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Hegseth Again Says Attack Plans in Group Chat Weren't Classified; White House Calls Report of Attack Plans as Sensationalist Spin; Secretary Rubio Speaks as New Group Chat Messages Are Published; Trump to Announce New Auto Tariffs. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 26, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:01:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": The breaking news this hour, just moments ago, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt digging in on that White House strategy of downplaying the growing controversy over the Signal group chat, which featured top national security officials discussing detailed attack plans in Yemen. Leavitt calling the text exchange a "sensitive policy discussion" and adding President Trump still has confidence in his national security team.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, this comes as the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee is now joining Democrats and calling for an Inspector General probe into this Signal group chat. We have so much to discuss. Let's turn to our experts now. CNN Chief National Security Analyst Jim Sciutto is with us, along with Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Beth Sanner, and Retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt. He also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President George W. Bush.

Thank you so much all for being with us. Jim, first to you. What do you make of this explanation from the press secretary saying that this information is not classified because the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says so.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, there were people inside Pete Hegseth's building who were saying the opposite. I spoke to a senior U.S. military official who said, based on the information as presented, he does not see any way it is not classified because it includes information on targets, timing, including specific names. Right? Right down to the -- there's that exchange we saw as the texts were revealed today, about a building where one of the targets was leaving his girlfriend's house. Right?

That's a specific target with, with an address there. And I reached out to a former senior U.S. military official who served President Trump previously who said the following, until the strike goes, it's absolutely classified as the lives of our pilots depend on secrecy. That's the other piece here, because when you have strike packages, they're talking about F-18s. There are certain platforms that launch F-18s, which is key. And while, in some of the text messages, it didn't say these are the particular Houthis firing positions that the U.S. was going after.

The Houthis know what their firing positions are. And they know that we know where those firing positions are because we could track where the drones and the missiles are launched from. So, even if you haven't listed all 12 or 24, whatever targets, if you're the Houthis and you gain access to this information, you might move things, move people. But you might, and this is crucial to that issue with the pilot safety, is you might put up additional surface-to-air capacity which would threaten those U.S. aircraft and therefore, the pilots as they come there.

So, everybody I've talked to has said that to call this unclassified is just preposterous based on the way the military treats this kind of information as a matter of practice. And just in my own practice, having been on countless embeds and done countless stories, whenever timing and target is involved, I'm told quite explicitly by U.S. military officials. This is classified information.

KEILAR: General Kimmitt, a two-part question for you. So first of all, would you agree that this information that is listed here, that was published today would in fact be considered classified?

KIMMITT: Well, I think that's wrong question to ask, and I think everybody is missing the relevant issue. The secretary of defense has the classification authority, so if he says it's not classified, it's not classified. The fundamental question that we should be asking is, should it have been classified? And the answer, of course, is yes.

As Jim said, the military's husbands, the tactics, techniques and procedures because if our adversaries find them out, they put our troops at risk for the very reasons, again, that Jim stated. So whether it was classified is a decision that was made by Secretary Of Defense Hegseth. If he says it's classified, it is. If it's not, it's not.

KEILAR: So to your point then, though, about the information --

[14:05:00]

KIMMITT: But I think -- but again, as I say, should it have been classified? Absolutely.

KEILAR: Right.

KIMMITT: This is -- clearly should be classified information.

KEILAR: So to that point in the press briefing, Karoline Leavitt was asked about concerns that service members may have as they're seeing all of this happening and they're seeing this information being put out there, information which, to your point, you believe should be classified. What would you say to your troops at this point, if you were still serving, if they had concerns about this, if there have concerns about the way information was being shared that could potentially put them at risk? KIMMITT: Well, first of all, that wouldn't happen because we wouldn't share that information. I think this was an aberration. I hope we will recognize that this was a mistake, it shouldn't have happened, and we'll put guardrails in so it doesn't happen again. But just because there was one bad incident, I don't think we should condemn the intelligence program, the intelligence system, or the intelligence handling. So, I'm sure the troops are going to be OK with this.

SANCHEZ: Before, I get to my question to Beth, I just wanted to point out for our viewers, we were watching a moment ago at this base in Hawaii where the secretary of defense just participated in a photo with a group of folks. It appears he is walking now up to reporters and will answer questions. Let's listen.

PETE HEGSETH, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: What a beautiful day. It's always a beautiful day when we're on the road, talking to the troops and actually in real time, re-establishing deterrence. You see, that's what President Trump has charged the Defense Department with doing, reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military which we're doing in real time, and re-establishing deterrence. And that's why we're heading out into the Indo-Pacific to talk to our allies and partners, and meet with the troops.

And anybody that knows me for years and knows President Trump knows how much we love the warriors. That's what it's about. The men and women who serve, who do the tough, difficult, gritty, dirty work that most Americans will never know about, but we have the privilege of seeing and understanding the courage and skill of what they do. I'm going to go see that for the next couple of days.

We also have seen it on full display in what's been done to the Houthi terrorists and what they're trying to do, close freedom of navigation. You see, under the Biden administration, we let our troops and our ships and both warships and commercial ships get shot at to no consequence. What does that look like? That looks like weakness. And what President Trump has said is, peace through strength is back. We will re-establish deterrence. That's not acceptable. And our ongoing campaign against the Houthis has been devastatingly effective.

Now, as I said to this group, a couple of times on this trip now, as we move to the Indo-Pacific to do our job, which is what we're here to do, nobody is texting war plans. Well, I noticed this morning out came something that doesn't look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to "attack plans" because they know it's not war plans. There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information.

You know who sees war plans? I see them every single day. I looked at them this morning. I looked at attack plans this morning. You know who does attack plans and war plans? Men like that admiral right there, Paparo for the Indo-Pacific, or Erik Kurilla, our General in Centcom. They do attack plans and war plans, and thank God we have those leaders who do it and do it well, and our enemies know it.

My job, as it's said at top of that, everybody has seen it now, team update, is to provide updates in real time, general updates in real time, keep everybody informed. That's what I did. That's my job. The war fighters will take the fight to the enemy, and I love what they do. And with President Trump's leadership, our enemies are on notice. We will have peace through strength and we'll keep putting our troops first.

Thank you very much. We're heading off to the --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Secretary, you shared strike plan before they launched. Mr. Secretary, how do you (inaudible).

SANCHEZ: That was the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Hawaii on his way to Guam, not answering reporter's questions, but making a statement there, reiterating much of what we've heard before, saying nobody is texting war plans. He called out The Atlantic in his eyes, I guess, for changing the way that they described the information that was shared in the text from war plans to attack plans.

He tried to highlight what wasn't in these text messages, though there's a lot of semantics here and some of it, as you were pointing out while he was speaking, Jim, it it's really a distinction without a difference.

SCIUTTO: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: To a degree?

SCIUTTO: Listen, Yemen was the target. The Houthis in Yemen were the target. The firing positions and forces and missile launch sites were clearly the target because that was the intention of the raid.

[14:10:00]

The Houthis know where they were. Is it possible that this U.S. attack did not strike every single one of them and therefore, you didn't have the specificity of saying, I'm striking A, B, C --

SANCHEZ: This longitude and latitude.

SCIUTTO: It's all that, all that kind of stuff. But if you're the Houthis and you have access to this, you've been given warning in advance that you're going to get attacked. And the U.S. planes, even if you don't know the tail numbers of those planes, right, or the squadron numbers or the call signs of the pilots, you know to point more surface-to-air missiles at the sky, right, as they come in your direction. That's why, to your point, it's a distinguished -- it's a distinction without a difference in terms of, one, how that violates the general treatment of information such as this. But two, how one can see just through simple logic that this would present a risk to the forces involved.

KEILAR: It is something, as we look at all of it, I think we still have Beth Sanner with us as well.

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: At this moment. Beth, if we could bring you in, as we talk about this and we look at how information is shared and the semantics, frankly, that are at play here today, whether we're talking about what is and what is not shared, how you -- what you determine to be a location. It's interesting too, there was a -- there were moments in these hearings today, when Director Gabbard really tried to make a distinction in terms of information coming from the Office of National Intelligence and from the DOD and in terms of classification, talking about the distinction, basically, who is responsible for what information and really putting a lot of this back on. Secretary Hegseth. As you're listening to that explanation from her, what do you make of it?

BETH SANNER, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: I think we're watching a lot of bob and weave, and up and down and look over here, instead of just making this simple, OK? Here's, it's simple for me, what's on Signal or anything else that is in this encrypted but unclassified domain by DOD regulations and everybody else's regulations would have to be cut and pasted into an unclassified email to have that as be a record.

If you have something that's called a Yemen small group meeting, you've created an official meeting, you're having official communications that needs to be put into an unclassified email. OK. So any of this would have to be OK to be in an unclassified email. Another really easy way to look at this is if I'm sitting in Moscow or Beijing, would I be happy to get this information and think that I've gotten something really interesting and something I would steal and classify myself?

The director of NSA said sources and methods, right? This would be something we would steal. Yeah. Signal we would steal it. Would it be of interest? Yes. And it's not just of an interest because someone could put up more air defenses. That is absolutely true, but just the deliberational aspect of this. They have learned so much about how policymaking is being done in the U.S. government, and in fact, how it's not being done.

And I want people to also pay attention to this. The president has made a decision to go to war, but clearly, that has been without complete deliberations and that's something we should get our heads around. So, this is absolutely classified from a multitude of angles and should not have appeared on an unclassified email. And I think they would all agree to that.

SANCHEZ: It was interesting on the policy side when we were speaking to Congressman Keith Self earlier, saying that this is actually exactly how it should go. In one of these conversations, the president makes a decision and then people question it after, which seems unusual. Right?

KEILAR: So the discussion itself may not be unusual, but to have the discussion on Signal --

SANCHEZ: Right.

KEILAR: That is the part, yes.

SANCHEZ: Right.

KEILAR: That didn't really add up.

SANCHEZ: Beth, I have a question for you more broadly because -- go ahead.

SANNER: You're supposed to make a deliberation with the president as the decision is being made, not question the timing of the decision. And also, the basic purpose of it is being discussed and not agreed upon after the president has made a decision to go to war. SCIUTTO: Correct me if I'm wrong, Beth. Those discussions themselves

are typically classified, right? You could imagine a Situation Room debate --

SANNER: (Inaudible) percent.

SCIUTTO: -- or discussion as to whether this is the right target to strike at this time, risks, costs, benefits, et cetera.

SANCHEZ: We should let our viewers know, the Vice President J.D. Vance is set to speak from Quantico in just moments. He likely will be asked about some of what he exchanged in that group chat, questioning whether this was the right move. General, I want to go to you more broadly on the idea that Hegseth presented.

[14:15:00]

He often repeats the objectives that he's been given by the president, saying revive the warrior ethos, rebuild the military, and establish deterrence. We've heard repeatedly from the administration criticism of the way that Former President Biden handled the Houthis. Walk us through what is exactly different about the approach from this administration to the last one over their handling of the Houthi rebels, because we know that President Biden did launch attacks against them.

KIMMITT: Yeah. I would say that this notion that somehow President Biden had not declared war against the Houthis and President Trump has, I think is again a distinction without a difference, as was said earlier. The fact remains what it appears to me is that he is increasing the intensity of the attacks, but more importantly, the type of attack -- the type of targets that he's willing to hit. I'm not aware that there were any leadership targets being attacked under President Biden. I could be wrong on that.

But the fact that we are now using leadership target techniques such as dropping buildings is another dimension where instead of just trying to take out their physical capability, you're trying to take out their leadership who is in charge of commanding and controlling that capability.

SANCHEZ: The other way that I hear that establish deterrence, and maybe I'm cynical, but I hear that and I think establish deterrence possibly from our European allies to share information with us, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, that's the other piece of this discussion, right, is it shows senior U.S. officials disparaging the Europeans and there was even one of those communications there, which seemed to share what could be considered classified -- a classified assessment of European capabilities in the region. That European naval assets there could not handle certain kinds of firepower, which if I'm a European commander right now, I'm thinking, OK, they've just exposed my service members in the region to a vulnerability by exposing what could have been a classified assessment about one of our own allies.

KEILAR: And even Beth, we heard from the Canadian prime minister who said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but Prime Minister Carney who said to the effect of, look, what's -- people make mistakes, what's important is how you clean it up.

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: And how you tighten things up. We're going to -- we're going to take care of ourselves here. That reaction too, as the world waits to see how is the U.S. actually going to clean this up? How is President Trump going to tighten things? The world is watching.

SANNER: I would really like everybody to stop, in some ways, pointing fingers and the Trump administration to do the right thing and focus on fixing things, because what you point out is exactly right. I don't -- I do think that people don't trust this process now more than ever, especially when Witkoff and Gabbard were both traveling. And this isn't just about Signal. It's about the compromise of your phone, and it's about whether your hotel room might have a hidden camera in it and be looking over your shoulder.

It's a lot of things here, and they need to tighten it down. They need to tighten down the deliberation process, and they need to establish a policy process. All these things come out of that and we should be focusing on that instead of trying to shift the blame and saying, people who criticize are just, well, Democrats.

SANCHEZ: Beth Sanner, General Mark Kimmitt, Jim Sciutto, appreciate the conversation. Thank you so much for being with us.

Still to come, how some lawmakers are turning a pressure on the White House to hold someone accountable for this fiasco.

KEILAR: And later, we are expecting to hear from President Trump in just a couple of hours, making what the White House is now referring to as a major announcement about new auto tariffs, interesting timing as well on this day, that and much more ahead. You're watching "CNN News Central."

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[14:23:23]

KEILAR: The breaking news at this hour, the White House continuing to downplay the discussion of sensitive defense information, even as we're learning more about that information, that discussion between top national security officials on the unclassified Signal app.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, a short time ago, calling the reporting "sensationalist spin."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: There was no classified information transmitted. There were no war plans discussed. Why did The Atlantic downgrade their allegation about "war plans" to "attack plans?" They're now playing word games because they know this was sensationalist spin from a reporter who is well known for doing this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN's Brian Stelter joins us now live. And Brian, I wonder what you make of the efforts here by the White House, not only cutting the press briefing short, but also not answering a multitude of questions about this incident and then programming so that at 4:00 p.m., there's this announcement on something completely -- this previously unannounced announcement on something completely off-topic. What do you make of that?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Such 2018 vibes here. We have seen this time and time again in Trump's first term. And now, during the kind of the hottest scandal of Trump's second term, they're going back to the exact same playbook. Leavitt referred to word games and someone is playing word games, but it's not The Atlantic, it's the press secretary.

There's this attempt to get into the semantics here and play semantic games by saying, the original headline said "war plans." The new headline says "attack plans." Right?

[14:25:00]

That is so beside the point here. This is one of those Occam's razor situations where the obvious simple explanation is the right one. Right? We know how Goldberg ended up in the text chain. It's because either Mike Waltz or an assistant accidentally added him. Elon Musk's DOGE team does not need to come in and provide tech support to solve this mystery because there is no mystery.

As one observer commented to me this morning, we're getting to the point where it's like O.J. Simpson searching for the real killer here. There's an audacity and a ridiculousness to the spin that we're getting from the Trump White House and from these agencies. But, I think they deserve credit on one front. They are -- there's kind of a united effort here, on social media, on pro-Trump outlets, from Hegseth, from other administration officials, from Leavitt. They are all trying very hard to disparage and smear The Atlantic, to take down Goldberg, to take down the editor of the -- reporter of this story.

But, as I said yesterday, The Atlantic is not a failing magazine the way Trump says. It's actually profitable and growing, and it's actually gained a lot of subscribers in the last 48 hours, thanks to this article.

KEILAR: There's also, there are these questions too about -- I mean, as you pointed out, it was either Mike Waltz or a staffer. Well, he's made it clear it was not a staffer. It was him. It was him. He said he added Goldberg to the text chain, but he was trying to, I guess, say that he thinks that somehow his contacts were compromised. And so, somehow Jeffrey Goldberg's number got in there, but he didn't actually put it in there.

Do we have a better sense of, well, he claims they don't know one another. What are we hearing from Goldberg about what kind of relationship they may have had in terms of him perhaps being a source?

STELTER: Right. That's a very good question. And what we're seeing from MAGA Media and from some of these Trump officials is a conspiracy theory attempt, right? To try to muddy the waters, create so much confusion, make this into a big mystery, when it's actually not a big mystery. And I think notably, there are some conservative voices. Dave Portnoy was mentioned at the briefing today, one of those bar stool sports founders.

Yeah, Dave Portnoy, who sometimes delves into politics, he posted a video today calling for Mike Waltz to be out. Leavitt said from the briefing room podium, I have a lot of respect for Dave Portnoy, but then she dodged his point. It is notable, there are some conservative figures who are not buying it, who are not playing along with the White House's spin here, who are saying this is a serious error and someone needs to go. That is notable.

But to your point about Goldberg, I asked him earlier today, what is your relationship with Mike Waltz? Waltz is out there saying, I don't know the guy. All I know he is a Trump hating editor. I wouldn't know him if I bumped into him. Well, it is notable that Goldberg said yesterday that he has interacted with Waltz in the past. I asked him this morning and --

SANCHEZ: We want to go to Jamaica now because Secretary of State Marco Rubio is answering questions about this Signal issue. Let's listen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- around the world on administrative leave, not carrying out the work of the American people. Do you worry that the DOGE effort won't ultimately end up benefiting U.S. taxpayers. And prime minister, violence and instability remains in Haiti. What would you like to see from the United States, in terms of being a productive force and a state department envoy yesterday called the presence of Cuban doctors in Jamaica and elsewhere, human trafficking. Do you agree with that? Thank you.

MARCO RUBIO, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: Let me take the first, I've already -- I mean, I've already addressed the aid one, but let me address it again. This is not about getting rid of aid. This is about restructuring how we're going to do aid. And when you restructure, there's some disruption and -- but it has to happen. By the way, this is not an idea. This is an idea Condoleezza Rice wanted. This is an idea of multiple secretaries of state throughout time have tried to achieve, and we intend to achieve it because we think that makes all the sense in the world. So I recognize that there's disruption involved when you make reform and you make change, but it's necessary because our foreign policy and our foreign aid have to be aligned. Foreign aid is an instrument of foreign policy, OK? It is not global charity. Jamaica is not asking for charity. They're asking for development assistance, so they can become stronger at their security needs and the other things of this nature. That's what they're asking for.

They're not asking for a handout. They're asking for a hand up, help to build their capabilities so that they become a self-reliant partner and frankly, could end up and already are helping other countries. And Jamaica now is contributing to the effort in Haiti as an example. So, these are the kinds of things we want to see in our foreign aid. So, look, our goal was not to disrupt anyone's life. Our goal was to restructure the way we deliver foreign aid, so that it is aligned with our foreign policy and with what we're trying to carry out at our respective missions around the world.

On the first question, let me just say on the Signal thing, this thing was set up for purposes of coordinating how everyone was going to call, when these things happen, I need to call foreign ministers, especially of our close allies. We need to notify members of Congress. Other members of the team have different people they need to notify as well. And that was the purpose of why it was set up. Obviously, someone made a mistake -- someone made a big mistake and added a journalist. Nothing against journalists, but you ain't supposed to be on that thing.

So they got on there and this happened. I've been -- so I can speak to myself or my presence on it. I think my role on it was -- just speaking for my role, I contributed to it twice. I identified my point of contact, which is my chief of staff, and then later on, I think three hours --