September, 03 2020, 12:00am EDT
Over 100 Organizations Call on Biden To Adopt a New Good Neighbor Policy Towards Latin America
Over 100 organizations that work on issues related to Latin America and the Caribbean sent a letter to Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump calling for the next administration to adopt a new Good Neighbor Policy toward the region based on non-intervention, cooperation and mutual respect. Current policies punish innocent civilians through harsh economic sanctions, destabilize the region through coups and attempts at regime change, and are a significant factor in driving migration northwards. Among the organizations calling for a new approach are Alianza Americas, Amazon Wa
WASHINGTON
Over 100 organizations that work on issues related to Latin America and the Caribbean sent a letter to Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump calling for the next administration to adopt a new Good Neighbor Policy toward the region based on non-intervention, cooperation and mutual respect. Current policies punish innocent civilians through harsh economic sanctions, destabilize the region through coups and attempts at regime change, and are a significant factor in driving migration northwards. Among the organizations calling for a new approach are Alianza Americas, Amazon Watch, the Americas Program, Center for International Policy, CODEPINK, Demand Progress, Global Exchange, the Latin America Working Group and Oxfam America.
The letter to the presidential candidates warns that in "January 2021, the President of the United States will face a hemisphere that will not only still be reeling from the coronavirus but will also likely be experiencing a deep economic recession." The letter calls for the next administration to follow a new Good Neighbor Policy and proposes that "the best way for the United States to help is not by seeking to impose its will, but rather by engaging with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean as equal partners."
"The Trump administration openly calls its Latin America and Caribbean policy the 'Monroe Doctrine 2.0', and the Democratic Party hasn't been much better. Its platform calls the entire Western Hemisphere 'America's strategic home base.' The countries and peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America aren't anyone's backyard or home base, they are sovereign and want their relations with Washington to be based on non-intervention, mutual respect and cooperation for the common good," said Leonardo Flores, Latin America Campaign Coordinator for CODEPINK. "If the U.S. government applied these principles, it would end the broad sanctions that punish innocent civilians in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and instead resolve its differences with these countries through diplomacy and multilateralism."
In addition to calling for an end to stifling economic sanctions, the organizations also call for ending U.S. arms sales and militarization of the region, ending political interference in elections and domestic affairs, supporting the human rights of all peoples, and implementing a humane immigration policy and fairer economic policies.
The letter to candidate Biden and full list of endorsing organizations can be accessed at this link and is included below. An identical letter to President Trump is available here.
Dear Vice President Biden,
As organizations that care about United States policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean, we write to urge you to adopt a broad set of reforms to reframe relations with our neighbors to the south.
Shortly after meeting with President Raul Castro of Cuba in April of 2015, President Obama stated that "the days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past." Two years prior to that, his Secretary of State, John Kerry, had earned praise throughout the region after announcing that the "era of the Monroe Doctrine is over." To many, it appeared that the U.S. government was reviving the "Good Neighbor" regional policy of respect for Latin American and Caribbean self-determination and human rights that had been announced under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and then quickly abandoned during the Cold War.
The Monroe Doctrine - asserting U.S. geopolitical control over the region - served as a pretext for over 100 years of military invasions, support for military dictatorships, the financing of security forces involved in mass human rights violations, economic blackmail, and support for coups against democratically elected governments, among other horrors that have caused many Latin Americans and Caribbeans to flee north in search of safety and opportunity.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt distanced himself from this doctrine, outlining a new vision for relations in the hemisphere. His "Good Neighbor" policy temporarily ended the gunboat diplomacy that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. Although the policy had its flaws, such as FDR's support for the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, his administration's failures were often the result of not following the Good Neighbor principle of non-interference.
In January 2021, the President of the United States will face a hemisphere that will not only still be reeling from the coronavirus but will also likely be experiencing a deep economic recession. The best way for the United States to help is not by seeking to impose its will, but rather by engaging with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean as equal partners.
We hope that your administration will adopt a New Good Neighbor Policy and commit to the following:
Ending broad economic sanctions
The embargo against Cuba has been a 60-year disaster that has caused countless deaths, cost the Cuban economy billions of dollars, shut U.S. businesses out of an important market, and contributed to deep antipathy towards the US throughout the region and much of the world. More recent sanctions regimes against Venezuela and Nicaragua are also causing widespread human suffering. Furthermore, U.S. sanctions violate the Charter of the Organization of American States, the United Nations Charter, and international human rights law. They target the civilian population and therefore would violate both the Hague and Geneva Conventions -- to which the US is a signatory -- if they were committed during a war. We call on you to end unilateral U.S. sanctions imposed through past presidential orders and to work with Congress to repeal the Helms-Burton Act, which imposes unilateral economic sanctions against Cuba. The United States should resolve its policy differences through diplomacy, multilateralism and engagement.
Militarization policy
Though the Cold War ended decades ago, the U.S. continues to provide and export hundreds of millions of dollars of police and military equipment and training to Latin American and Caribbean countries each year. In many cases, such as Honduras and Colombia, U.S. funding and training have supported troops involved in corruption and egregious human rights abuses, including numerous extrajudicial killings and attacks targeting local activists and journalists. Much of this aid and weapons exports, which have accompanied the increased militarization of law enforcement, are transferred in the name of the decades-long war on drugs, which the vast majority of the U.S. public has long believed to be a failure. Rather than abating drug trafficking and violence, this approach incentivizes drug trafficking and fuels a vicious cycle of violence. Often US-backed forces are themselves involved in drug trafficking and defend the interests of big landowners and corporations, while violently repressing land rights activists. There is no justification for U.S. security programs in the region. No national security threat exists and a "war on drugs" is a counterproductive way to deal with a US public health issue that is best addressed through decriminalization and equitable legal regulation. It is time to scale down US "security assistance" and arms sales and remove US military and law enforcement personnel from the region.
Ending political interference
The US government has a long, troubling history of interfering in the internal politics of countries of the region. It has frequently carried out military invasions to impose or remove political leaders and it has supported rightwing military coups that have invariably resulted in violent repression. In the name of "democracy promotion," the US government has trained and funded political groups that it favors while supporting public relations campaigns to try to marginalize the political forces that it opposes. Time and time again, the US has sought to shape the outcome of elections to favor its perceived interests. Here at home, we rightly condemn any sort of foreign interference in our own country's domestic politics and elections, so how can we continue to engage in gross interference in the politics of our neighbors? It is time for the US to respect the political sovereignty of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Any major political crises that emerge in the region should be dealt with through multilateral engagements, not unilateral actions.
Supporting the human rights of all peoples
The US has an important role to play in advocating for human rights across the hemisphere, a role that can only be strengthened by ensuring that the US government does not violate human rights in its own territory, on its borders or overseas. Special attention should be paid at home and abroad to the rights of historically excluded communities, including indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and migrants and refugees. The United States should speak out when human rights defenders, including environmental and land rights activists and labor organizers, are in danger--a situation all too frequent in Latin America and the Caribbean today. For the US to credibly speak about rights, it should sign and ratify international treaties including, but not limited to, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as other covenants relating to racial discrimination, women, children, persons with disabilities, migrants, and torture. Furthermore, the US should work towards depoliticizing and strengthening existing multilateral institutions that defend human rights, and the US must ensure that it does not instrumentalize rights for political gain - too often, human rights violations in the US or in allied countries are ignored, while violations in countries considered adversaries are magnified.
Immigration
The next administration must undo the brutal harms of the 2016-2020 Trump administration and must understand how past U.S. economic, security and environmental policies have fueled mass migration. It must also reject the status quo of the Obama administration, which deported more people than any administration ever before and built the infrastructure for the Trump administration to carry out violent anti-immigrant policies. These include an increase in border militarization, growth in the privatized immigration detention system, an increase in DHS information-sharing programs like Secure Communities, more ICE partnerships with local police, and an increase in ICE raids, among others. The next administration must hear the demands for immigrant justice, and implement the following measures: enact a day-one moratorium on all deportations; end mass prosecutions of individuals who cross the border; re-establish asylum procedures at the border; provide an immediate path to citizenship for the Dreamers and for Temporary Protected Status holders; terminate the Muslim Ban; rescind funding for the border wall; rescind the myriad abusive Trump administration's regulatory changes that have denied basic rights to immigrants; rescind the "zero-tolerance" (family separation) policy and other policies that prioritize migration-related prosecutions; reallocate resources away from immigration enforcement agencies and towards community-based alternatives to detention programs; and end private immigration detention.
Trade policy
The US government has engaged in a variety of economic interventions in the region in order to promote a neoliberal economic agenda that benefits transnational capital and local elites while generating greater inequality, environmental destruction and living conditions for ordinary citizens. The US intervenes in domestic economic policymaking in countries in large part through its enormous influence within multilateral financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Bank. In order to obtain credit lines from these organizations, governments typically have to agree to austerity measures and other policies that lead to the downsizing of welfare states and a weakening of workers' bargaining power. In addition, the trade agreements that Washington promotes in the region have invariably led to the deregulation of financial markets and the strengthening of foreign investor protections, which prioritize the "rights" of corporations over peoples' rights. As such, the US should end the undue power given to corporate interests to exploit other countries economically through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions found in trade and investment agreements, which allow corporations to sue countries in supranational tribunal over public interest and environmental regulations that affect their expected profits. To help the region develop, the US needs to allow countries to choose their own paths, instead of supporting external institutions that claim to support development while actually serving the interests of corporations and global finance. Further, it must be ensured that US foreign assistance supports public health and education services by channeling funding primarily to NGOs that take on these services in coordination with local and state entities and priorities, as well as in consultation with local and affected communities.
*****
The principles of non-intervention and non-interference, mutual respect, acceptance of our differences, and working together for the common good could form the foundation of a New Good Neighbor policy that would allow the U.S. to restore peace and make a positive contribution to the well-being of people throughout the hemisphere.
Sincerely,
- ActionAid USA
- African Services Committee
- Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice
- Albany Cuba Solidarity
- Alianza Americas
- Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE)
- Alliance for Global Justice
- Altruvistas
- Amazon Watch
- American Friends Service Committee
- Americas Program
- Arts & Cultural Bridge Foundation
- Bolivarian Circle ALberto Lovera New York
- Building Relations with Cuban Labor
- Casa Baltimore Limay
- Center for Common Ground
- Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
- Center for International Policy
- Central American Resource Center - DC
- Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America
- CODEPINK
- Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)
- Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)
- Community EsTr(El/La)
- Corvallis (OR) Latin America Solidarity Committee
- Council on Hemispheric Affairs
- Ecumenical Peace Institute/Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC)
- Florida Alliance for Peace and Justice
- Friends Committee on National Legislation
- Friends of Latin America
- Garifuna Community Services INC
- Global Exchange
- Global Health Partners
- Grassroots Global Justice
- Haiti Action Committee
- Hands Off Venezuela
- Honduras Solidarity Network
- Hunts Point Community Partnership
- IFCO/Pastors for Peace
- Institute for Policy Studies, Global Economy, New Internationalism, and Drug Policy Programs
- Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI)
- International Committee for Peace, Justice, and Dignity
- Jewish Voice for Peace Portland
- July 26th Coalition of Boston
- Just Foreign Policy
- Labor Community Alliance of South Florida
- Latin America Task Force of Interfaith Council for Peace & Justice
- Latin America Working Group (LAWG)
- Latino Commission on AIDS
- LELO/A Legacy of Equality, Leadership and Organizing
- LIFT-NY
- MADRE
- Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
- Massachusetts Peace Action
- National Lawyers Guild International Committee
- National Network on Cuba
- Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA)
- New Sanctuary Coalition
- Nicaragua Center for Community Action
- Nicaraguan Cultural Alliance
- Nonviolence International
- North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
- Oregon PeaceWorks
- Our Developing World
- Oxfam America
- Peace Action
- PeaceHost.net
- People Demanding Action
- PopularResistance.org
- Portland Central America Solidarity Committee (PCASC)
- Progressive Democrats of America
- ProximityCuba
- RootsAction.org
- Sanctuary DMV
- Seattle Cuba Friendship Committee
- SHARE Foundation
- Sister Parish, Inc.
- Sisters of Mercy of the Americas - Justice Team
- Solidarity Committee On The Americas (SCOTA)
- South Texas Human Rights Center
- Task Force on the Americas
- The Cross Border Network
- The Feminist Foreign Policy Project
- The Friendship Association
- U.S. Labor Against the War
- Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
- United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
- United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1445
- United for Peace and Justice
- US Network for Democracy in Brazil
- US Peace Council
- US Women and Cuba Collaboration
- US-El Salvador Sister Cities
- USF Immigration & Deportation Defense Clinic
- Veterans For Peace, #136
- Whatcom Peace & Justice Center
- Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective
- Women Against Military Madness
- Women's International League for Peace and Freedom US
- World Beyond War
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UN Program Out of Food in Gaza as Israel Maintains Blockade
"No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed. This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced," said the World Food Program.
Apr 25, 2025
As Israel continues to bomb and impose a total blockade on the Gaza Strip, the United Nations World Food Program announced Friday that "WFP delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meals kitchens" in the Palestinian enclave, which "are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days."
"For weeks, hot meal kitchens have been the only consistent source of food assistance for people in Gaza. Despite reaching just half the population with only 25% of daily food needs, they have provided a critical lifeline," the U.N. program said in a statement. "WFP is also deeply concerned about the severe lack of safe water and fuel for cooking—forcing people to scavenge for items to burn to cook a meal."
This is just the latest troubling update from the group since Israel began its total blockade on March 2—following months of severely restricting aid and commercial goods—and then ditched a fragile cease-fire with Gaza-based Hamas that had been in effect since mid-January. Last month, all 25 WFP-supported bakeries closed due to lack of wheat flour and cooking fuel, and program parcels with two weeks of rations for families were exhausted.
"More than 116,000 metric tons of food assistance—enough to feed 1 million people for up to four months—is positioned at aid corridors and is ready to be brought into Gaza."
"No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed," WFP said Friday. "This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced, exacerbating already fragile markets and food systems. Food prices have skyrocketed up to 1,400% compared to during the cease-fire, and essential food commodities are in short supply, raising serious nutrition concerns for vulnerable populations, including children under 5, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly."
Over 18 months into a U.S.-backed military assault for which Israel faces a genocide case at the Interenational Court of Justice, WFP said that "the situation inside the Gaza Strip has once again reached a breaking point: People are running out of ways to cope, and the fragile gains made during the short ceasefire have unravelled. Without urgent action to open borders for aid and trade to enter, WFP's critical assistance may be forced to end."
While conditions are dire, WFP is prepared to keep feeding people, if Israel will allow aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave. The program highlighted that "more than 116,000 metric tons of food assistance—enough to feed 1 million people for up to four months—is positioned at aid corridors and is ready to be brought into Gaza by WFP and food security partners as soon as borders reopen."
The program called on "all parties to prioritize the needs of civilians and allow aid to enter Gaza immediately and uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law."
The Associated Press reported that "COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of coordinating aid in Gaza, declined to comment on the amount of supplies remaining in the territory. It has previously said Gaza had enough aid after a surge in distribution during the cease-fire."
The WFP statement came after an Israeli drone strike that hit a food distribution center in central Gaza on Thursday and Israel's Tuesday airstrikes that destroyed several bulldozers used to clear streets and remove bodies from beneath rubble.
While humanitarian organizations have shared fresh warnings about conditions in the enclave this week—Oxfam's Clemence Lagouardat said Tuesday that "it's hard to explain just how terrible things are in Gaza at the moment"—Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, shared violent rhetoric.
Ben-Gvir claimed that "senior Republican Party officials" whom he met at U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence "expressed support for my very clear position" that Gaza "food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages" taken during the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel.
While Trump—like his Democratic predecessor—has supported Israel's military assault, he also claimed to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week, "Gaza came up and I said, 'We've got to be good to Gaza... Those people are suffering.'"
According toReuters.
When asked whether he raised the issue of opening up access points for aid into Gaza, Trump replied, "We are."
"We're going to take care of that. There's a very big need for medicine, food and medicine, and we're taking care of it," he said.
Asked how Netanyahu responded, Trump said: "Felt well about it."
As for cease-fire negotiations,
Drop Site News obtained a draft proposal for a 45-day "bridge" deal that is "being pushed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators." The outlet reported Friday that "while the current proposal largely aligns with the one that Hamas agreed to on March 29 and which Israel rejected, the new terms related to disarmament and no clear path to complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will likely meet stiff resistance from Hamas' negotiators."
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Apr 25, 2025
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"We write to you concerning reports that U.S. strikes against the Houthis at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week killed dozens of civilians, potentially more than 70," Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote in a letter to Hegseth.
The lawmakers noted that "the United Nations Protection Cluster's Civilian Impact Monitoring Project has... assessed that March 2025 marked the highest monthly casualty count in Yemen in almost two years, tripling the previous month, with a total of 162 civilian casualties."
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"Further, reports suggest that the Trump administration plans to dismantle civilian harm mitigation policies and procedures at the Pentagon designed to reduce civilian casualties in U.S. operations," the letter notes. "And the Trump administration has already dismissed senior, nonpartisan judge advocates, or JAG officers, who provide critical legal counsel to U.S. warfighters, especially when it comes to the laws of war and adherence to U.S. civilian harm mitigation policies."
"The Defense Department also recently loosened the rules of engagement to allow [U.S. Central Command] and other combatant commands to conduct strikes without requiring White House sign-off, removing necessary checks and balances on crucial life-and-death decisions," the senators added. "Taken altogether, these moves suggest that the Trump administration is abandoning the measures necessary to meet its obligations to reducing civilian harm."
The senators asked Hegseth to answer the following questions:
- Has the Department of Defense (DOD) assessed the number of noncombatant and combatant casualties in each of its strikes inside Yemen?
- What has DOD's process been for assessing the acceptable civilian casualties for individual strikes inside Yemen, and assessing estimated levels of civilian harm and collateral damage?
- What role have legal advisers, including JAG officers, played in reviewing the legality of U.S. strikes in Yemen?
- What DOD instructions or orders currently govern department civilian harm mitigation and response actions?
- Were the civilian harm mitigation and response experts at CENTCOM and/or at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence consulted in planning for these strikes?
- How does the department plan to engage with the families or communities affected by these strikes, including acknowledging civilian harm and exploring avenues for potential redress?
Last month, Hegseth
announced that the Pentagon's Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was established during the Biden administration, would be closed. Hegseth—who has
supported pardons for convicted U.S. war criminals—lamented during his Senate confirmation hearing that "restrictive rules of engagement" have "made it more difficult to defeat our enemies," who "should get bullets, not attorneys," according to his 2024 book The War on Warriors.
Asked during his confirmation hearing whether troops under his leadership would adhere to the Geneva Conventions, Hegseth replied, "What we are not going to do is put international conventions above Americans."
During his first administration, President Donald Trumprelaxed rules of military engagement meant to protect civilians as he followed through on his campaign pledge to "bomb the shit" out of Islamic State militants and "take out their families." Thousands of civilians were killed during the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria as then-Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis announced a shift from a policy of attrition to one of "annihilation."
Meanwhile, noncombatant casualties soared by over 300% in Afghanistan between the final year of the Obama administration and 2019.
Overall, upward of 400,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen have died as a direct result of the U.S.-led War on Terror, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
In Yemen, the U.K.-based monitor Airwars says U.S. forces have killed hundreds of civilians in 181 declared actions since 2002. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing and blockade.
The U.S. bombing of Yemen has not received nearly as much coverage in the corporate media as the scandal involving Hegseth's use of Signal chats to share plans for attacking the Middle Eastern country with colleagues, a journalist, and relatives. However, critics say the mounting backlash over the high civilian casualties there is belying Trump's claim of an anti-war presidency.
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians," the senators stressed in their letter. "The reported high civilian casualty numbers from U.S. strikes in Yemen demonstrate a serious disregard for civilian life, and call into question this administration's ability to conduct military operations in accordance with U.S. best practices for civilian harm mitigation and international law."
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Journalist Sues to Secure Three Months Worth of Hegseth Signal Chat Messages
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," said the head of the group that filed the lawsuit.
Apr 25, 2025
As the Trump administration faces a metastasizing controversy over reports of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's use of the commercial messaging app Signal, including to discuss U.S. strikes in Yemen, the legal group National Security Counselors on Friday sued on behalf of a journalist to secure three months worth of conversations that took place on the encrypted platform.
According to The Hill, which was first report the news of the lawsuit, the complaint requests Hegseth's Signal messages and the messages from other top Trump officials.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is journalist Jeffrey Stein, the founding editor of the outlet SpyTalk. Stein sought the three months worth of chat records via Freedom of Information Act request and is now taking legal action to obtain them, according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court.
News about my Signalgate iceberg lawsuit for @spytalker.bsky.social: it's OUT!
[image or embed]
— National Security Counselors 🕵 (@nationalsecuritylaw.org) April 25, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"The heads of at least five of the most powerful agencies in the national security community were freely texting over an app that was not approved for sensitive communications and setting it to automatically delete everything they said," Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, told The Hill. "Since then we've learned that we were right to be worried, thanks to the news about Hegseth's Signal chat with his wife and personal lawyer about bombing plans."
In what's now become known as "Signalgate," The Atlanticrevealed last month that its editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been accidentally included in a Signal group chat with top administration officials where they discussed forthcoming U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. The Atlantic later published messages from the chat.
Members of the chat, dubbed "Houthi PC small group," included Hegseth; National Security Adviser Mike Waltz; Vice President JD Vance; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The defendants listed in the lawsuit from the National Security Counselors are the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The New York Timesreported last week that Hegseth had shared information about impending U.S. strikes in Yemen in another Signal group chat included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer on March 15. The outlet cited four unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter.
In response to the Times' reporting, a spokesperson for the Pentagon wrote on April 20: The the newspaper "relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the secretary and the president's agenda. There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story."
The Times responded a day later saying that it stood by the reporting, that the Pentagon had not denied the existence of the chat, and that the story did not characterize the information in the chat as classified.
In yet another twist, The Associated Pressreported Thursday, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the situation, that Hegseth had an internet connection set up in his office at the Pentagon that bypassed government security protocols—also known as a "dirty" line—in order to use Signal on a personal computer.
The AP reported that the advantage of this kind of a line is that a user would be essentially "masked" and not show up as an IP address assigned to the Defense Department, but it would also leave that user vulnerable to hacking.
Speaking of the lawsuit filed by National Security Counselors, McClanahan toldThe Hill that "this administration has proven again and again that it is allergic to accountability and transparency."
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," he added.
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