When are War Plans not War Plans?
When they’re Attack Plans, silly.
The scandal is over. No more Signalgate. Mike Waltz won’t have to go on Fox News and squirm tonight. Pete Hegseth can continue to show off his tats in Honolulu. JD Vance can go on hating European freeloaders. Karoline Leavitt can go back to telling us how bad Joe Biden was.
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And President Donald Trump can focus on firing people who do their jobs as opposed to saving the jobs of people who mess up.
Because they were only “Attack Plans” that Secretary of Defense Hegseth shared with the entire world via the Signal chat group with his MAGA buddies.
And everyone knows that’s much better than “War Plans”—and why on Earth would anybody think “Attack Plans” are classified information?
That was the spin being peddled on Wednesday by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Communications Director Steven Cheung, Deputy Chief-of-Staff Taylor Budowich, the Pentagon, and anyone else in the administration who was asked to pitch in.
The truth, of course, was very different.
Because everybody with half a brain knows that whether you call it war or attack plans, what was discussed on that Signal messaging app was classified information.
Because of the amateurish way the fall-out from the revelation was handled by Trump and the White House, it turns out that revealing the “Attack Plans” was way worse than the original The Atlantic story about the “War Plans.”
When The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg first revealed that he had been inadvertently included in this self-same chat group, he withheld key details about a planned strike on Houthis in Yemen.
The disclosure that a journalist had been included in a senior administration discussion of such sensitivity blew up into the biggest scandal the administration has faced. And then they made it worse.
Rather than admit a mistake was made by Waltz, who allegedly included Goldberg in the chat, and promise a thorough investigation to make sure it never, ever happens again, the administration went on the attack, demeaning Goldberg by calling him a “sleazebag” and calling The Atlantic a failed magazine.
Like a group of recalcitrant elementary schoolchildren, the Cabinet finally owned up to the debacle, but continued sticking it to Goldberg and stuck to their guns that nothing discussed was classified.
The White House even circulated a tweet from Waltz that read: “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests.”
The result was that Goldberg, a widely respected editor, was goaded into publishing the full texts of the chats, including details he had redacted previously, fearing, quite understandably, that they might be giving too much away to America’s enemies.
The story ran on Wednesday under the heading: “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisors Shared on Signal.”
These new messages included timings for the attack, detailed to the group before the strikes happened.
“TEAM UPDATE,” Hegseth wrote in the chat in full caps at 11:44 a.m. ET.
“TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch,” he added, before outlining that F-18s would launch at 12:15 p.m. ET. They would strike half an hour after that.
“(Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s),” Hegseth added.
There were more:
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package).”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets).”
“1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
“MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.
“Godspeed to our Warriors.”
After The Atlantic’s follow-up article was published, Leavitt pounced to claim on X: “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT “war plans.” This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell posted: “It’s no surprise hoax-peddlers at The Atlantic have already abandoned their “war plans” claim. These additional Signal chat messages confirm there were no classified materials or war plans shared. The Secretary was merely updating the group on a plan that was underway & had already been briefed through official channels. The American people see through the Atlantic’s pathetic attempts to distract from President Trump’s national security agenda.”
“The Atlantic has already abandoned their bullshit “war plans” narrative, and in releasing the full chat, they concede they LIED to perpetuate yet ANOTHER hoax on the American people,” tweeted Budowich.
Cheung wrote: “The Atlantic beclowns itself as they concede— by releasing this—that no “war planning” was going on as they had falsely alleged. Sounds like some terrorists had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
“They backpedaled the whole “war plans” thing really really fast….” Added the DoD.
The tweets were a diversion. “It is not just information about potential attacks that are classified,” said one former government official. “The derogatory remarks by Hegseth and Vance about Europe would be classified because they would affect the way that the United States is seen abroad. Nobody really believes that this information isn’t classified. They just won’t admit it.”
Behind the smokescreen of animosity over the use of the words “war plans” another important truth has now emerged. By insisting they weren’t discussing any secrets, Trump and his minions ensured the entire text chain was broadcast to anyone who cared to read them.
The fact that they were called “Attack Plans” didn’t make one iota of difference.
Because, in this case, the attack was worse than the war.
