. We see the time and locations of where the strikes are going to occur. We even see that Secretary Hegseth put the airframes that were going to be used to conduct those strikes in the text thread. I understand that the Republicans are trying to cover up and parse that. You know, the exact locations aren't given. It is - we - it is well-known where the Houthis control territory within Yemen. The fact that the secretary put this incredibly sensitive, classified, top secret tick tock sequence of events in an unclassified group chat, had that been intercepted by an adversary, that could have killed one of our fighter pilots that were in the air preparing to conduct that strike.

And so, it's incredibly damaging. I think that this talk that there was nothing classified put in this thread, anything that is before an operation, before an operation begins, is classified. And that's what needs to be investigated. And frankly, I think we're seeing the gross incompetence, not only of Secretary Hegseth, but others that participated in this chat as well.

SIDNER: Now to you, Colonel Cedric Leighton. I just want to put back up what we saw in this text chat just to remind people, one of the first things that we saw. And it gives the time, 11:44 Eastern. And it says, "weather favorable. Just confirm with CENTCOM, we're a go for the mission launch." And then it gives you the F-18s are launching. And it tells you that there are more F-18s launching. And then it says, "this is when the first bombs will definitely drop." And that was at 14:15, which is 2:15 in the afternoon, saying strike drones are on target.

When you see that, if you were currently in the military involved in this particular mission, would you, if that was leaked out to the public or to someone who wasn't supposed to be a part of this group, would that put soldiers, airmen, people in danger?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It would. Absolutely, Sara. So, if I were the commander of an operation like that, I would seriously consider if I know that this is being leaked at that moment in time, I would seriously consider aborting the mission. So, that's how serious this is.

They got lucky that this was a successful mission, that the sailors and airmen performed exceptionally well in their duties and in carrying out the mission. But the people in the White House, and the Defense Department, in the intelligence community who are on this chat made a serious mistake by revealing this before the operation was actually going on.

And this, you know, this really points to not only, well, sloppy behavior, but also a lack of professionalism when it comes to these kinds of operations. Discipline has to be maintained at all levels when it comes to these kinds of things. And that includes the very top of our national security establishment.

SIDNER: Just one quick thing. It strikes me that now that this has happened, and you're saying that it would put you in danger if you were involved in this mission, how do the troops trust that they are going to be kept safe when they see something like this?

LEIGHTON: Well, that, I think, is a very key question, Sara. And, you know, many troops will, you know, just move on and carry on, so to speak. But they know that there is an increased risk when these kinds of things are revealed. There's always been, you know, ever since I've been involved with the military, there's always been a risk that senior people will reveal things in a -in a way that they shouldn't. And they'll get on unsecured communication systems. They'll talk in open areas where they shouldn't, you know, kind of the World War II adage, loose lips sink ships. And that's the kind of thing that we're dealing with here. They should remember that. You know, it's a - it is a very key component.

And, you know, when you had Congresswoman Houlahan on, she spoke about how op-sec is drilled into military people, but not so much into our political leadership. And our political leadership needs to understand there is significant consequences to these kinds of things. And failure to abide by op-sec rules, all of the op-sec rules, can pose significant dangers and result in not only catastrophic failures, but, obviously, loss of life and potential loss of capabilities, operational capabilities.

[09:55:07]

BERMAN: Kimberly Dozier, you know who might have an awkward morning for the next few hours? Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who are set to testify in moments before the House Intelligence Committee. Tulsi Gabbard, yesterday, said that she couldn't recall or had no knowledge of whether there were times included on these texts exchanges. There are times all over them. What are you anticipating this morning?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Every single Democrat will again be asking about this, and every single Republican will likely be trying to obliquely ignore it.

It seems that, in using Signal, the actors in this primary committee, in the principals committee, just got so comfortable with it that they forgot they weren't talking on a highly secure network. You know, even within the military and in the intelligence community, there are two different systems, the SIPR and the NIPR network. And, you know, one's the high side and one's the low side. And there are things that are - you're not supposed to transfer over. And this is going to raise questions about, since what Hegseth was typing in is considered classified, actual movements that are about to happen, was he on a device that allowed him to mix those different skeins (ph) of intelligence? And specifically, I'm a Signal user, like most journalists in Washington, D.C., a warning got sent out that using Signal on your computer, as opposed to just your cell phone, has an added risk. So, they are going to have to look at, no matter how they're defending themselves in public, there will be an investigation into which devices, what different skeins (ph) of information were mixed and how. And there's probably also going to be in the shoot the messenger tradition of just about any administration, and investigation into Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris, because they were both listed on this story. And I can tell you, leak investigations are no joke. They have the right to come into your house, take all of your devices, all of your notebooks, and anything else that they find in the process. But, of course, I'm sure Mark Zaid knows more about that. He's advised clients, like me, on the hell that's about to befall them when something like this happens.

BERMAN: All right, everyone, thank you very much.

Again, we are standing by for this hearing to start.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. And thank you all so much for joining us with everything we've learned today.

This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. Up next, "THE SITUATION ROOM."

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