The back-and-forth between Sen. Michael Bennet and CIA Director Ratcliffe took place during an extraordinary Senate Intelligence hearing.
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.
