Dan Caldwell

What Signalgate tells us about Iran

Remember Signalgate? It was quite the story, and worth revisiting now in light of Operation Epic Fury, the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and its dire implications for the global economy.  In March last year, Donald Trump’s then National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, somehow added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, to a Signal messaging group for senior government officials to discuss top secret military action against the Houthis in Yemen. The group included the Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, among others.

hegseth signalgate walt

Pete Hegseth’s fight is about more than mere staff personalities

The Washington firing squad is out for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His department has seen the dramatic departure of three top aides who were placed on leave and escorted from the Pentagon, before ultimately being fired on Friday. Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick have for their part maintained they were wrongly slandered by others in the building as leakers – and a fourth former spokesperson, John Ullyot, took the rare step of taking to the pages of Politico to publicly denounce the current Pentagon direction as a chaotic "Month from Hell.

pete hegseth