This world needs accountability. It has very little of it. Good for Nathan Lane:
Amy
Pascal and David Heyman have been named as the producers of the
currently untitled new "James Bond" film by Amazon MGM Studios, per a
press release. The duo, who both have decades of experience working in
big franchises (more on that in a moment) will now set about shaping the
future of Bond on the big screen. One of the biggest things they need
to do is get an actor cast as our next James Bond,
but that's a conversation for another day. Amazon MGM Studios' Head of
Film Courtenay Valenti had this to say about it in a statement:
"We are approaching every creative decision with James Bond, which Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have so masterfully steered, with the greatest sense of responsibility. Part of an elite group of producers who have developed and managed massive film franchises to box office success and critical acclaim, Amy Pascal and David Heyman are two of the most accomplished, experienced, and respected film producers in our industry. We are honored to be working with them on James Bond's next chapter and are excited to deliver to global audiences storytelling that upholds the impeccable legacy of this beloved character."
News reports branded the exchange as "racially insensitive,"[6][55][56][57][60] while others called it "racist."[6][61] Pascal responded by saying "the content of my emails were insensitive and inappropriate but are not an accurate reflection of who I am."[57][62]
Civil rights leader Al Sharpton suggested the apology was not sufficient, compared her to Donald Sterling, and called for more diversity in Sony's hiring pool.[63] The screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin denounced the media's focus on Pascal's communications and many other emails released by the hack in an opinion piece for The New York Times, characterizing the coverage as "giving material aid to criminals" and writing "at least the hackers are doing it for a cause. The press is doing it for a nickel."[64] In the popular press, coverage of the story was extended with actress and producer Lisa Kudrow suggesting Pascal should have known better, adding, "Don't write anything you don't want broadcast".[65][66][67] At the Writers Guild of America Awards 2014 on January 7, 2015, Kudrow, who was the presenter, mentioned the Sony hack again, arguing that it was disturbing "because Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal thought that was witty banter."[68]
Color of Change, a civil rights organization, launched a petition in December 2014 calling upon Sony to fire Pascal from her role, arguing, "Pascal's comments are confirmation of the manipulative, exploitative relationship corporations like Sony have with Black folks."[69][70][71] They added, "We must hold Pascal accountable here; not just for her horrendous comments, but also for her role at the helm of a corporate agenda that views Black America as one big, lucrative joke."[69]
In a 2020 interview with Vulture, Thandiwe Newton accused Pascal of making racially insensitive and demeaning demands of her for the film remake of Charlie's Angels, a film Newton ended up declining to star in due to Pascal's alleged behavior.[72] Pascal responded by stating she was "horrified" by the story and had no recollection of it.[73]
Think a lot of people may start singing Bye-bye-Bond.
A racist like that. That's who Jeff Bezos is going to put Bond in the hands of.
There is no accountability. She's also a gender traitor who has a long history of harming women.
But, hey, she's Drew Barrymore's gal pal! (Another reason to wash your hands of Drew.)
We need accountailibyt.
Going out with C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
Geoff Bennett:
Senior Trump administration officials, including the vice president and secretary of defense, used the encrypted commercial messaging app Signal to debate the pros and cons of launching military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen.
Amna Nawaz:
And they accidentally invited the editor in chief of "The Atlantic" and "Washington Week" moderator Jeffrey Goldberg to be part of that chat group.
Goldberg revealed the details today in a report published for "The Atlantic," and he joins me now.
Jeff, welcome to the "News Hour." Thanks for joining us.
Jeffrey Goldberg:
Thanks for having me.
Amna Nawaz:
So, you're added to this group chat. You see some 18 or so other people on it. Among them appear to be senior national security and Cabinet officials like Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Miller, Steve Witkoff, Michael Waltz.
How did you end up on this chat? And when do you realize it looks like you were added by mistake?
Jeffrey Goldberg:
I was invited a couple of weeks ago to connect with Michael Waltz, the national security adviser. That didn't strike me as particularly strange, given my job and his job.
A little while later, I'm added to a group chat with the people you just named. That seemed strange. But I kind of just ignored it a little bit. And then it really became a very bizarre situation on Saturday the 15th of March, when I was shared on a text in this group from somebody purporting to be Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense.
And this text contained operational military information, including the time that bombs were supposed to start dropping on Yemen. And this was two hours before that time. So I simply waited and stared at my phone.
And, sure enough, the attack, the American attack on Yemen began to be felt at about 1:30 Eastern or so, 1:50 Eastern. And that's when I realized that the chain was real. Until that point, I really had a deep suspicion that I was being spoofed or hoaxed or being led astray on a disinformation campaign, the rationale for which I can't figure out.
But this all seemed so improbable that I simply assumed that it couldn't be real.
Amna Nawaz:
And I want to point out you share some details. You report some details of what unfolds on that text chain.
When it comes to these operational details, though, you're very careful with your language. You write in your piece what appears to be from the account of Pete Hegseth posts — quote — "operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying and attack sequencing."
This gets posted two hours later. The bombings begin. And then what do you see unfold on the group chat?
Jeffrey Goldberg:
A lot of happiness and virtual high-fiving. There's some reporting, again, material that I didn't feel comfortable reporting because it contained tactical operational information, about the effects of the bombing on various places in Yemen.
Mainly, it was the participants in this group chat, which, as you note, contained most of the national security leadership of the United States congratulating each other and sending emojis, flag emojis, muscle emojis, fire emojis to each other in celebration of a successful mission.
Amna Nawaz:
We did hear from Brian Hughes. I know you did as well, the spokesman for the National Security Council, who sent a statement in response when you did reach out. He said that it appears the message thread was authentic, that they're reviewing how an inadvertent number, presumably yours, was added.
He also says — quote — "The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our service members or our national security."
Jeff, you have reported on national security for decades. That this is being held up as an example of a deep and thoughtful policy coordination, had you ever seen anything like this before?
Jeffrey Goldberg:
I don't disagree with something that he said.
If you look at the story on TheAtlantic.com, you will see that they are having a live debate, including the vice president of the United States, about the utility of attacking Yemen and the European component of this and various other things. There's interesting discourse going on.
But, according to everything I understand, they're not supposed to be doing this on commercial messaging apps. They got quite lucky that they included my phone number in the — if they're going to pick an errant phone number, I mean, at least it wasn't somebody who supported the Houthis, because they were actually handing out information that I believe could have endangered the lives of American servicepeople who were involved in that operation.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, issued the following statement today in response to today’s article in The Atlantic entitled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans:”
“Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting in The Atlantic calls for a prompt and thorough investigation. If senior advisors to President Trump in fact used non-secure, non-government systems to discuss and convey detailed war plans, it’s a shocking breach of the standards for sharing classified information that could have put American servicemembers at risk. There needs to be an oversight hearing and accountability for these actions.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki to blast the irresponsible planning of sensitive military operations over text chat and call out the utterly incompetent handling of national security interests following The Atlantic’s reporting.
View the full interview here.
Key Excerpts:
On the incompetence and arrogance of Trump’s national security advisors:
It is stunning. I can understand Jeffrey’s disbelief, or thought that is, this somehow contrived, because it is so stunning and so incompetent and so dangerous in terms of the planning for this operation and who might have been on this text chain. But what really leaps out at me is that you have the Director of National Intelligence, you have the head of the CIA, and no one it appears bothered to say, “Hey, folks, should we really be talking about this here? Should we really be using an unclassified channel to talk about an operation, a detailed military operation, that’s going to take place in a few hours?” That is just so striking to me, and it shows both the level of incompetence, but also a certain kind of arrogance that some of the folks on that had to know that they should never be discussing these things on a Signal chat. But there is a feeling that they’re beyond accountability. I mean, who’s going to hold them accountable? They can break whatever rules. They’re stopping the FBI from doing background checks on people. They can deal with national security however they see fit.
[…] Just staggeringly irresponsible. And it’s not just that they had a reporter by accident on this chat. They should have never been doing this on a chat to begin with. And what’s more, who knows what phones they were using? Who knows the safety and security of those phones, whether a foreign government had already penetrated some of those communications? So, the dangers are real. There should be a real accounting over this. But you could expect more of the reaction you saw from Hegseth, which is to attack the reporter rather than acknowledging their own dangerous incompetence here. It put pilots at risk potentially. But also it meant that the success of the operations could have been dramatically reduced if, for example, word got out to not just the Houthis, but allies of the Houthis, like Iran, that could have tipped them off – “Hey, here’s when these attacks are going to start. Here’s when you’ll know that the next target is upon you.” It’s just staggeringly irresponsible.
On the shocking lack of concern over the communication of national security interests:
There certainly could be a criminal offense here. This is information that in a normal world would be highly classified. And so someone could have very plainly violated laws in terms of the handling of sensitive national security of information, even if it isn’t classified. But I think to your point, also, my guess is that this is probably the tip of the iceberg. This was probably not the first time that the people on this chat used Signal to communicate information that – if not highly classified – was highly sensitive national security information. So, who else is doing this? Apparently, it certainly appears to be widespread, because no one on that chat seems to have objected to it or even raised the issue.
Now, I know we don’t know the full conversation, because Jeffrey was careful to limit what he made public to protect the legitimate national security interests of the country, even if the participants in the chat weren’t protecting it. But if nobody was objecting, that means that there was a certain routine already in this administration to use such poor trade craft.
###
Geoff Bennett:
How does this lapse strike you from an operational security perspective, that the country's top national security officials shared information about an imminent strike, an imminent attack on a commercial messaging app?
Leon Panetta, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense: Well, look, this is a serious security breach, particularly when it comes to war plans.
Look, war plans, attack plans are among the most sensitive and classified information that you can have. And it has to be handled with care. I think it was a mistake to have a conversation a Signal app that is not approved for sharing classified information. So, I'm not sure why they even placed any of this information on Signal.
But, nevertheless, the fact that it included somebody who was not cleared for that information, and as a matter of fact was a member of the press, is a serious breach and one that needs to be fully investigated.
Geoff Bennett:
What are the traditional secure channels for this type of discussion? How would this normally unfold?
Leon Panetta:
Well, when I was both director of the CIA and secretary of defense, when it came to attack plans, the discussion was reserved for the Situation Room in the National Security Council, which is highly protected and is a place where you can have that kind of discussion without having to worry whether or not any of that information would leak.
So I'm a little bit taken aback that they would have this kind of conversation a commercial messaging network. That just strikes me as being pretty careless.
Geoff Bennett:
How might a foreign intelligence service, a foreign country trying to do the U.S. harm, how might they use this kind of information or how might they exploit what appear to be lax security practices?
Leon Panetta:
Well, there are very serious consequences to leaking information about a potential military attack.
If that information is leaked to an adversary, not only does it jeopardize very important intelligence resources that are being used to be able to determine military plans, but, in addition to that, that kind of leak would give a potential adversary an advantage of being able to strike first and going after whatever weapons, whatever naval vessels were going to be used for the attack.
So it could cost lives of our men and women in uniform if that information was leaked. That's the danger here. And, furthermore, it weakens our national security, very frankly, if we cannot protect that kind of sensitive information.
Geoff Bennett:
President Trump, when he was asked about this today by reporters, he said he didn't know anything about it, and then he quickly pivoted to criticizing "The Atlantic." It doesn't appear that he's focused on taking accountability.
And, of course, he faced a criminal trial, criminal charges from his handling of classified information. That aside, in your view, what should the consequences be?
Leon Panetta:
Well, I don't think there's any question that somebody made a serious blunder here, a serious mistake, of including somebody that should not have been part of a national security group discussing war plans.
So, who added that name? And why did that happen? That really does have to be investigated, because it could involve a breach of our espionage laws, because that kind of breach simply cannot happen when the security of the United States is on the line. That is the danger of having that kind of information leak.
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