Canada’s former spy chief has said the Trump administration’s attempts to downplay the leak of top-secret attack plans is a “very worrying” development, with implications for broader intelligence sharing among US allies.
On Wednesday, the Atlantic magazine published new and detailed messages from a group chat, including plans for US bombings, drone launches and targeting information of the assault, including descriptions of weather conditions. Among the recipients of the messages was a prominent journalist, who was inadvertently added to the group.
“This is very worrying. Canada needs to think about what this means in practical terms: is the United States prepared to protect our secrets, as we are bound to protect theirs?” said Richard Fadden, the former head of Canada’s intelligence agency. “Every country has experienced leaks, of varying severity. The problem with this one is that it’s being generated at the highest levels of the US government – and they haven’t admitted that it’s a problem.”
Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand have for decades shared intelligence in a pact informally known as the Five Eyes. But the leak of classified information is likely to put further strain on the group as it weighs how seriously the current American administration takes the handling of top secret information.
“When we have intelligence leaks, we admit it, we try to sort out what’s happened and we try to fix it. One doesn’t get the impression today that the US cabinet members will admit there’s a problem,” said Fadden, who also served as national security adviser to Canada’s Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. “They’re just trying to clean it up from a political perspective. That worries me.”
Despite a far more detailed picture of the information leaked to the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, the White House and key figures in the message thread have redoubled efforts to claim none of the information was classified.
The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said on Tuesday that “nobody was texting war plans” in the thread. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, wrote on social media “these were NOT ‘war plans’. This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
“No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS,” national secruity adviser Mike Waltz wrote on X. “Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests.”
Fadden disputed the “cleanup exercise” by the current administration.
“This is intelligence, and it should be kept confidential. It would be useful if somebody in the US administration admitted they made a mistake, acknowledged there were problems, but that on the sharing of critical intelligence, wanted the current relationships to continue,” he said. “I don’t think that is the kind of thing the administration is inclined to do. There are ways to lower the temperature. Their lack of willingness to do that makes it worse.”
The use of Signal by senior members of the Trump administration has also become a focus of the leak. The commercial messaging app is popular among journalists for its sophisticated encryption but cannot be download on devices issued by the federal government, meaning those involved in the discussions were probably using private phones.
“It may well be that Signal is easier, but that’s not the issue. When you join government, you have to accept some sort of restrictions,” said Fadden. “Even though Signal is quite good in terms of encrypting, that doesn’t mean that people who are wandering around with their iPhones can’t be hacked. That is worrying.”
The revelations came as Canada grapples with a rapidly deteriorating relationship with the United States, its largest trading partner and closest military ally.
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On Tuesday, the prime minister, Mark Carney, said that, increasingly, Canadians “have to look out for ourselves” as decades-long relationships face fresh scrutiny.
“My responsibility is to plan for the worst, is to think about the most difficult evolution of the new threat environment, what it means for Canada and how do we best protect Canada,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Despite bilateral tensions precipitated by Trump’s trade war and threats to annex Canada, “transactional” relationships were still possible, said Fadden.
“Our political and strategic difficulties with the United States aren’t going to go away tomorrow. But I would like to think that on things like the sharing of critical intelligence, we would be able to survive.”
But Fadden suggests the nature of the leaks – and the denials – will provoke intense conversations among US allies.
“Should we think more carefully about what we call ‘Canadian eyes only’ intelligence, or should we continue to share very, very broadly? I imagine that United Kingdom and Australia, New Zealand will go through the same sort of exercise. The Five Eyes will survive this. But over the short to medium term, it probably will mean a few adjustments.”
Canada’s department of national defence declined to comment on the leaks.
Source: theguardian.com
