CIA Director John Ratcliffe clashed with a Democratic senator Tuesday over the lawmaker’s description of the Trump administration’s leaked Signal chat – pushing back multiple times before snapping, ‘I didn’t say any of those things.’
The exchange between Ratcliffe and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., happened Tuesday morning during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual ‘Threats to the Homeland’ hearing.
Much of this year’s hearing, however, centered on the extraordinary news that more than a dozen of Trump’s top national security officials, including Ratcliffe, had inadvertently included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Golberg in a Signal group chat that discussed plans for a forthcoming strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
The news was first reported by Golberg Monday, in a first-person account that sent shockwaves throughout Washington, D.C.
Ratcliffe, especially, was grilled by lawmakers over the Trump administration’s use of the encrypted messaging app to exchange purported classified security information. Senators demanded to know who added Goldberg, a well-known editor and journalist, to the so-called ‘Houthi PC Small Group,’ where he remained unnoticed for several days.
Bennet asked Ratcliffe if it was his view that there was nothing wrong with the Signal thread in question, and whether he shared the view of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that the chat in question did not include any targeting information or battle sequence.
Bennet said this was in Ratcliffe’s testimony, before noting, ‘I’m a little staggered that that is your view, Director Ratcliffe.’
‘Does the CIA have any rules about [the] handling of classified information?’ he asked. ‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ Ratcliffe responded. He added that he had not previously heard of Goldberg, though he acknowledged ‘clearly he was added’ to the Signal thread by someone in the group.
‘I don’t know how he was added,’ Ratcliffe said, before Bennet interrupted, asking, ‘You don’t know that the president’s national security advisor invited him to join the signal thread,’ referring to national security advisor Mike Waltz.
‘Everybody in America knows,’ Bennet said.
Ratcliffe said he does not use the app to share classified information, or to share targeting information.
‘And your testimony as the director of the CIA, is that it’s totally appropriate’ to conduct conversations like this on Signal, Bennet asked. ‘Is it appropriate?’
Ratcliffe began to respond, saying ‘No, that is not what I—’ before the Democratic senator cut him off.
He then tried again, challenging Bennet: ‘Did I say it was? When did I use the word ‘appropriate’?’’
‘Clearly, ‘nothing to see here,’ is what your testimony is,’ Bennet said. ‘It was just a normal day at the CIA where we chat about this kind of stuff over Signal. In fact, it’s so normal that the last administration left it here for us.’ That’s your testimony today.’
‘No, that is not my testimony,’ Ratcliffe fired back. ‘I didn’t say any of those things that you just related, senator.’
The back-and-forth wrapped with a blistering remand from Bennet, who told Ratcliffe of the Signal chat: ‘This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for them is entirely unacceptable. It’s an embarrassment,’ he said. ‘You need to do better. You need to do better.’
During the hearing, other Democrats, including Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, called for Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to resign over the Signal chat in question.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously attempted to brush off the Signal chat, telling reporters Monday that the attacks on the Houthis discussed in the group chat ‘have been highly successful and effective.’
‘President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including national security advisor Mike Waltz,’ she said.