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NERMEEN SHAIKH: The Pentagon’s inspector general is set to release a report today on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the widely available social media app Signal to discuss U.S. airstrikes in Yemen earlier this year. Two people familiar with the report’s findings told news outlets that Hegseth endangered U.S. troops in using Signal to discuss the strikes with several other senior Trump administration officials. The chat, which included Hegseth’s wife and brother, was revealed when The Atlantic’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to the Signal group.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders.
Matt, thanks so much for being with us. In a moment, we’re going to talk to you about the negotiations around Ukraine. But let’s start with this top news, and that is everything that’s happening right now with Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, or, as he calls himself, the war secretary. If you can start off by talking about what’s going to be released today, but many news outlets have already reported on, saying that he shared sensitive information with a reporter and others about attacks on Yemen? Talk about the significance of this.
MATT DUSS: Right. This happened last year as strikes, U.S. strikes, on Yemen against Yemen’s Houthi government were about to begin. The Houthis, as people may remember, had been launching strikes on shipping in the Red Sea and on Israel in protest of the Gaza war. The U.S. was about to undertake strikes against the Houthis.
As you noted, the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was included on a Signal chat of senior administration officials in which, apparently now, classified information was being shared by the secretary of defense, you know, including when the strikes would start and other things that he was not authorized to release. Now, the secretary of defense does have the authority to declassify information if he chooses, as does the president, but none of that, clearly, was done. This was just carelessness. It was reckless. And as the report is going to say, this potentially put U.S. troops and service members in danger.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the fact that Pete Hegseth refused to sit for an interview or hand over his phone? Is it just up to him, the man who is being investigated himself? And where does Roger Wicker, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed stand on this in this investigation? What do you expect to take place?
MATT DUSS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Could they force him?
MATT DUSS: Well, I think Pete Hegseth, much like the president he serves, sees himself as, essentially, above the law, as unconstrained by legal procedures, by his own obligations, apparently, to U.S. service members, given that he very clearly put them in danger. So, unfortunately, it’s not surprising that he would not sit for an interview.
This investigation was a form of oversight, an important form of oversight, but I do think the more important form will come when we see what Congress is going to do about it. You mentioned Senator Wicker, Senator Reed in the Senate Armed Service Services Committee. How far do they push this? How aggressively are they going to be toward the administration when this report comes out?
And I think the question really does come down to the Republicans, because, unfortunately, in general, the Republican leadership has been pretty subservient to Trump. They have not been all that willing to assert their oversight authority. But given the recklessness of this act and also some of these other things that have been piling up around Pete Hegseth, including the strikes on the alleged drug boats that he’s facing now, from what I’m hearing, Republican impatience toward him is really, really growing on the Hill, and this could be something that really pushes people over the edge. But we’ll have to see.
AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, Matt, today, the Admiral Mitch Bradley is expected to testify before Congress about the second strike on that September 2nd boat, what the Trump administration calls “drug boats.” Of course, they have not presented any evidence. Nine people killed in the first strike, two hanging on for dear life, and they then killed them.
MATT DUSS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: The significance of what this means and the overall attacks on the boats, as President Trump says they’re going to attack Venezuela directly imminently?
MATT DUSS: Right. Unfortunately, it seems that Pete Hegseth is using Admiral Bradley as a human shield here. We’ve seen, just over the past few days, trying to put blame — or not put blame. He’s trying to say, “I stand behind Bradley, who gave the order. I didn’t give the order.” They’ve had multiple stories about what happened, what didn’t happen, who gave the order.
But it is important to understand this is happening in a context of strikes that are not — clearly not in the context of war. They are unauthorized. As you noted, there has been no proof given that these are drug boats at all, that these people were engaged in anything illegal, and even if they were, it seems absolutely unnecessary to destroy these boats, to kill these men who have been convicted of no crime.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, not just unnecessary, but the question is if this is just outright —
MATT DUSS: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: — murder, if these are war crimes.
MATT DUSS: That’s right. Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, let me ask you about Admiral Alvin Holsey, the African American head of SOUTHCOM, the first Black head of SOUTHCOM, who’s out next week, but was forced out, apparently, in October after his objections to what’s going on with these boats being targeted. The significance of this?
MATT DUSS: Right. I mean, that happened — there was a wave of firings, essentially, early in the Trump administration, especially in DOD, a clearing out of senior leaders who were seen to be not with the program, essentially. And that seems to be what had happened here, discomfort with what was going to be a really aggressive policy toward Latin America. And that’s what we’re seeing play out.
But I do think, as you noted, while this is, you know, really, really, I would say, objectionable and clearly criminal, it does come in the context of years and decades of U.S. abuse and U.S. violations around the world. So, we need a deeper — we need to take a deeper look at the authorities that have been given and abused by successive administrations, not just this one.
