Slotkin Grills Intelligence Community IG Nominee: Was There Classified Information In Signal Chat?

Forbes Breaking News

During a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) spoke about the leaked Signal chat that included plans for strikes on the Houthis.

Transcript

00:00Senator Slotkin. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And I understand this was raised before,

00:09but Mr. Fox, you know, you're asking to be the Inspector General, or you've been nominated,

00:18excuse me, to be Inspector General of the entire intelligence community, you know,

00:24having relationships with Inspector Generals and providing that objective, stand-back investigation

00:31into really important questions of integrity in the intelligence community. I'm a former CIA officer,

00:39so this is important to me. And I think if we expect you to do that behind closed doors,

00:46we have to know that you're going to be objective. So what is your assessment of whether classified

00:57information was shared in the SignalGate exchange? Was there classified information that you're aware

01:05of placed on an unclassified system and shared with a journalist? Thank you for the question,

01:13Senator, and I agree with you that it's very important that we protect our sensitive information.

01:18To my knowledge, the Secretary of Defense, who is the original classifier authority, OCA,

01:23on the content from DOD, determined that it was unclassified. And in my capacity as the acting

01:30chief of information management at ODNI, our practice is to defer to other agencies for information

01:36originating out of those agencies. Okay, so even though we now have a report that that information

01:41was directly taken from a document labeled secret no form, with no declassification process that I've

01:48heard of formally going on, you believe that just because the Secretary of Defense was the Secretary

01:56of Defense, he got to declassify it just by putting it on SignalGate? I'm not familiar,

02:01Senator, with DOD's policies when it comes to declassifying or determining the classification

02:07of information, but... Well, that's a strong statement to say that I'm not familiar with DOD's

02:12processes, but you're saying it's unclassified. I mean, first of all, I want you to be familiar.

02:19If you're going to be the Inspector General, you're going to have to weigh in on a million

02:22of these cases when people rank-and-file officers, you know, leak information. So I would just say

02:29it's hard to understand how the senior officer in charge of inspections and investigations on this

02:38issue can't, like, speak clearly about how a potential leak of classified information is bad,

02:46and to be not familiar with the procedures is concerning. Let me ask another question related

02:53to the reporting. I believe you're right now the senior advisor to Tulsi Gabbard, is that correct?

03:01My title is senior advisor, but I am performing in the capacity of acting chief of information

03:05management, Senator. Got it. Okay. So I guess what I'm having trouble understanding is,

03:14you know, in the past couple of days, there's been reports out that your current boss has put forward

03:21going after Barack Obama and a bunch of reporting from, I think, nine years ago now,

03:29on the exact same day that President Trump's name appeared in the Wall Street Journal as being in

03:37the Epstein files. The exact same day. It is hard to imagine that in the four years of the Trump

03:43administration previously, in the six months leading up to now, when there's been plenty of time

03:48for your boss, for you all in your front office to refer these issues to the Department of Justice,

03:54you picked the exact same day that the president knew he was going to be named as being in the files

04:00of a known pedophile, right, and a known sexual offender. Can you help me understand why, because

04:09my 10-year-old nephew understands that that was a distraction, that we were talking about something

04:15that was 10 years old on the exact day that the president didn't want to be talking about his

04:21name being in those files. So can you answer for that? Senator, I really appreciate the opportunity

04:28to address this. The declassification process is lengthy, and it's significant, and we have

04:34an excellent team of officers who've been working on this for weeks. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You just said

04:38that Secretary Hegseth could declassify under his authority and put out on public information

04:45a piece of secret, no foreign information. So that took seconds, and I've seen presidents do this. I'm

04:51a CIA officer. Presidents can declassify very quickly. Are you saying that the reason why Tulsi Gabbard

04:57made that decision to announce yesterday or whatever it was two days ago was because of a lengthy

05:03declassification process? And you're talking to a CIA officer who's watched those things happen,

05:07so please tell me how in the four years of the Trump administration previously it didn't get done,

05:13but yesterday it got done. Senator, I appreciate that question and your service as a clandestine

05:18officer. These documents are reviewed very carefully and redacted as needed to protect sensitive sources

05:25and methods, and that's not an overnight process. Time has expired. Thank you, sorry.

05:32We're getting close to the end.

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