Members of President Trump’s cabinet insisted at a House committee hearing on Wednesday that there was nothing wrong with using a consumer messaging app to discuss U.S. military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen.
On Tuesday, the spy chiefs told the Senate that they did not believe any of their material, no classified “intelligence,” had been exposed in the chat, where senior officials discussed the timing, advisability and possible targets of the administration’s planned airstrikes on Houthis in Yemen.
Their answer at least left open the idea that some of the Pentagon plans shared in the chat might have been classified.
But on Wednesday there was no hint of wavering, with Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, asserting that no classified material had been put into the group chat.
“There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared,” she said.
Republicans on the committee all but ignored the issue, focusing their questions on the official subject of the hearing, the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment.
Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who is a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient, was one of the few Republicans on the panel to offer a defense of the chats, if partially in jest.