The news of Jeffrey Goldberg on a group chat on the encrypted social messaging app Signal is a reminder that the human element remains the weakest link when it comes to employing technology to share secrets. Goldberg had allegedly received an invitation and was included in a group chat designated the “Houthi PC small group.”
Goldberg said the communications included “operational military information” and discussions about the planned military strikes on the Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.
“I assume that I’m being hoaxed. I assume that either this is a foreign intelligence operation or an organization that tries to, you know, set up journalists or embarrass them or feed them,” Goldberg said during an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered on Monday.
Good Reason to be Skeptical
It is not surprising that Goldberg may have assumed it was part of an elaborate misinformation/disinformation campaign. Militaries have employed such tactics to great success for centuries.
During the American Revolution, General George Washington employed John Honeyman to spread disinformation to the British forces that claimed there was low morale within the Continental Army. That lulled the British and Hessian troops into a full sense of security before the surprise attack was carried out at Trenton, N.J., on Christmas.
Even greater efforts were employed in the Second World War, when an entire “Ghost Army” was created as part of Operation Fortitude to mislead the Germans about the planned Allied invasion of Europe. That included false signals communications, while a “Phantom Army” was even created, under the command of the famed General George S. Patton.
Secrets Spilled
Just as the U.S. has employed misdirection, there have also been several examples in history of mishandling of classified information.
During the American Civil War, a copy of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s invasion orders were found wrapped around cigars by Union infantrymen. It would have been easy for “Special Order 191” to be tossed aside or mistaken for a deception campaign, but the information was passed up the chain of command.
As a result, General George McClellan changed the direction of the movement of his forces and responded accordingly, stopping Lee’s invasion of Maryland at the Battle of Antietam – now remembered as being the bloodiest day in American history.
Nearly 80 years later, the United States War Department inadvertently leaked the detailed plan to defeat Germany and the Axis powers, which was obtained by Chicago Tribune reporter Chesley Manly in early December 1941, just days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. was still not in the war, but the findings of “F.D.R.’s War Plans” were published in the paper’s December 4, 1941 edition.
The War Department report suggested that the UK and Russia couldn’t defeat Nazi Germany alone, and that the U.S. would need to intervene. The publishing of the report was described by the paper’s Washington bureau as “perhaps the great scoop in the history of journalism.”
The release of the report embarrassed the White House, and President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the FBI to investigate the source of the leak. By Sunday, December 7, it was a moot point as Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declared war the next day, while Germany responded by declaring war on the U.S. on December 11. Only in 1962, when he published his memoirs, did isolationist Democratic Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana acknowledge his hand in sharing the leaked documents, which he was given by an unmanned U.S. Army Air Forces captain.
The AP and D-Day
Communications technology almost spilled the aforementioned D-Day landings, when an inexperienced London telegraph operator sent an erroneous “flash” that announced that the invasion of France had begun. That was three days earlier than the actual landing.
On June 3, 1944, at 4:39 p.m. Eastern War Time, CBS interrupted a sports broadcast to announce the AP’s news flash about the invasion of France. Just minutes later, teletypes sent out the subsequent message “BUST THAT FLASH,” and told news outlets not to release the story.
Joan Ellis was later named as the AP operator who had practiced on a disconnected machine and typed the erroneous message, but then accidentally ran the perforated tape, which is used to transmit the electrical impulses, through another machine.
The Pizza Meter
Even as reporters may now monitor social media for indicators of breaking news, it was more than 40 years ago that pizza proved to be a portent that something big was about to happen. Pizza orders doubled on the night before the U.S. launched its invasion of Grenada in October 1983, and that was repeated the night before December 1989.
Since then, journalists and analysts have monitored for a surge of late-night activity at the Pentagon – notably pizza deliveries. Domino’s Pizza reported a sharp uptick in pizza orders just before Iraq invaded Kuwait, and it was noted by Frank Meeks, who owned 60 Domino’s Pizza locations in the D.C. order.
After the “pizza-int” was made public, U.S. agencies stopped ordering large quantities of pizzas from one provider and stopped deliveries. Yet, as recently as last year, on April 13, 2024, pizza orders shot up again when Iran launched its drone attack against Israel. As that news already broke, the orders of pizzas just confirmed it was going to be a long night!
