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New in SpyWeek: Signalgate—Still, Worse

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Seth Hettena's avatar
Seth Hettena
Apr 26, 2025
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SIGNALGATE PART DEUX: This week has been a near-daily series of revelations about Signalgate and how cavalier Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been with the nation’s secrets.

The Honorable Pete Hegseth, Christian soldier.

On Friday, The Times reported that Hegseth’s personal phone number—the one linked to his Signal account—was easily found on the Internet and in public apps, leaving a trail that a foreign intelligence service could easily exploit. 

“There’s zero percent chance that someone hasn’t tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone,” Mike Casey, the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told the Times. “He is one of the top five, probably, most targeted people in the world for espionage.”

If anyone has managed to crack Hegseth’s phone, they struck gold. We learned this week that the Defense Secretary has used Signal to share details about an impending attack on Yemen with his wife, brother, and lawyer. 

If you’re wondering how you get a commercially available messaging app into a classified workspace, The Washington Post has got you covered.

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