National security veterans vexed by Trump team’s Signal use on Yemen operation

Sean O’Keefe Washington Examiner March 28, 2025

Former Secretary of the Navy

Controversy continues to build over the use of the Signal social app by top national security officials from President Donald Trump’s administration to discuss an attack against Houthi rebels in Yemen. Questions remain over whether the president’s Cabinet selections and top appointees, made up of less-experienced Washington outsiders, led to such ill-advised communication.

The inadvertent inclusion of Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg by national security adviser Michael Waltz led to the full publication of the communications chain, exposing messages between Cabinet members over sensitive national defense procedures that included incongruous language and emojis. Now, former members of the defense and intelligence communities wonder who’s in charge of policy and operations — and if they’re qualified for the responsibilities they carry.

Sean O'Keefe was secretary of the Navy during former President George H.W. Bush's administration before becoming NASA administrator under former President George W. Bush. Before those presidential appointments, he served on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council, the Senate Committee on Appropriations staff, and as staff director of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Now the distinguished senior adviser at the Syracuse University Center for Strategic and International Studies, O'Keefe insists such open discussion of national security affairs is unique in U.S. history. Still, his greatest concern is how the discussion took place through publicly open channels.