Dem
47
GOP
53
At the height of the Watergate scandal, there was new dirt nearly every single day. Some of the dirt was directly related to Watergate, some of it was only tangentially so. Still, what made the daily drip, drip, drip possible was that Richard Nixon was a shady character, and he had 5 years as president to compile a big pile of shady things before the lid got blown off.
Mike Waltz has been NSA for just over 2 months, and yet he's somehow managed to compile a ledger of bad behavior that gives the press something new to talk about every single day. The latest is that in addition to his apparent love for Signal, he was also using Gmail to conduct government business.
The good news, such as it is, is that there is no evidence (at least, not as yet) that any classified information was sent over Gmail. That said, the things that WERE discussed over Gmail are still of some value to foreign intelligence services. We're talking things like schedules and the times of, and list of attendees at, meetings. Reportedly, Waltz preferred to use Gmail when communicating with colleagues outside the government. And he decided he was in compliance with the rules as long as he cc'd his government account on any messages sent via Gmail.
We say, yet again, that Waltz's handling of information is just abominable. He either doesn't understand security, or doesn't care about it, or both. And, at this point, there's simply no question he's doing harm to national security. First, folks in the U.S. intelligence establishment surely have to think twice before sharing information with him. We have no doubt that, at very least, there are "leaner" cases where someone has said, "Well, I could tell Waltz, or I could not... I'll choose 'not.'" And maybe there have been cases that are not really leaners at all, where someone said "This information is just too important to put at risk by sharing it with Waltz."
Meanwhile, regardless of what's going on within the U.S. intelligence establishment, foreign intelligence services are surely aghast. A lower-ranking person in the U.S. who withholds information from Waltz is at risk of getting fired. But anyone in the U.K. or France or Japan who withholds information is just doing their job. It is inconceivable that, at this point, other countries aren't playing their intel cards much closer to the vest. We can only hope that no American dies because Waltz is too arrogant, or too dumb, to do it the right way. Or because Donald Trump is too cowardly to fire him. (Z)