When the cover-up is worse than the crime

As an old newspaperman, this Mark Twain adage is ringing loudly in my ears today:”Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” Yesterday, The Atlantic released yet another blockbuster story that contained the truth … and nothing but the truth … concerning the Trump Administration’s incredible, life-threatening security lapse, and their ensuing childish, amateurish response to this egregious event on Tuesday. By now many of you know that The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was included in a Signal chat attended by high-level Trump officials March 15, that went into extraordinary detail about a looming airstrike on Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The information contained in this chat was incredibly specific and had it gotten into the hands of somebody other than Goldberg’s could have bare minimum resulted in the loss of life of members of our military. Goldberg has reported he has no idea why he was included in this forum, but because of it we now know about one of the most significant high-level, national-security screwups in our nation’s history. Before typing a bit more about this blockbuster, I want to address the ringing in your ears right now, which I bet sounds a lot like this: “They could burn down the entire country, Earl, and nothing will matter.”I’ll concede to the cynicism, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t serious violations of The Espionage Act, and further proof — as if we needed it — that this administration is not only completely dishonest and incompetent, but fully willing to lean into their dishonesty and incompetency as a defense for their reprehensible actions and inactions.As I type this, the administration is still burying themselves with the bulls— they themselves piled high during their eye-opening testimony on The Hill yesterday. They essentially said that what happened really didn’t happen, but if it did really happen it really wasn’t that bad …Yes, we have arrived at a dangerous moment in American history where facts no longer seem to matter, but that makes the crimes and danger to our nation no less real.FACTS:Russia influenced our elections in 2016 …Helsinki happened …January 6th happened …I come from a time when the insane developments that led to the subsequent stories surrounding this Signal chat would have ended the careers of many of the people who participated in this national-security nightmare. Charges would have also been filed, because, again, it looks as if serious laws have been broken here. Maybe we’ll still get there yet, but I understand your cynicism.We simply cannot give into it, though, or we are already dead. In an odd, and sickeningly ironic development, while The Atlantic is exposing this administration for its dishonest and dangerous incompetence, knuckle-dragging Republicans on the Hill today led by the supersonic mess, Marjorie Taylor Greene, are going after NPR and PBS for their decades of providing truthful information to the American pubic and our troops and their families overseas. Our messengers and their truth are under attack in the Year 2025, by the same dead-insides who over the course of history have been making atrocities like our Civil War, Hitler, and January 6 possible thanks to their morbid, carnal attraction to dishonesty.THE TRUTH MUST MATTER.Jeffrey Goldberg with the help of the administration, has caught them redhanded. There is no nuance here. There are no grays, only black and white.God only knows why he was included in this group that included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, who invited him into the chat.He has turned around plenty of copy since this happened positing just this question.All that matters is that he was, and he’s got the goods to prove it.THE FACTS MUST MATTER.Goldberg has let those facts frame his reporting. He and the staff at The Atlantic have put on a masterclass for handling sensitive information like this, and have been patient and diligent in their work, taking great care that their reporting does not put any further lives at risk — lives the administration regards with the same consideration they’d give an empty Big Mac wrapper.The editors at The Atlantic are the adults at the table right now, while predictably the ketchup has started flying from the orange mobster, who has once again been caught with his stubby little fingers in the cookie jar.Today Goldberg and his team released the Signal chat that all these high-level officials haughtily claimed (lied) Tuesday contained no classified information.The examples provided in Goldberg’s reporting of classified and highly sensitive information are many. Here is but one:At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)” Now back to Goldberg’s story this morning:“Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.”Incredible. And as bad as that is, I found another part of this reporting even more eye-opening:”A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified.””Ratcliffe had testified earlier yesterday that the officer is not undercover and said it was “completely appropriate” to share their name in the Signal conversation. We will continue to withhold the name of the officer.”So essentially, The Atlantic is continuing to take greater care with this national-security screwup than the White House.And here’s the other part of this that simply can’t be glossed over. I guarantee you, that if the White House had taken this blockbuster event seriously, and as a public service, Goldberg and his staff would have been only too happy to work with them to make sure this story was reported out, while making sure not to do further damage to America. Except, predictably, that is not how they reacted. Instead they slandered The Atlantic and continued to deny what was right in front of their eyes.In lieu of the cock-eyed testimony on the Hill by Trump’s Band of Blubbers, The Atlantic went to the White House yesterday afternoon and informed them they were considering publishing the entire Signal chat.Here is the sloppy email response they got from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:“As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reason [sic] — yes, we object to the release.” Used to be the coverups were even worse than the crime, and if America is to survive the most dangerous time in her history they must be treated this way again …We very well might not get another chance.NOW READ: Dear GOP: America is not going to forget — and many Americans will never forgiveD. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

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