“A launch of an attack there is just no-way, no-how, that an American #military operation starting off is going to not be #classified for Lord's sake," retired Marine Lt. Col. Mick Wagoner said.

And #Hegseth's #defense also tacitly confirms that he shared those details w/people, like his wife, he knew were not authorized to have the information.

"If you remember…I said no one is texting war plans," #Hegseth said on FauxNews. "What was shared over #Signal then [during the first leak, which surfaced last month] & now was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination [&] other things."

But the details he shared, 2hrs before airstrikes hit in Yemen, almost certainly were #classified, acc/to ret Marine Lt Col Mick Wagoner, who was a #military lawyer for 17 years & deployed to 4 war zones.

…the #GSA oversharing, which continued over at least 4 years, also suggests a pattern of sloppy handling of sensitive information that spans both the #Trump & #Biden admins.

The records reviewed by WaPo did not specify whether the East & West Wing plans, the blast door details, or the banking information were #classified.

Govt ofvls under #Biden & #Trump improperly shared sensitive documents w/thousands of federal workers, including potentially #classified floor plans of the #WhiteHouse, acc/to internal records reviewed by WaPo.

Career employees at the #GSA, which provides administrative & tech support for much of the federal bureaucracy & manages the govt’s real estate portfolio, were responsible for the oversharing, which spurred a #cybersecurity incident report & investigation last week.

“Unless you are using #GPG, email is not end-to-end encrypted, & the contents of a message can be intercepted & read at many points, including on Google’s email servers,” said Eva Galperin, director of #cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

#NationalSecurity experts have expressed alarm over the #Trump admin’s denial that the leaked #Signal chat contained #classified information.

…#Hegseth & other snr officials have argued that the information he shared was not #classified, & that it was ultimately up to his dept to decide what of its info should be considered classified.

#NationalSecurity experts said that argument fails a test of basic common sense about the danger of letting #military plans leak before an operation, & that it goes against longtime practice among military & #intelligence agencies.

Dating back to at least the Reagan admin, the govt has considered the details of “#military plans, weapons, or operations” to be #classified.

…Under federal #law, it is possible for people to be charged with crimes for mishandling national #defense information that is not classified, but such prosecutions are very rare.

“What we should be talking about is, it was a very successful mission,” she said, before quickly accusing Democrats from previous administrations of mishandling #classified info [who faced investigations].

“If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home,” she said. “Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage, that Hunter Biden had access to.”

“This chat was alleged to have included #classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen. If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive & classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance & need to know,” the senators wrote.