Backchannel to Moscow
The SIGNAL crisis is much worse than you think
Washington DC 27 March 2025
The SIGNAL crisis is much worse than has been reported. Project 2025 contained a premeditated plan to use SIGNAL across the entire US Government (USG) to flaunt US laws. It had the added benefit of providing an easy backchannel to the Kremlin - something Trump had been seeking since 2016.
Breaking the Law
Relevant Laws
Presidential Records Act
Federal Records Act
Espionage Act
Freedom of Information Act
At the Cabinet/4 star commander level (sometimes lower), officials are provided with classified systems in their homes. They also have mobile set-ups operated by a coms specialist who travels with them. These systems satisfy NSA technical standards and the various laws demanding the preservation of official records.
Soooooo… if you don't want something preserved on the record… don't use the systems provided. DOH! “Just use SIGNAL and move on. No one will know.”
Paraphrasing, this was the advice provided by Project 2025 in its instructional videos about how to work outside of the law.
“SPEAKER ONE: What every political appointee needs to know is that all their communications, all their emails, all their calendars, that is all subject to FOIA and anyone can request those records from a federal agency. SPEAKER TWO: That’s a frightening proposition.” [Project 2025 Private Training Video: Oversight and Investigations, 18:06] emphasis added.
Frightening? Only to someone planning to routinely and habitually break the law. Using non-government systems, particularly on personal phones, ensures everything is done in darkness. Provided you don't invite a journalist into the chat discussing future combat operations.
“On the hill and in the House of Representatives the typical preferred communication methods are email text or even signal chat but when you work for the federal government everything you put in an email, text, or note is FOIAable and releasable to the American people. At interior, we had a ton of in person meetings which allowed us to speak a little more freely about the topics of the day.” [Project 2025 Private Training Video: Staffing an Office , 3:11]
According to a report by Fred Wellman, the Project 2025 advice was applied across government.
Signal is a primary means of communications for Trump Administration senior leaders…
That report has been confirmed by multiple sources.
The Trump regime is using Signal to break the law. “Trump” is not a word often associated with the rule of law. Quite the opposite in fact. So is any of this a surprise?
Of course all of those involved are the most disgraceful hypocrites.
Compare all that puffery with what they are saying on the deck plates:
Electronic Warfare Officer speaks out
Megan Glancy is former naval electronics warfare officer who flew Growlers off the TRUMAN (the same carrier involved in the SIGNAL raid). She has both the technical knowledge and security clearances to cut through all the noise to get to the signal. Here she explains why the situation is critical and criminal.
The lawlessness has a purpose. It is designed to cover incompetence and as a backchannel to Moscow. As one of my readers, Steve Anderson, put it so perfectly this morning, it is “Treason wearing the mask of incompetence…”
Backchannel to Moscow
Even before he took office, Trump was looking for a backchannel to Moscow. In 2016, before he was inaugurated, Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn, asked the Russian Ambassador to use their secret communication systems in the embassy to chat with Putin away from FBI surveillance. When Trump met with Putin he refused to have any other American officials in the room, not even a note taker or translator. They relied on a Russian translator. Trump's extensive ties to Russia have been documented elsewhere in exhaustive detail.
Investigations following the Signal breaking story have revealed a much darker threat to US security coming from the White House. As this author predicted weeks ago, following the appointment of suspected Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard to run US intelligence, and Trump openly switchings sides from NATO to Russia, it was inevitable that direct intelligence sharing with Moscow would come to light. The volume of data that needed to be passed demanded an established system.
Signal turned out to be a masterful solution that delivered the highest level intelligence, in volume, in real time, in a plausibly deniable vehicle. Or at least so they thought. They knew it was compromised by Russia and chose to use it not despite, but because of, that fact.
Wellman’s report continues
A high level information security source inside the Department of Defense has informed me that a month ago they were ordered by political appointees to ignore information security regulations and install Signal on government phones for senior leaders.
The regulations he is referring to is an NSA advisory warning Signal was compromised.
"A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application… Russian professional hacking groups are employing the 'linked devices' features to spy on encrypted conversations”.
The Deputy Chief Information Officer for the DOD, knowing all of the above, ordered Signal be installed and used. The only explanation for that is they were ordered to do so by the SECDEF on the orders of the White House.1
The officer most responsible for the security of national security information systems knowingly ordered the use of a system documented as compromised by “Russian hacking groups” (typically fronts for Russian intelligence).
Opening a back channel to Moscow is the only plausible answer.
But wait… it gets worse!
The NSA advisory continues
Further, Russian hacking groups that are "targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest.”
The head of the CIA, the DNI, and the SECDEF might fall into that category?
Today Der Spiegel, a German newspaper, discovered that phone numbers, emails, an passwords, of the DCIA, the DNI, and the SECDEF, were all freely available on the internet! What could go wrong?
Do you know how you open an account on Signal? You use your phone number!
Summary
The criminal America-hating agenda of this regime is clear. The use of Signal across the USG is for the purpose of evading federal law and as a deception espionage system to pass classified information to Moscow. The Principals Committee of the NSC is manned by criminals who knowingly broke the law. They serve at the pleasure of a man who stole nuclear war plans and dumped America's traditional allies for Moscow.
America is dissolving before our very eyes. The regime has almost totally destroyed the constitution and the international order. Treason wearing the mask of incompetence…” guarantees that even more shocking scandals are just around the corner. As Trump said in the oval office after jumping President Zelinsky “this makes great television”. A once great superpower, vanguard of democracy and universal human rights, is now a badly scripted and terribly acted, geostrategic snuff flick.
Here is the propaganda strategy they are engaging in right now.
This SECDEF is not going to take any initiative on his own. His breathless Signal reports of ops has big “Thunderbirds are GOOOO” energy. He's a dilettante. He knows it which is why he is so pathetically over compensating by playing Jason Borne. None of those officials needed to know the blow-by-blow tactical events. It was just milporn and the talkshow host turned Big Man riding the doomsday plane wanted to show off. Reminded me of Jack Teixeira trying to impress his little computer game buddies how important he was.
This is a really great, insightful piece that puts what appears to be rank incompetence into the more intentionally nefarious aims of this administration. Very, very helpful ❤️🙏
Too many people are focusing on the OPSEC concerns (as they should be) but I think your point about the Presidential and National Records Act being deliberately skirted is the bigger can of worms. How many Principals and Deputies meetings of the National Security Council have been held via Signal and other means to avoid public records requirements? Would any of the deliberations that Leavitt is so proud of ever have been recorded if they weren’t leaked?