Godspeed to our OPSEC
Original post: hachyderm.io (Mastodon)
Context:
Also haven't heard anyone mentioning this, but late on the Friday before this story was published, Hegseth's chief of staff sent a late night memo threatening anyone that leaks classified information to the press by saying they're going to start doing polygraph tests at DOD, and said
“If this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure,” then such information “will be referred to the appropriate criminal entity for criminal prosecution,”
So threatening to turn Department of Defense employees over to the authorities for leaking classified information to reporters if they fail a polygraph (which isn't even admissible in court bc they give false positives so often).
Then it turns out, oops the guy trying to intimidate everyone texted classified information to a reporter in a group chat and now it's a story in the Atlantic
I would wager a guess that they were contacted for a comment on the story before release and this is Hegseth telling everyone to shut up and not say anything to the press. Timing makes it seem related.
Damn, I've been so distracted with the everything else I didn't even think of that, but yeah sounds about right.
Little fucking fascists typing up their big scary memos to prove how much they love trampling on rights
"Yeah, we all use Signal at work. Pete said it's the most secure app"
Polygraphs aren't scientific anyway. All you're really doing is seeing if they're nervous or not.
Making someone nervous by threatening them with a polygraph is arguably more effective than the polygraph itself.
"will be referred to the appropriate criminal entity for criminal prosecution"
I had to check that your quote was correct, because that doesn't seem like the words they probably meant to use. Though, now that I think of it, the current administration referring someone to a "criminal entity" is all too plausible.
If you read the full transcript of all of the released signal messages it's pretty obvious that they always talk like that.
They probably attended some seminar on public speaking by some hack and they were told to sound "alpha" in their communications. It's a sort of thing these idiots would obsess about.
According to the AP it's a direct quote from the memo written by the finest legal minds Trump's money can buy