War Plan Group Chat Absolutely Exposed Classified Info, Former Defense Secretary Says

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the administration’s claim Wednesday that the war plan group chat they added a reporter to ahead of a bombing campaign in Yemen contained no confidential information and, therefore, qualifies as a “sensationalized story that’s falling apart by the hour.”

It’s a claim that former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who held the position under former President Barack Obama, called “astounding.”

“It’s truly astounding that we would see that released in the form of a non-secure government channel,” Hagel told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Hagel said information of that sort “would ordinarily be classified for obvious reasons.”

“I mean, details of a strike ― a war strike ― that’s going to kill people, do damage. That’s the intent of it. I think that is classified information,” he added.

The texts, which included 18 highly senior members of the Trump administration, relayed specific information about when F-18s would take off, when specific types of missiles would hit their targets and when waves of other munitions and drones would strike.

Yet Leavitt argued Wednesday that because Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, downplayed the magnitude of the information, it should be ok.

“It’s not just me saying that, it’s the secretary of defense himself who is saying this as well,” she said. “He put out a very strong statement earlier today.”

Leavitt declined to answer multiple follow-up questions.

The press secretary also claimed the information distributed on the chat didn’t constitute a “war plan,” instead spinning it as “a sensitive policy discussion … amongst high-level cabinet officials and senior staff.”

Hagel called bogus on the logic.

“You can parse words … was it a ‘war plan,’ or a ‘war strike,’ but it’s all the same and in many ways you can say that the specifics of a war strike, which this laid out, is even more important and probably should be even more classified than war plans,” he said.

More worrying to Hagel is how the Trump administration’s incompetence is being received by America’s allies, who may now be reluctant to share their own intelligence efforts.

“This is a new administration that’s barely been in office two months,” he said. “And our allies, our friends, relationships that we’ve depended on for years and years to share intelligence ― not just NATO but countries all over the world ― when they see this, they lose trust, they lose confidence in us.”