March 27, 2025 • 38 mins
The “Yemen Signal Chat” story of Trump Administration top security officials accidentally including a journalist from The Atlantic into their chat group, has been dominating the news cycle but also raising a lot of questions and concerns over how this mishap occurred. Tech experts say that you can’t get much better than Signal’s message encryption services to protect the privacy of your correspondence however, when discussing such classified information, you should really use a high security device that would make it nearly impossible to include a member of the public. Boston Globe tech reporter Hiawatha Bray will joined us to discuss!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's Night with Dan Ray. I'm telling you easy Boston's video.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Welcome back everyone. For the last couple of days, all
of us have learned about an app called Signal. It
was used by leaders of the Trump administration in advance
of the military attacks on Yemen on Saturday, actually a
(00:28):
few days even before, on Saturday, March fifteenth, and it
came to everyone's attention because a journalist by the name
of Jeff Goldberg, who's the editor in chief of The
Atlantic magazine. I assume, and I guess you should never assume,
but inadvertently included on that chat. And so trying to
(00:51):
figure this out and trying to explain it to all
of you, some of whom have never probably downloaded an app,
I decided today to reach out to a wonderful guy
named Hiawatha Bray, who you know from the Boston Globe,
because there's nobody in the world who I think would
(01:11):
probably know more about this and also could explain to
us exactly what it is and what the implications of
this whole set of circumstances are than Hiawatha Bray. So
let me welcome Hiawatha Bray back to Nightside. Hiawatha. Thanks
so much for being available tonight. How are you my friend?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (01:28):
It was either this or watch another episode of the
Law and Order Marathon, so I talked to you.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Okay, well, thank you. Of course it could have been
a Bruin's hockey game and those they're on in six
game losing streak, so those, yeah, that's start. It would know.
It's not a good time to start, that's for sure.
So first of all, let me let me start off
with just a couple of basic questions. Uh, I had
(01:55):
never I'm going to admit I had never heard of
this app before the last few days. I do not
have anywhere near the expertise that you have, but I'm
kind of starting to find out. This has been around,
like for ten or fifteen years. Is that true?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yes, that is absolutely right. It was created. It is
actually a product that was created by a nonprofit. It
is open source. Anyone can get at the software. It's
open so that the code can be inspected by people,
and the whole idea was to create a messaging platform
that was very secure and at the same time very
(02:31):
easy to use. It features a technology that actually a
lot of us use every day, but often our chats
don't have it. It's called end to end encryption. That
means that the moment you put something into signal and
send it to somebody else's signal, for the entire path,
it's encrypted. Like sometimes it used to be you would
(02:51):
go to a web page and the data was not
encrypted as it went over the Internet, and if somebody
was listening in, they could get that. Nowadays, most major
websites also use end to end encryption, but a lot
of chat services like on your phone, do not. That's
finally starting to change. But signal is one of the
things that started that. You chat on signal, it's all encrypted.
Nobody so far as I know, has ever cracked a
(03:13):
signal message. They've never gotten in. But what happens if
somebody is led in accidentally. That's what happened in this
case for some reason. It apparently it was Mike Waltz,
who is what is He's a national security advisor. There
are so many of these guys tied in here. He
was a national security advisor, and somehow he had the
journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who is the editor in chief of
(03:37):
the Atlantic, among the people he has listed in his directory.
So apparently he's communicated with him before on signal and
he accidentally hooked him up to this chat. And here's
this guy. He is one of the he's an editor
in chief for one of the nations leading magazine, Lo
the Waly an excellent magazine. I recommend it to everybody
if you want articles on every conceivable subject from every
(03:57):
conceivable point of view, liberal, conservative, all kinds of different
points of view.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
It's really good.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And he's probably sure to say that Jeffrey Goldberg is
not a huge fan from what I've read.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
About Donald to Oh, no, not at all. Yes, fine, right,
but it's not his fault. I mean, he's just sitting
there and he starts getting these messages and it includes
this thread of messages that include a bunch of the
National security team talking about these air strikes, and he
knew he shouldn't be getting it. But I guess he,
like any good journalists, realized this is not something that
(04:30):
I should be receiving, and that very fact is a
news story. So I'm going to just keep collecting this information.
And of course you know what happened.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I think initially how it was he wasn't sure if
he was being pranked.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
That's right. He first thought it was some kind of
a gag, and then he kept reading and reading, and
he decided this must be for real. And then they
started sending detailed information about this air strike against the
Hooties that they carried out a few days ago, and
he realized this was for real and that the information
he was getting was coming. In fact, he realized it
was for real the air strikes happened because two hours
(05:02):
before the air strike happened was when he was reading
these texts, and then two hours later all the stuff
that had been in the text had happened, and he realized,
my goodness, this is real. He saved it all, did
an article for The Atlantic, but deliberately. In that first
article he said, I'm not going to tell you all
the military stuff because it could be dangerous. It could
expose American military forces to some risk. And the next thing,
(05:26):
you know, people in the Trump administrations are saying, oh,
he's lying, he's lying, this didn't happen. And then he said, fine,
do you want me to release this stuff since it's
not real, And basically they ended up agreeing to let
him release it. I think he redacted one thing that
they said might be sensitive, and then he released it
all and it confirmed what he was saying. And they
(05:46):
had two hours before the attack. They gave the names
of the kinds of planes they were going to hit,
the kinds of planes that were going to send on
the mission. They gave the names of like the types
of missiles they were going to fire. They talked about
having some guy understood valence they specifically wanted to kill,
which meant that they are giving up the fact that
we have assets there that are tracking these people visually.
(06:07):
All of that stuff was in these messages two hours
before it happened. If it at leaked to a bad guy,
it could have been very bad.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
As a matter of fact, we talked about this last night,
and they were looking for this specific guy. They knew
where he was headed. He was apparently headed to his
girlfriend's apartment, that's right, And once they knew that he
was in the girlfriend's apartment, they hit the building. So
it was a building and they said the building is down,
and they knew at that point that this guy was
(06:37):
the guy they wanted to get, who apparently was the
one of the heavy directors of the Hoody Missiles program,
which was firing all the missiles at shipping going through
near Yemen.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
So taking no position on whether or not I'm not
taking any political positions here, but I must say, if
you stop to think about it, it does kind of make
you proud to be an American in a way. They
have really good intelligence. If they were following these guys,
they had eyes on them and everything right, and you know,
sometimes think hi, wata.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I'll take the position, and my position is pretty clear.
These guys are using Iranian assets to fire missiles at
one hundred and sixty four times at US Navy ships
and more than that at commercial vessels, which are causing
a lot of companies to go as opposed to go
up the Red Sea through the show.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
No, no, you're you're right. I just don't want to
take political.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You're a reporter, I'm a commentator. So there if I
just wanted to make sure, and I think most Americans,
even journalists, would say, you know, good, these guys were
not really.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Helpful, and let me go so far as to say
that they will not be missed.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Exactly, so they will not be missed, all right, so
we know, let me do this. I want to take
a quick break if it's okay with you, I promise.
I can't you go at ten thirty. I want it now,
since I think you have explained it remarkably clearly. I
want to find out from you where the mistakes were made,
(08:04):
and I because I want to be fair in my
commentary on this, and I want my audience to understand.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
And the first question I'm going to come back with
is will be this? Was there a better app? And
from what I've learned, this was a perfectly good app
when properly used. What is there? I when I first.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
You and you would be wrong if.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I expect I would be wrong.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
I got to tell you.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I got to tell you this, Hiawatha. I wondered, why
was there not a Department of Defense communications team running this?
This this messaging app?
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Okay, we are approaching the truth.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Well, well, I spent a little time in the in
the military, so I no, I don't know. Leave me.
I was in the military shortly after the Revolutionary.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
War with the string.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
You got it, you got it. So that's why I
would think that you would have said, okay, let's call
you know, DoD Coms, let something up. I got to
assume that when when the President of United States, whether
it's Donald Trump or whomever is talking to Vladimir Putin,
they want something a little more secure than signal, or
maybe not. We'll find out. We would hope, we would
(09:29):
hope we'll find out for certain. From Hiawatha right after
this quick break, I love your clarity. Thank you so
much for being here tonight. It's helping me and it's
helping my audience. We'll be back on nights tick right
after this.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's Night Side Boston's news Radio.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
This Hiawatha braid Uh tech expert, tech writer from the
Boston Globe. You've read his columns in the in the
Business page and elsewhere. So, Hiawatha, the question that I
left you with was whether or not there would have
been a better option for this group who were wanted
to all be on the same page. As the attack
(10:12):
on these Huti rebels in Yemen was going to take
place on Saturday, early afternoon our time, but obviously probably
after dark the time in Yemen. What should have they used?
What should have they been thinking about to have avoided
this problem?
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Well, the very fact that a person could be accidentally
added to this message chain illustrates the problem. Okay, I've talked.
I was talking to some people at a company in
California called Greenhill Software. Most of us have never heard
of them, but they specialized, among other things, in making
highly secure military communications systems, and that is precisely the
(10:55):
kind of thing that is supposed to be used for
a job like this. Remember the election campaign, they found
out that that Chines. Yeah, it's hard to forget. They
found out that the Chinese were trying to hack Prump's
Advance's cell phones. So Greenhill Software contacted them and offered
them highly secure phones that were they claimed totally unhackable,
(11:20):
and they used those phones throughout the rest of the campaign.
Such phones are also provided to the US military. These
phones are so secure precisely because they do not communicate
with the public Internet at all. They do not run
apps at all. They are designed to do one thing,
and only one thing, conduct extremely secure military communications. They
(11:41):
can do text, they can do voice, And in order
to connect to this phone, you have to already be
logged into the network. You have to have been identified,
you have to have been proven to have a right
to be on that network. This is the kind of
technology that is used all the time for military communications.
Technology exists, it's been around forever. That's what you use.
(12:04):
You do not use signal.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
No, Okay, now that is as clear as a bell.
So now my next question is I'm assuming that signal
has been used by other political leaders in Washington. I
know it's been used by senators and Senate aids and
all of that. Did the Biden administration also use signal
(12:29):
or was this age well.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
As I understand it, yeah, a lot of them had.
Let me be clear about this. In December of twenty
twenty four, the uh oh, it's called SISA, the cybersecurity
branch of the US Department of Commerce, actually recommended that
high government officials ought to consider using signal for their
everyday communications because it is indeed hard to crack. That's
(12:53):
very different from using it for the you know, actual
military command kind of activity. For everyday sort of you know,
confidential stuff and by trying to keep it basically secure,
signal is actually quite good for that.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And just to be clear, signal wasn't cracked. It wasn't.
This journalist did not somehow, you know, I don't think
there's any journalists in the world maybe other than you
would even attempt to do that.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
I mean, I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to
you know, know know.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
How it works. It's like I wouldn't want to stand
in and and and try to bat against the guy
who's throwing a fastball ninety seven miles an hour. But
I understand what what it would take. You know, it
take you know, split second diming and eye hand coordination
that I never had it, and if I ever had it,
it's long gone now. So so what do you think
(13:50):
will come out of this? Do you think that the
Trump administration? They're not gonna I don't believe they're going
to fire anyone, although they could. They could look at
some of the comments that these principles made, which were,
if not incorrect, they were misleading.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Well, no, you know, I read a great column today
by a guy who writes this publication called The Dispatch.
Name is Johonna Goldberg, and he pointed out what he thinks,
and he might be right, is the really most startling
thing that came out of all this, And he compares
it to The Godfather. The scene in The Godfather where
Sonny interrupts while they're just trying to negotiate the drug
(14:36):
deal and his father takes him aside and says, never
tell anyone outside the family what you're thinking. That's what
happened here, because the really interesting thing that came out
was when Vance and which was the other one, started
talking about how they couldn't stand the Europeans always sponging
off the Americans. That I think it was Vance who
(14:58):
agree with him?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Oh, yes, yes, yes, absolutely, it was Vincent hegseth. Correct.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Have you been looking at the European press? That has
sent shockwaves across Europe? Everybody in Europe now recognizes and
this is what Goldberg was pointing out. They were able
to kid themselves and say, oh, they don't really hate
us that much, they don't really distrust the Europeans that much.
Now they're reading messages that were apparently intended to be secret,
and their contempt for NATO and the European allies is
(15:24):
just palpable. And how that is going to help us
do business with Europe, I don't know. But it has
really sent shock waves. And if you read the news,
a lot of European leaders are horrified by this, not
because of the secret military information, because these people are
just standing there telling them we're sick of Europe. We're
tired of having to clean up their messages, and we
expect them to pay us if we finished. Did you
see that part? We expect them to pay us if
(15:45):
the United States feels with no disease.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, they were what they were saying. What they were saying,
Hi Walth was that if they wipe the hoovenes out
here or they incapacitate the hoodies, which then allows the
I think it's forty percent of europe ship goes through the.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
America's trade right and.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Ours is like three percent. Okay, So the idea was
that we're doing this one. They said that no European
country and they're probably correct on this. No European country
could have carried this attack out as effectively as we were.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
It's not probable, it's definite.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They have done it right, And so what they're saying
is we have provided a service. And they said, I
hate that we have to do this, but they were
going to do it anyway. So I was concerned about
heg Seth was asked uh, and he was very clear,
there was there was this, There were no war plans here,
there was no information here. He he used different terminology
within the military that that would would have been misleading
(16:45):
and all. It was almost as if we weren't talking
about any of this when we were on this we
were talking the worst thing we were talking about was
European soccer scores or something like that. I mean, it was,
it was. It was just it was misleading.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
At a minimum, it was misleading, and it was very disturbing.
And oh and of course I know, no, we're probably
run out of time, but I want to squeeze in
the one last point which I also mentioned, which is
the fact that Signal, among its other features, is designed
to make its messages disappear. Yes, there was an actual
a report from the Defense Department's Inspector General where they
(17:20):
were rebuked a Defense Department official for using Signal, and
their reason was, this is the US government. You can't
make your messages disappear. They're part of the public record.
They're all supposed to be archived, yes, the way supposed
to do that.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
By the way, as I understand that the person who
is establishing the meeting, if you will, can determine if
the messages disappear in five seconds, twenty seconds, or.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Twenty days Rctually, I saw something If you look at
the screenshot, it says message will be deleted in four weeks.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah. Well, at this point there was a judge has
ordered the Defense Department tonight, the judge has ordered that
Hegseeth Walls and others not delete the hooty messages. It's
the same time Judge Boseburg, who is a federal District
court judge in Washington, DC. So the messages will be preserved,
(18:17):
I respect.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
I don't think how many other things have they done
using signal that I've been lost to history.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Probably not their first use of this.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
I've read this, I need to confirm it. But you know,
the whole controversy over Project twenty twenty five. I read
today that there is apparently something to this effect. In
Project twenty twenty five, they said the new administration should
find alternative channels for conducting its communications that go outside
of government channels.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Project twenty five. Of those who don't know what it is,
it was a group that was done by the Federalist
Society which talked about.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
No, no, no. It was the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Heritage Foundation correct on that. I'm sorry to strike that
Heritage Foundation, which was suggesting that if Donald Trump was
elected president, he might be able to do ABC, D,
E FG whatever, an alphabet of ideas. And and you
know that that that's a possibility ability there. Obviously you
raised that one. I think the I don't think Trump
(19:17):
is going to fire anyone in this group. Uh. The
person who should be fired, if anybody, would be the
Aid of Waltz, because I'm assuming Waltz gave his his
cell phone to the AID and said set it up.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
And because in it is quite possible.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, and so and it almost comes down to, you know,
when you're hurrying and you're making a phone call to
someone and I'm going to call Hiawatha, and I go
to call Hiawatha, but I call the person on my
contact list who's one above you or one below you?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Yea and.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, right the other Hiawatha, right, uh and uh. And
they'll say who who is this? Who are you looking
for the bulk of them? Hiawatha bray, Well, you got
the wrong Hiawatha and said, I apologize, innocent mistake, but
that's probably what happened here.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
But you're not supposed to do military communications on devices
that are even capable. That's the point I talked to
the guy over at Harvard. Why am I going blank
on his name? Bruce Schneier, brilliant guy. He's written multiple
books on cybersecurity, and he says, that's the whole point.
You use devices where a mistake like that cannot literally
cannot be made, because the only people who can connect
(20:32):
to the network are people who are supposed to be there.
And we have those technologies. They exist, it's not that
difficult to use them. For whatever reason they didn't.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
You've explained it so well, Hiawatha Bray. As always, it's
it's late at night. I can't wait to read your
next column on this.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Are going to write about it anymore? Huh, I'm tired
of this, but I may have to. We'll see.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I hope you do. I hope you do always. I
thank you for your time, and I thank you for here,
Thank you, Thank you to you soon. Okay, when we
get back, all right, thanks, we're gonna take a break
for news. We'll let Hiawatha turn in for the night.
But I still have some time, and I hope you
have some interest in this story. And uh, look, this
(21:18):
is this is a this is a mistake, okay, And
whenever you have a mistake, it's always the They should
have come out early and said, hey, we made a mistake,
and we're gonna correct it. We're gonna rectify it, and
we're going to change the protocol. In my opinion, when
you sort of hunker down and hope that the storm's
(21:43):
gonna blow over, it's all that's always the storm that
doesn't blow over. Now again, I celebrate what was accomplished
in the raid. But but the conversation in newspapers and
on talk shows has been about everything but the now.
I know we had some wild calls last night on
night Side, and I'm going to open up the full
(22:05):
lines tonight, uh and give you an opportunity to comment.
I have a fairly direct tape on this. I have
a much better I must tell you. I have cell phones,
I use computers. I'm not the expert that Hiawatha Bray
is period period, So I listened and learned from him.
(22:26):
I had a conversation with a couple of colleagues of
mind today which have helped me understand this. This is
and well I'll talk about on the other side. Let
me open up the phone lines. Let's get it going.
Six one, seven, two, five, four, ten, thirty six, one
seven ninety. Coming right back on night Side.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
All right, welcome back. We're going to again talk about
this signal experience. That again, the bottom line was there
was a successful raid, but but we need to learn
from this. I'm not sure that anyone is going to
(23:17):
lose their job in the Trump administration over this. I
think that Trump will be lolled to fire anyone. I'm
not sure there's a fireable offense. To be really honest
with you, I don't think there was an intention here
to keep it secret from us, but there was. This
was an administration that should have known that because of
(23:40):
the National Archives Acts and the National the Office of
the National Archives and record Keeping that that these these
conversations need to be preserved. Yeah, the raid was successful.
They accomplished what if they apparently needed to accomplish. And
it sounds to me as if the hooties have been
(24:00):
kind of put in a box, which would be good
for the passage of commercial and military vessels in the
Red Sea its Sewice Canal. But I've learned a lot
about signal and by the way, you can have you
can have a zoom call on signal, you can have
a telephone call on signal. You can have just a
(24:22):
phone call and with the transcription encrypted. So it's it's sophisticated.
But there's a lot of people in my business who
have used it. Now again, uh, maybe maybe for whatever reason,
they want to know what's going on. Maybe you've used it.
I'd love to know what you've used it for. Again,
(24:44):
there there are people, bad actors out there who are
trying to get all of our information. I have all
I can do to deal with the spammers. Who are
you know that we joke about the Nigerian prince who
wants to give you the million dollars. So anyway, let's
just let's get right to it. Six point seven two
five four ten thirty six one seven thirty. Paul's in Wakefield. Paul,
(25:05):
you were next up. I hope you enjoyed the conversation
with Hiawatha Bray. Okay, Paul may not be there, so Rob,
why don't we put Paul on hold see what's going
on with Paul. In the meantime, I'm going to go
to Bill and Nadick. Bill, you are next on nightside. Welcome,
Thank you. Okay, Billy, you're a speakerphone?
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Could I ask cell phone?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, well, please hold the cell phone close to the
to your mouth and let's hear you. Sounded like you
might have been on a speakerphone.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Go right ahead, okay.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I watched the show on TV UH and they asked
only yesterday. And then there was a congresswoman named Houlahn
and I don't know where she was from, but she
was really good. She says it was me, a new congresswoman.
She had a list of things she warned to talk about,
but yeah, she didn't want to talk about anymore because
(26:05):
she wanted to talk about the UH. The column was
messed up, and she just started a conversation but by saying,
you know, we had a lot of stories about this
guy being having trouble with alcohol, and they said that
(26:27):
he's off and now everything's all right. And one of
the guys she was talking was saying, hey, hold on, man,
you can't you can't talk.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Like that here.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
We're not going to allow that. Well, she had a
very good equation and she was very innocent, and I
wish I don't know where she comes from, what stay,
but she was really good.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Hold, well, I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about.
If you're talking about a congress woman named Chrissy Hulahan,
she's a American politician, former United States Air Force Office
Sir member the Democratic Party, she represents the sixth Congressional
district in Pennsylvania. If you're talking about alcohol, there was
(27:08):
concerns early on that the Secretary of Defense now Secretary
Pete Hegesath, in his past had had some problems with alcohol.
He apparently took a pledge that he was not going
to drink while serving as Secretary of Defense. I don't
know how that has no to best of my knowledge,
(27:31):
it has no relation to what we're talking about, which
is whether or not the app let me finish, let
me do this, let me do this, bill, if you'd
permit me, let me finish my sentence, and then I'm
going to give you the opportunity to speak. Okay, just
give me the courtesy. I'll allow you to speak as well.
And that is that there's no indication that any use
(27:51):
of alcohol, never minded abuse of alcohol, has anything to
do with the story. Go right ahead, Okay, fine, we
lost them. That's fine. You know, Look, if you want
to call and you want to have a conversation, I
don't mind that. But if I'm making a point or
you're making a point, it just to me seems impolite,
(28:15):
at at at best impolite not to be able to
have a conversation, all right. Six one, seven, two, five,
four ten thirty six one seven nine three one ten thirty.
I had a lot of really difficult callers last night,
and that is not what this show tends to be about.
We we could have passionate exchanges, but there were people
(28:36):
last night who just it was and by the way,
people on both ends of the spectrum. Okay, it wasn't
necessarily trumps supporters or Trump critics or Democrats or Republicans.
I just, you know, I'd like to like to keep
the program under control, because if we're just yelling and screaming,
(28:58):
we're not going to make much progress. I have no
idea what Bill was talking about. I have no idea
what he was talking about. There's some reference to alcohol.
That's I tried to make some sense of it, but
I couldn't even allow me to make sense of it
for him. We'll take a break. Six one seven, two
five four, ten thirty six, one seven, nine three, one
ten thirty What are the lessons that we can learn,
(29:19):
that all of us can learn. I don't know how
many of you have used signal before as a communication app.
I've never used signal. If you have, I'd love to
know your experience with it. According to Hiawatha Bray, our
guest in the first half hour of this this Hour,
and Hiawath's is an excellent guest, he talked about it
(29:40):
being a good uh web, a good app. But he says,
and he cited one out in California called Green Hills Software,
which is what should have been used. You would think
that the military, you would hope that the military would
have been totally up to speed. It was not. We'll
be back on Nightside right after.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
This Night Side with Dan Ray on Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
We're bringing up the quality of the call is right now,
going to Audrey and Cambridge. Audrey, welcome to Nightside. How
are you?
Speaker 6 (30:14):
I'm fine, Dan, how are you? You didn't have a
heck of a time. I just saw the end of
heard the end of the show last night. I'm like,
oh my gosh, I don't know his patient's got to
be running thin. But on this I worked, I did
work for the Defense Apartment and I we were auditus.
But the thing is, you know, some of us I
(30:37):
had a security clearance, some some did very cute. But
the point of my call is for this kind of
a conversation to be set up. Why they didn't check,
double check and check again to see who was on
that line. That that's the thing that doesn't make I mean,
(30:57):
that's the first thing you taught, you know, check, double check, trust,
but verified, right, And I just think the head should
roll on this one.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
I really do.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So when you say head should roll, okay, that's the euphemism,
what exactly do you who do you think should wow,
should be be shown the door?
Speaker 6 (31:16):
Well, whoever set the call up?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
That's Mike Walls.
Speaker 6 (31:20):
Then I think, I mean, there's no excuse. So I
just can't see any excuse of something this important. You know,
they're saying, oh, well nothing, but but all the detail
I mean of what the strike was going to entail
by what I understand was, you know, transpired in this conversation.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
So I just okay, it's the The counter argument would be, okay,
this was information which remained secure after the strike because
the the journalist who was I assume inadvertently invited onto
the line. I I you know, Jeffrey Goldberg is a
(32:02):
big critic of Donald Trump. These were Trump's most loyal
his Defense Secretary Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State Chelsea Gabbertt,
all of his uh you know, international people were so
I don't think anybody said it'd be a great idea
to put Jeffrey Goldberg on here, So we don't think so. Yeah,
(32:24):
and he did not, Thank goodness. I don't know what
he could have been able to do. He would have
had to have called the hoodies, and I don't think
anyone would be crazy enough to do that and said, hey,
you guys are going to get hit in about two hours.
If I get if I were you, i'd get out
of town.
Speaker 6 (32:38):
I mean, right, And did you think did you say?
Did you mention that he thought it was kind of
a joke? He didn't, he.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Is he I saw that he wrote he thought that
he was being prank, that that it was someone who
was pulling and he realized he only realized when the
actual news was saying that that the US is hitting
hitting Yemen. I mean it was anticipated the Biden administration
has hit them before. I don't know if this was
(33:07):
the first time. It's not a surprise like we're all
of a sudden attacking some country. Switzerland. They've been a
pain of the neck for a long time. So so
you think the head should roll? Okay, let's see what without.
Speaker 6 (33:19):
What others said, Dan, But what can I tell you?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
That's okay? Audrey? I loved your call. I mean that seriously.
Thank you you've said you've said a new standard here.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Okay, thanks, Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Okay, we had luck with Ardurye. Let me go to
Heidi and Wellesley. Hi, Heidi, how are you tonight?
Speaker 7 (33:43):
Well, it's actually not he it's actually Patty.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
But Patty, Oh how did Rob? How did you get
Heidi out of Patty? Patty is one of my favorite callers. Patty?
Speaker 3 (33:54):
How are you? Peace?
Speaker 8 (33:59):
Love and honor for you?
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Okay?
Speaker 8 (34:03):
And I would never ever call your show with anger,
but text you noticed in this community or in this
world right now, there are heightened feelings of anger, fear,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 7 (34:16):
Yes, and so there's also the factor that everybody wants
to be right.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
And I don't know what.
Speaker 7 (34:26):
Is the big deal about being wrong? Why does everyone
have to be right? But let me tell you about
that little thread of the text. Yes, there's no such
thing as a mistake. Everything happens for a reason. So
the guy was on the thread, right, We've all put
(34:46):
different people on threads. It just shows that everyone is
so in another planet that mistakes happen so much, and
it's just a tragedy where we are at now. Would
you agree?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I think you're right. I do think that all of
us need to kind of dial it back a little bit.
They probably threw that call together a little bit more quickly.
There should have been double checks. They should have been
doing it through, you know, a professional Department of Defense
communications team. It shouldn't have been done at this point.
I think it's pretty clear if they made a mistake
(35:21):
by putting it on signal. Now they could have put
had her on signal, and maybe if no mistake was made,
but guess what, we're all human beings, Mistakes can be made.
It should have been done through a more secure site.
Although signal is from everyone I've talked to today, a
pretty secure site in terms of encryption.
Speaker 7 (35:42):
Done.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
Have you ever heard of this?
Speaker 7 (35:44):
Quotes or whatever?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Measure twice.
Speaker 7 (35:47):
How one yes done?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Absolutely A stitch in time saves nine is another one
as well.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Hey got it?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Thank you so much. I haven't heard your voice since
too long and I love you voice. You know that
we will talk soon. Thank you so much.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Just what do you want to hear? Your secret?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Do?
Speaker 7 (36:05):
I love you?
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Do?
Speaker 7 (36:06):
You are the and you are the best?
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
It's not a secret anymore, but I feel the same
way to it you, Patty. Thank you so much.
Speaker 7 (36:15):
Okay, one day, one day we'll meet Don in person. Okay,
abe show tonight and we all love you and I'm
speaking for all your fun. You are the best.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Thanks Patty, I'm blushing. Thank you so much. Okay, thanks,
bye bye bye bye bye. Okay, uh, David san Antonio, Dave,
I only got a couple of minutes left, but I
know you make the most of it. Go ahead, Dave.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I just think to them, have a lot of noise
is being made over nothing. I mean I it wasn't
top secret, it wasn't anything like that. And the fact
that it's out is because a little journalists. They Goldberg,
(37:00):
he couldn't keep his mouth shut. Well, first of all.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
That's not what journalists do. Dave. You, first of all,
that's not what journalists do. I mean, he was he
was inadvertently put on the call. I don't think people
would have put him on intentionally, do you.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
He's just as an American desire. Why do you just
keep his mouth shut?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Well, that's not what journalists do, David. I mean, I'm
sure that if there was a conservative journalist, then Goldberg
has staked out of position. He's very critical of the
Trump campaign. Maybe I would hope that if he had
been on a call with an administration that was more
(37:40):
supportive of he would have done the same thing that
he as a journalist, but that he didn't have to.
He could have kept it quiet, but that's his choice.
I can't second guess his choice.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
You have kept it, He kept it quiet. Nothing, no
noise about this at all. The fact is it was
a very successful campaign. He really done it in over there,
and uh, they're they're they're shaking in their boots and
doing things that uh, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Well, a lot of the hooties aren't even in there anymore, Dave.
A lot of the hooties aren't even in their boots anymore.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Yeah, I know, I.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Got you in before the news. But here comes the
news and we both got to get out of the way.
I'll talk soon. I'll give you more time next year.
A good night, Dan, my friend, take it take, take
it easy. You guys have the numbers. I'm not even
gonna repeat them. Fill up the lines. We're going to
talk to this, about this until midnight, coming back on
night Side.
It's Night with Dan Ray. I'm telling you easy Boston's video.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Welcome back everyone. For the last couple of days, all
of us have learned about an app called Signal. It
was used by leaders of the Trump administration in advance
of the military attacks on Yemen on Saturday, actually a
(00:28):
few days even before, on Saturday, March fifteenth, and it
came to everyone's attention because a journalist by the name
of Jeff Goldberg, who's the editor in chief of The
Atlantic magazine. I assume, and I guess you should never assume,
but inadvertently included on that chat. And so trying to
(00:51):
figure this out and trying to explain it to all
of you, some of whom have never probably downloaded an app,
I decided today to reach out to a wonderful guy
named Hiawatha Bray, who you know from the Boston Globe,
because there's nobody in the world who I think would
(01:11):
probably know more about this and also could explain to
us exactly what it is and what the implications of
this whole set of circumstances are than Hiawatha Bray. So
let me welcome Hiawatha Bray back to Nightside. Hiawatha. Thanks
so much for being available tonight. How are you my friend?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (01:28):
It was either this or watch another episode of the
Law and Order Marathon, so I talked to you.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Okay, well, thank you. Of course it could have been
a Bruin's hockey game and those they're on in six
game losing streak, so those, yeah, that's start. It would know.
It's not a good time to start, that's for sure.
So first of all, let me let me start off
with just a couple of basic questions. Uh, I had
(01:55):
never I'm going to admit I had never heard of
this app before the last few days. I do not
have anywhere near the expertise that you have, but I'm
kind of starting to find out. This has been around,
like for ten or fifteen years. Is that true?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Yes, that is absolutely right. It was created. It is
actually a product that was created by a nonprofit. It
is open source. Anyone can get at the software. It's
open so that the code can be inspected by people,
and the whole idea was to create a messaging platform
that was very secure and at the same time very
(02:31):
easy to use. It features a technology that actually a
lot of us use every day, but often our chats
don't have it. It's called end to end encryption. That
means that the moment you put something into signal and
send it to somebody else's signal, for the entire path,
it's encrypted. Like sometimes it used to be you would
(02:51):
go to a web page and the data was not
encrypted as it went over the Internet, and if somebody
was listening in, they could get that. Nowadays, most major
websites also use end to end encryption, but a lot
of chat services like on your phone, do not. That's
finally starting to change. But signal is one of the
things that started that. You chat on signal, it's all encrypted.
Nobody so far as I know, has ever cracked a
(03:13):
signal message. They've never gotten in. But what happens if
somebody is led in accidentally. That's what happened in this
case for some reason. It apparently it was Mike Waltz,
who is what is He's a national security advisor. There
are so many of these guys tied in here. He
was a national security advisor, and somehow he had the
journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who is the editor in chief of
(03:37):
the Atlantic, among the people he has listed in his directory.
So apparently he's communicated with him before on signal and
he accidentally hooked him up to this chat. And here's
this guy. He is one of the he's an editor
in chief for one of the nations leading magazine, Lo
the Waly an excellent magazine. I recommend it to everybody
if you want articles on every conceivable subject from every
(03:57):
conceivable point of view, liberal, conservative, all kinds of different
points of view.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
It's really good.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And he's probably sure to say that Jeffrey Goldberg is
not a huge fan from what I've read.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
About Donald to Oh, no, not at all. Yes, fine, right,
but it's not his fault. I mean, he's just sitting
there and he starts getting these messages and it includes
this thread of messages that include a bunch of the
National security team talking about these air strikes, and he
knew he shouldn't be getting it. But I guess he,
like any good journalists, realized this is not something that
(04:30):
I should be receiving, and that very fact is a
news story. So I'm going to just keep collecting this information.
And of course you know what happened.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I think initially how it was he wasn't sure if
he was being pranked.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
That's right. He first thought it was some kind of
a gag, and then he kept reading and reading, and
he decided this must be for real. And then they
started sending detailed information about this air strike against the
Hooties that they carried out a few days ago, and
he realized this was for real and that the information
he was getting was coming. In fact, he realized it
was for real the air strikes happened because two hours
(05:02):
before the air strike happened was when he was reading
these texts, and then two hours later all the stuff
that had been in the text had happened, and he realized,
my goodness, this is real. He saved it all, did
an article for The Atlantic, but deliberately. In that first
article he said, I'm not going to tell you all
the military stuff because it could be dangerous. It could
expose American military forces to some risk. And the next thing,
(05:26):
you know, people in the Trump administrations are saying, oh,
he's lying, he's lying, this didn't happen. And then he said, fine,
do you want me to release this stuff since it's
not real, And basically they ended up agreeing to let
him release it. I think he redacted one thing that
they said might be sensitive, and then he released it
all and it confirmed what he was saying. And they
(05:46):
had two hours before the attack. They gave the names
of the kinds of planes they were going to hit,
the kinds of planes that were going to send on
the mission. They gave the names of like the types
of missiles they were going to fire. They talked about
having some guy understood valence they specifically wanted to kill,
which meant that they are giving up the fact that
we have assets there that are tracking these people visually.
(06:07):
All of that stuff was in these messages two hours
before it happened. If it at leaked to a bad guy,
it could have been very bad.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
As a matter of fact, we talked about this last night,
and they were looking for this specific guy. They knew
where he was headed. He was apparently headed to his
girlfriend's apartment, that's right, And once they knew that he
was in the girlfriend's apartment, they hit the building. So
it was a building and they said the building is down,
and they knew at that point that this guy was
(06:37):
the guy they wanted to get, who apparently was the
one of the heavy directors of the Hoody Missiles program,
which was firing all the missiles at shipping going through
near Yemen.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
So taking no position on whether or not I'm not
taking any political positions here, but I must say, if
you stop to think about it, it does kind of make
you proud to be an American in a way. They
have really good intelligence. If they were following these guys,
they had eyes on them and everything right, and you know,
sometimes think hi, wata.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I'll take the position, and my position is pretty clear.
These guys are using Iranian assets to fire missiles at
one hundred and sixty four times at US Navy ships
and more than that at commercial vessels, which are causing
a lot of companies to go as opposed to go
up the Red Sea through the show.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
No, no, you're you're right. I just don't want to
take political.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
You're a reporter, I'm a commentator. So there if I
just wanted to make sure, and I think most Americans,
even journalists, would say, you know, good, these guys were
not really.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Helpful, and let me go so far as to say
that they will not be missed.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Exactly, so they will not be missed, all right, so
we know, let me do this. I want to take
a quick break if it's okay with you, I promise.
I can't you go at ten thirty. I want it now,
since I think you have explained it remarkably clearly. I
want to find out from you where the mistakes were made,
(08:04):
and I because I want to be fair in my
commentary on this, and I want my audience to understand.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
And the first question I'm going to come back with
is will be this? Was there a better app? And
from what I've learned, this was a perfectly good app
when properly used. What is there? I when I first.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
You and you would be wrong if.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I expect I would be wrong.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
I got to tell you.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I got to tell you this, Hiawatha. I wondered, why
was there not a Department of Defense communications team running this?
This this messaging app?
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Okay, we are approaching the truth.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Well, well, I spent a little time in the in
the military, so I no, I don't know. Leave me.
I was in the military shortly after the Revolutionary.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
War with the string.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
You got it, you got it. So that's why I
would think that you would have said, okay, let's call
you know, DoD Coms, let something up. I got to
assume that when when the President of United States, whether
it's Donald Trump or whomever is talking to Vladimir Putin,
they want something a little more secure than signal, or
maybe not. We'll find out. We would hope, we would
(09:29):
hope we'll find out for certain. From Hiawatha right after
this quick break, I love your clarity. Thank you so
much for being here tonight. It's helping me and it's
helping my audience. We'll be back on nights tick right
after this.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
It's Night Side Boston's news Radio.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
This Hiawatha braid Uh tech expert, tech writer from the
Boston Globe. You've read his columns in the in the
Business page and elsewhere. So, Hiawatha, the question that I
left you with was whether or not there would have
been a better option for this group who were wanted
to all be on the same page. As the attack
(10:12):
on these Huti rebels in Yemen was going to take
place on Saturday, early afternoon our time, but obviously probably
after dark the time in Yemen. What should have they used?
What should have they been thinking about to have avoided
this problem?
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Well, the very fact that a person could be accidentally
added to this message chain illustrates the problem. Okay, I've talked.
I was talking to some people at a company in
California called Greenhill Software. Most of us have never heard
of them, but they specialized, among other things, in making
highly secure military communications systems, and that is precisely the
(10:55):
kind of thing that is supposed to be used for
a job like this. Remember the election campaign, they found
out that that Chines. Yeah, it's hard to forget. They
found out that the Chinese were trying to hack Prump's
Advance's cell phones. So Greenhill Software contacted them and offered
them highly secure phones that were they claimed totally unhackable,
(11:20):
and they used those phones throughout the rest of the campaign.
Such phones are also provided to the US military. These
phones are so secure precisely because they do not communicate
with the public Internet at all. They do not run
apps at all. They are designed to do one thing,
and only one thing, conduct extremely secure military communications. They
(11:41):
can do text, they can do voice, And in order
to connect to this phone, you have to already be
logged into the network. You have to have been identified,
you have to have been proven to have a right
to be on that network. This is the kind of
technology that is used all the time for military communications.
Technology exists, it's been around forever. That's what you use.
(12:04):
You do not use signal.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
No, Okay, now that is as clear as a bell.
So now my next question is I'm assuming that signal
has been used by other political leaders in Washington. I
know it's been used by senators and Senate aids and
all of that. Did the Biden administration also use signal
(12:29):
or was this age well.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
As I understand it, yeah, a lot of them had.
Let me be clear about this. In December of twenty
twenty four, the uh oh, it's called SISA, the cybersecurity
branch of the US Department of Commerce, actually recommended that
high government officials ought to consider using signal for their
everyday communications because it is indeed hard to crack. That's
(12:53):
very different from using it for the you know, actual
military command kind of activity. For everyday sort of you know,
confidential stuff and by trying to keep it basically secure,
signal is actually quite good for that.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And just to be clear, signal wasn't cracked. It wasn't.
This journalist did not somehow, you know, I don't think
there's any journalists in the world maybe other than you
would even attempt to do that.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
I mean, I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to
you know, know know.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
How it works. It's like I wouldn't want to stand
in and and and try to bat against the guy
who's throwing a fastball ninety seven miles an hour. But
I understand what what it would take. You know, it
take you know, split second diming and eye hand coordination
that I never had it, and if I ever had it,
it's long gone now. So so what do you think
(13:50):
will come out of this? Do you think that the
Trump administration? They're not gonna I don't believe they're going
to fire anyone, although they could. They could look at
some of the comments that these principles made, which were,
if not incorrect, they were misleading.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Well, no, you know, I read a great column today
by a guy who writes this publication called The Dispatch.
Name is Johonna Goldberg, and he pointed out what he thinks,
and he might be right, is the really most startling
thing that came out of all this, And he compares
it to The Godfather. The scene in The Godfather where
Sonny interrupts while they're just trying to negotiate the drug
(14:36):
deal and his father takes him aside and says, never
tell anyone outside the family what you're thinking. That's what
happened here, because the really interesting thing that came out
was when Vance and which was the other one, started
talking about how they couldn't stand the Europeans always sponging
off the Americans. That I think it was Vance who
(14:58):
agree with him?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Oh, yes, yes, yes, absolutely, it was Vincent hegseth. Correct.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Have you been looking at the European press? That has
sent shockwaves across Europe? Everybody in Europe now recognizes and
this is what Goldberg was pointing out. They were able
to kid themselves and say, oh, they don't really hate
us that much, they don't really distrust the Europeans that much.
Now they're reading messages that were apparently intended to be secret,
and their contempt for NATO and the European allies is
(15:24):
just palpable. And how that is going to help us
do business with Europe, I don't know. But it has
really sent shock waves. And if you read the news,
a lot of European leaders are horrified by this, not
because of the secret military information, because these people are
just standing there telling them we're sick of Europe. We're
tired of having to clean up their messages, and we
expect them to pay us if we finished. Did you
see that part? We expect them to pay us if
(15:45):
the United States feels with no disease.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, they were what they were saying. What they were saying,
Hi Walth was that if they wipe the hoovenes out
here or they incapacitate the hoodies, which then allows the
I think it's forty percent of europe ship goes through the.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
America's trade right and.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Ours is like three percent. Okay, So the idea was
that we're doing this one. They said that no European
country and they're probably correct on this. No European country
could have carried this attack out as effectively as we were.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
It's not probable, it's definite.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They have done it right, And so what they're saying
is we have provided a service. And they said, I
hate that we have to do this, but they were
going to do it anyway. So I was concerned about
heg Seth was asked uh, and he was very clear,
there was there was this, There were no war plans here,
there was no information here. He he used different terminology
within the military that that would would have been misleading
(16:45):
and all. It was almost as if we weren't talking
about any of this when we were on this we
were talking the worst thing we were talking about was
European soccer scores or something like that. I mean, it was,
it was. It was just it was misleading.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
At a minimum, it was misleading, and it was very disturbing.
And oh and of course I know, no, we're probably
run out of time, but I want to squeeze in
the one last point which I also mentioned, which is
the fact that Signal, among its other features, is designed
to make its messages disappear. Yes, there was an actual
a report from the Defense Department's Inspector General where they
(17:20):
were rebuked a Defense Department official for using Signal, and
their reason was, this is the US government. You can't
make your messages disappear. They're part of the public record.
They're all supposed to be archived, yes, the way supposed
to do that.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
By the way, as I understand that the person who
is establishing the meeting, if you will, can determine if
the messages disappear in five seconds, twenty seconds, or.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Twenty days Rctually, I saw something If you look at
the screenshot, it says message will be deleted in four weeks.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah. Well, at this point there was a judge has
ordered the Defense Department tonight, the judge has ordered that
Hegseeth Walls and others not delete the hooty messages. It's
the same time Judge Boseburg, who is a federal District
court judge in Washington, DC. So the messages will be preserved,
(18:17):
I respect.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
I don't think how many other things have they done
using signal that I've been lost to history.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Probably not their first use of this.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
I've read this, I need to confirm it. But you know,
the whole controversy over Project twenty twenty five. I read
today that there is apparently something to this effect. In
Project twenty twenty five, they said the new administration should
find alternative channels for conducting its communications that go outside
of government channels.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Project twenty five. Of those who don't know what it is,
it was a group that was done by the Federalist
Society which talked about.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
No, no, no. It was the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Heritage Foundation correct on that. I'm sorry to strike that
Heritage Foundation, which was suggesting that if Donald Trump was
elected president, he might be able to do ABC, D,
E FG whatever, an alphabet of ideas. And and you
know that that that's a possibility ability there. Obviously you
raised that one. I think the I don't think Trump
(19:17):
is going to fire anyone in this group. Uh. The
person who should be fired, if anybody, would be the
Aid of Waltz, because I'm assuming Waltz gave his his
cell phone to the AID and said set it up.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
And because in it is quite possible.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, and so and it almost comes down to, you know,
when you're hurrying and you're making a phone call to
someone and I'm going to call Hiawatha, and I go
to call Hiawatha, but I call the person on my
contact list who's one above you or one below you?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Yea and.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, right the other Hiawatha, right, uh and uh. And
they'll say who who is this? Who are you looking
for the bulk of them? Hiawatha bray, Well, you got
the wrong Hiawatha and said, I apologize, innocent mistake, but
that's probably what happened here.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
But you're not supposed to do military communications on devices
that are even capable. That's the point I talked to
the guy over at Harvard. Why am I going blank
on his name? Bruce Schneier, brilliant guy. He's written multiple
books on cybersecurity, and he says, that's the whole point.
You use devices where a mistake like that cannot literally
cannot be made, because the only people who can connect
(20:32):
to the network are people who are supposed to be there.
And we have those technologies. They exist, it's not that
difficult to use them. For whatever reason they didn't.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
You've explained it so well, Hiawatha Bray. As always, it's
it's late at night. I can't wait to read your
next column on this.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Are going to write about it anymore? Huh, I'm tired
of this, but I may have to. We'll see.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I hope you do. I hope you do always. I
thank you for your time, and I thank you for here,
Thank you, Thank you to you soon. Okay, when we
get back, all right, thanks, we're gonna take a break
for news. We'll let Hiawatha turn in for the night.
But I still have some time, and I hope you
have some interest in this story. And uh, look, this
(21:18):
is this is a this is a mistake, okay, And
whenever you have a mistake, it's always the They should
have come out early and said, hey, we made a mistake,
and we're gonna correct it. We're gonna rectify it, and
we're going to change the protocol. In my opinion, when
you sort of hunker down and hope that the storm's
(21:43):
gonna blow over, it's all that's always the storm that
doesn't blow over. Now again, I celebrate what was accomplished
in the raid. But but the conversation in newspapers and
on talk shows has been about everything but the now.
I know we had some wild calls last night on
night Side, and I'm going to open up the full
(22:05):
lines tonight, uh and give you an opportunity to comment.
I have a fairly direct tape on this. I have
a much better I must tell you. I have cell phones,
I use computers. I'm not the expert that Hiawatha Bray
is period period, So I listened and learned from him.
(22:26):
I had a conversation with a couple of colleagues of
mind today which have helped me understand this. This is
and well I'll talk about on the other side. Let
me open up the phone lines. Let's get it going.
Six one, seven, two, five, four, ten, thirty six, one
seven ninety. Coming right back on night Side.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
All right, welcome back. We're going to again talk about
this signal experience. That again, the bottom line was there
was a successful raid, but but we need to learn
from this. I'm not sure that anyone is going to
(23:17):
lose their job in the Trump administration over this. I
think that Trump will be lolled to fire anyone. I'm
not sure there's a fireable offense. To be really honest
with you, I don't think there was an intention here
to keep it secret from us, but there was. This
was an administration that should have known that because of
(23:40):
the National Archives Acts and the National the Office of
the National Archives and record Keeping that that these these
conversations need to be preserved. Yeah, the raid was successful.
They accomplished what if they apparently needed to accomplish. And
it sounds to me as if the hooties have been
(24:00):
kind of put in a box, which would be good
for the passage of commercial and military vessels in the
Red Sea its Sewice Canal. But I've learned a lot
about signal and by the way, you can have you
can have a zoom call on signal, you can have
a telephone call on signal. You can have just a
(24:22):
phone call and with the transcription encrypted. So it's it's sophisticated.
But there's a lot of people in my business who
have used it. Now again, uh, maybe maybe for whatever reason,
they want to know what's going on. Maybe you've used it.
I'd love to know what you've used it for. Again,
(24:44):
there there are people, bad actors out there who are
trying to get all of our information. I have all
I can do to deal with the spammers. Who are
you know that we joke about the Nigerian prince who
wants to give you the million dollars. So anyway, let's
just let's get right to it. Six point seven two
five four ten thirty six one seven thirty. Paul's in Wakefield. Paul,
(25:05):
you were next up. I hope you enjoyed the conversation
with Hiawatha Bray. Okay, Paul may not be there, so Rob,
why don't we put Paul on hold see what's going
on with Paul. In the meantime, I'm going to go
to Bill and Nadick. Bill, you are next on nightside. Welcome,
Thank you. Okay, Billy, you're a speakerphone?
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Could I ask cell phone?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, well, please hold the cell phone close to the
to your mouth and let's hear you. Sounded like you
might have been on a speakerphone.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Go right ahead, okay.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I watched the show on TV UH and they asked
only yesterday. And then there was a congresswoman named Houlahn
and I don't know where she was from, but she
was really good. She says it was me, a new congresswoman.
She had a list of things she warned to talk about,
but yeah, she didn't want to talk about anymore because
(26:05):
she wanted to talk about the UH. The column was
messed up, and she just started a conversation but by saying,
you know, we had a lot of stories about this
guy being having trouble with alcohol, and they said that
(26:27):
he's off and now everything's all right. And one of
the guys she was talking was saying, hey, hold on, man,
you can't you can't talk.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Like that here.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
We're not going to allow that. Well, she had a
very good equation and she was very innocent, and I
wish I don't know where she comes from, what stay,
but she was really good.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Hold, well, I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about.
If you're talking about a congress woman named Chrissy Hulahan,
she's a American politician, former United States Air Force Office
Sir member the Democratic Party, she represents the sixth Congressional
district in Pennsylvania. If you're talking about alcohol, there was
(27:08):
concerns early on that the Secretary of Defense now Secretary
Pete Hegesath, in his past had had some problems with alcohol.
He apparently took a pledge that he was not going
to drink while serving as Secretary of Defense. I don't
know how that has no to best of my knowledge,
(27:31):
it has no relation to what we're talking about, which
is whether or not the app let me finish, let
me do this, let me do this, bill, if you'd
permit me, let me finish my sentence, and then I'm
going to give you the opportunity to speak. Okay, just
give me the courtesy. I'll allow you to speak as well.
And that is that there's no indication that any use
(27:51):
of alcohol, never minded abuse of alcohol, has anything to
do with the story. Go right ahead, Okay, fine, we
lost them. That's fine. You know, Look, if you want
to call and you want to have a conversation, I
don't mind that. But if I'm making a point or
you're making a point, it just to me seems impolite,
(28:15):
at at at best impolite not to be able to
have a conversation, all right. Six one, seven, two, five,
four ten thirty six one seven nine three one ten thirty.
I had a lot of really difficult callers last night,
and that is not what this show tends to be about.
We we could have passionate exchanges, but there were people
(28:36):
last night who just it was and by the way,
people on both ends of the spectrum. Okay, it wasn't
necessarily trumps supporters or Trump critics or Democrats or Republicans.
I just, you know, I'd like to like to keep
the program under control, because if we're just yelling and screaming,
(28:58):
we're not going to make much progress. I have no
idea what Bill was talking about. I have no idea
what he was talking about. There's some reference to alcohol.
That's I tried to make some sense of it, but
I couldn't even allow me to make sense of it
for him. We'll take a break. Six one seven, two
five four, ten thirty six, one seven, nine three, one
ten thirty What are the lessons that we can learn,
(29:19):
that all of us can learn. I don't know how
many of you have used signal before as a communication app.
I've never used signal. If you have, I'd love to
know your experience with it. According to Hiawatha Bray, our
guest in the first half hour of this this Hour,
and Hiawath's is an excellent guest, he talked about it
(29:40):
being a good uh web, a good app. But he says,
and he cited one out in California called Green Hills Software,
which is what should have been used. You would think
that the military, you would hope that the military would
have been totally up to speed. It was not. We'll
be back on Nightside right after.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
This Night Side with Dan Ray on Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
We're bringing up the quality of the call is right now,
going to Audrey and Cambridge. Audrey, welcome to Nightside. How
are you?
Speaker 6 (30:14):
I'm fine, Dan, how are you? You didn't have a
heck of a time. I just saw the end of
heard the end of the show last night. I'm like,
oh my gosh, I don't know his patient's got to
be running thin. But on this I worked, I did
work for the Defense Apartment and I we were auditus.
But the thing is, you know, some of us I
(30:37):
had a security clearance, some some did very cute. But
the point of my call is for this kind of
a conversation to be set up. Why they didn't check,
double check and check again to see who was on
that line. That that's the thing that doesn't make I mean,
(30:57):
that's the first thing you taught, you know, check, double check, trust,
but verified, right, And I just think the head should
roll on this one.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
I really do.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So when you say head should roll, okay, that's the euphemism,
what exactly do you who do you think should wow,
should be be shown the door?
Speaker 6 (31:16):
Well, whoever set the call up?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
That's Mike Walls.
Speaker 6 (31:20):
Then I think, I mean, there's no excuse. So I
just can't see any excuse of something this important. You know,
they're saying, oh, well nothing, but but all the detail
I mean of what the strike was going to entail
by what I understand was, you know, transpired in this conversation.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
So I just okay, it's the The counter argument would be, okay,
this was information which remained secure after the strike because
the the journalist who was I assume inadvertently invited onto
the line. I I you know, Jeffrey Goldberg is a
(32:02):
big critic of Donald Trump. These were Trump's most loyal
his Defense Secretary Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State Chelsea Gabbertt,
all of his uh you know, international people were so
I don't think anybody said it'd be a great idea
to put Jeffrey Goldberg on here, So we don't think so. Yeah,
(32:24):
and he did not, Thank goodness. I don't know what
he could have been able to do. He would have
had to have called the hoodies, and I don't think
anyone would be crazy enough to do that and said, hey,
you guys are going to get hit in about two hours.
If I get if I were you, i'd get out
of town.
Speaker 6 (32:38):
I mean, right, And did you think did you say?
Did you mention that he thought it was kind of
a joke? He didn't, he.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Is he I saw that he wrote he thought that
he was being prank, that that it was someone who
was pulling and he realized he only realized when the
actual news was saying that that the US is hitting
hitting Yemen. I mean it was anticipated the Biden administration
has hit them before. I don't know if this was
(33:07):
the first time. It's not a surprise like we're all
of a sudden attacking some country. Switzerland. They've been a
pain of the neck for a long time. So so
you think the head should roll? Okay, let's see what without.
Speaker 6 (33:19):
What others said, Dan, But what can I tell you?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
That's okay? Audrey? I loved your call. I mean that seriously.
Thank you you've said you've said a new standard here.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Okay, thanks, Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Okay, we had luck with Ardurye. Let me go to
Heidi and Wellesley. Hi, Heidi, how are you tonight?
Speaker 7 (33:43):
Well, it's actually not he it's actually Patty.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
But Patty, Oh how did Rob? How did you get
Heidi out of Patty? Patty is one of my favorite callers. Patty?
Speaker 3 (33:54):
How are you? Peace?
Speaker 8 (33:59):
Love and honor for you?
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Okay?
Speaker 8 (34:03):
And I would never ever call your show with anger,
but text you noticed in this community or in this
world right now, there are heightened feelings of anger, fear,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 7 (34:16):
Yes, and so there's also the factor that everybody wants
to be right.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
And I don't know what.
Speaker 7 (34:26):
Is the big deal about being wrong? Why does everyone
have to be right? But let me tell you about
that little thread of the text. Yes, there's no such
thing as a mistake. Everything happens for a reason. So
the guy was on the thread, right, We've all put
(34:46):
different people on threads. It just shows that everyone is
so in another planet that mistakes happen so much, and
it's just a tragedy where we are at now. Would
you agree?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I think you're right. I do think that all of
us need to kind of dial it back a little bit.
They probably threw that call together a little bit more quickly.
There should have been double checks. They should have been
doing it through, you know, a professional Department of Defense
communications team. It shouldn't have been done at this point.
I think it's pretty clear if they made a mistake
(35:21):
by putting it on signal. Now they could have put
had her on signal, and maybe if no mistake was made,
but guess what, we're all human beings, Mistakes can be made.
It should have been done through a more secure site.
Although signal is from everyone I've talked to today, a
pretty secure site in terms of encryption.
Speaker 7 (35:42):
Done.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
Have you ever heard of this?
Speaker 7 (35:44):
Quotes or whatever?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Measure twice.
Speaker 7 (35:47):
How one yes done?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Absolutely A stitch in time saves nine is another one
as well.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Hey got it?
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Thank you so much. I haven't heard your voice since
too long and I love you voice. You know that
we will talk soon. Thank you so much.
Speaker 7 (36:03):
Just what do you want to hear? Your secret?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Do?
Speaker 7 (36:05):
I love you?
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Do?
Speaker 7 (36:06):
You are the and you are the best?
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Perfect.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
It's not a secret anymore, but I feel the same
way to it you, Patty. Thank you so much.
Speaker 7 (36:15):
Okay, one day, one day we'll meet Don in person. Okay,
abe show tonight and we all love you and I'm
speaking for all your fun. You are the best.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Thanks Patty, I'm blushing. Thank you so much. Okay, thanks,
bye bye bye bye bye. Okay, uh, David san Antonio, Dave,
I only got a couple of minutes left, but I
know you make the most of it. Go ahead, Dave.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I just think to them, have a lot of noise
is being made over nothing. I mean I it wasn't
top secret, it wasn't anything like that. And the fact
that it's out is because a little journalists. They Goldberg,
(37:00):
he couldn't keep his mouth shut. Well, first of all.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
That's not what journalists do. Dave. You, first of all,
that's not what journalists do. I mean, he was he
was inadvertently put on the call. I don't think people
would have put him on intentionally, do you.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
He's just as an American desire. Why do you just
keep his mouth shut?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Well, that's not what journalists do, David. I mean, I'm
sure that if there was a conservative journalist, then Goldberg
has staked out of position. He's very critical of the
Trump campaign. Maybe I would hope that if he had
been on a call with an administration that was more
(37:40):
supportive of he would have done the same thing that
he as a journalist, but that he didn't have to.
He could have kept it quiet, but that's his choice.
I can't second guess his choice.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
You have kept it, He kept it quiet. Nothing, no
noise about this at all. The fact is it was
a very successful campaign. He really done it in over there,
and uh, they're they're they're shaking in their boots and
doing things that uh, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Well, a lot of the hooties aren't even in there anymore, Dave.
A lot of the hooties aren't even in their boots anymore.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Yeah, I know, I.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Got you in before the news. But here comes the
news and we both got to get out of the way.
I'll talk soon. I'll give you more time next year.
A good night, Dan, my friend, take it take, take
it easy. You guys have the numbers. I'm not even
gonna repeat them. Fill up the lines. We're going to
talk to this, about this until midnight, coming back on
night Side.
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