The shockwaves from the Signal chat discussions about attacks in Yemen have ping-ponged back and forth, with one side declaring “It’s the end of the security of the United States and we’re all doomed”, and the other saying, “This is nothing at all.  If anything, someone should arrest the journalist.”  Everyone’s opining about the definition of “War Plans” versus “Timing Schedules”, or whether Signal is a secure system even if it’s not official, or some other arcane aspect.  One of the hottest topics is whether anything “classified” was discussed in the chats.  I’m not going to weigh in on the ramifications or political rhetoric currently swirling.  I’m simply going to provide information on the question of whether classified information was included in the chat.  Having worked in that world for more than two decades, I have a little bit of knowledge on classified information and how it’s handled.  As such, this is not an opinion piece, but a dissemination of the official guidance of the United States Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), taken straight from its website.  That is where I will focus.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is the overseer of everything classified in the US intelligence community.  As such, it has  the responsibility to promulgate guidance across the eighteen different intelligence agencies in the United States so that each agency is operating under the same classification framework.  Because there are so many different platforms in the United States government, it would be chaotic for the CIA to state that one thing is classified while the DIA says it’s not, or the NSA to overclassify something that Army Intelligence routinely discusses in open forums.  The overarching “bible” of intelligence classification is something entitled the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Classification Guide (ODNI CG).  This guide is updated every decade or so with the latest version dated 2014 (updated 2016), and looks like this:

It can be found HERE, from the DNI’s official government website.  (Interestingly, the classification guide itself used to be classified, meaning I wouldn’t have been able to write this blog, but was declassified in 2016).

There are three classification levels in the US Government – C for Confidential, S for Secret (you’ll notice that this document itself used to be classified as secret) and TS for Top Secret.  There are many permutations at each level – like this document, for instance.  It’s SECRET with the caveat that it’s also NOFORN, meaning No Foreigners can read it either, whether they have a secret clearance or not.

The guidance delineates parameters, but it’s not omnipotent in its judgement.  Sometimes the guidance is at odds with our own objectives.  For instance, that NOFORN stamp sometimes caused unintentional problems in my own life.  While serving in Iraq with the British SAS and Aussie SASR – groups that most assuredly were cleared at the highest levels of their governments– everything my unit did was NOFORN, meaning that the Brit SAS guy technically couldn’t be read-on to my plan even as he was helping execute it.

The guide covers a host of different categories trying to encompass everything that an intelligence officer might need to know, from what needs to be classified to how exactly to do that with formatting, cover pages, etc:

For instance, let’s assume you’re an intel analyst just returned from a family vacation in Greece, where you came upon something interesting your boss and/or intel agency might want to know about.  You type it up and then wonder, “Is this tidbit classified?”  You would find the answer in this guide, learning whether you should send the tidbit over Yahoo mail or wait until you’re at your office in the SCIF.

The section we’re concerned about is Military Planning, section 3.4.3.  Under this section there are four categories.  The one we’re concerned about is the third row in the image below: lnformation providing indication or advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack.

As you can see in the second column under “Level”, this is classified as TS or Top Secret.  If you look to the right, this category of information is classified from the day it is created until plus 25 years, and that it MAY be releasable to FVEY – meaning the Five Eyes agreement of the English-speaking countries of Canada, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States.

One thing I’d like to note here is that the classification is on information providing indication or advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack.  There is nothing stipulating that it be war plans or timelines or platforms or targets or anything else.  It’s simply information providing indication or advance warning.  This is the text everyone’s quibbling about, and yes, it most certainly meets the definition of a TS classification:

In fact, according to the ODNI’s own guidance, the entire text chain is classified – beyond SECDEF Hegseth’s specifications of platforms and timelines.  The National Security Advisor simply creating a group chat saying, “Let’s start a Principals Group to discuss our impending strikes against the Houthis” is information indicating we are preparing to attack.

So, bottom line, the information in the text chain was classified information in accordance with our own Office of the Director of National Intelligence.  The paragraph in the guidance may be changed in the future to state that such a thing is not classified, but on the date the group chat was created, it was most definitely classified.

Whether sending the classified information over Signal is the end of the world or no big deal is another discussion entirely.