The idea that nobody in the administration is even willing to admit to error should disgust you.

The last talking point in the Jeffrey Goldberg Signal scandal died this morning. Readers will recall that, ten days ago, the Atlantic Monthly editor in chief was inexplicably invited onto a private chat between the Trump administration’s national security principals, who were candidly debating the value of strikes upon Yemen’s Houthi terrorists amongst themselves. This chat was held on a private platform, Signal, whose end-to-end encryption may be reasonably tight but whose operational security was clearly not — as evidenced by the fact that Goldberg (much to his own mystification) was present there in the first place.

At some point Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth dropped into the fray to published detailed minutes of the military’s impending strike plan. At that point Goldberg left the chat, realizing he was being inadvertently made privy to highly classified military matters. (Up until this point the possibility had remained that he was the target of an elaborate hoax, the likes of which are not unheard of in this business.) Out of deference to national security, Goldberg declined to quote or transcribe this segment of Hegseth’s revelations. (The military strike, incidentally, was apparently a success.)

Those inclined to dismiss such a bombshell claim — because it came from one of the Trump administration’s most prominent journalistic enemies — were for once left without any possible defense: Goldberg published verbatim transcripts which were subsequently confirmed as authentic by a spokesman for the National Security Council. So the fallback position from Trump’s defenders soon became, “Nothing classified was really discussed after all.” Goldberg hadn’t actually printed or screenshotted the supposed “war plans” he claimed Hegseth had revealed, so why believe him? Maybe he’s lying. This, in fact, was the position taken across the board by the Trump administration yesterday, as they hit the cable news shows and the Senate Intelligence Committee alike to explain what in God’s name went wrong here: No war plans were shared. Nothing truly classified at all. And none were more emphatic in this argument than Pete Hegseth himself, who naturally was most under the gun given what he was purported to have done.

And that’s a genuine shame, because I like Hegseth, and yet the most predictable thing in the world happened this morning. After being dared by the administration and Trump’s myrmidonic online defenders to put up or shut up, Jeffrey Goldberg put up the transcripts he had previously held back, the ones he characterized as “war planning.” Read them. Do not let ignorance be your shield. And while I can already anticipate the hair-splittingly ludicrous next line of defense Trumpworld will fall back to — “They’re not actual documents with exact military deployments, it’s just an executive summary!” — I would suggest that when you write, “1415: THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP,” you’re, uh, giving advance notice of when bombs are going to drop. The idea that this information, in the hands of (to name one) Russia’s GRU — which is friendly to the Iranian-backed Houthis — could have resulted in failure (or worse, disaster) should genuinely disturb you. The idea that nobody in the administration is even willing to admit to error should disgust you.

The administration’s defenders will doubtless find some further excuse to dismiss the scandal of all this. (I predict that, when not trying to hand-wave it away as “unimportant” or “not really classified” — as if it was a matter of opinion and not law — their talk will turn to whether Jeffrey Goldberg should be sued for publishing state secrets.) I cannot. It is a uniquely inexcusable blunder, compounded by the fact that all participating on an unsecure platform were doing so with the express purpose of avoiding government channels. I have no idea what should be done. I am not demanding punishment, because I know none will come. I am instead resigned, simply depressed that it ever happened and we are unable to do a thing about it.

What have we learned? I guess we learned not to do that again.