“Staggering incompetence”
Re: “Officials texted war plans to group chat, journalist,” March 25 news story
The discussion over an open network (and I can assure you that by hacker standards, it is open) of the Houthi battle plan and timing in Yemen shows just how inept this band of toadies appointed by a Republican congress is.
We’re very fortunate that we’re not reading an obituary of a fighter pilot brought down by a surface-to-air missile because they knew where and when they’d be there. In the Air Force (I’m a 24-year veteran), even the most basic of airmen have operational security drilled into them.
They should all be fired.
Robert Mann, Centennial
Sending mixed messages
So Hillary Clinton should have been locked up for using her private server to conduct government business while she was Secretary of State, but Donald Trump’s natural security team using a hackable message site instead of the government-secured protocol was a “glitch”? Or maybe it didn’t happen at all? Really? The issue is not so much that attack plans were inappropriately shared with a journalist but that Trump’s team used the Signal app in the first place. Not only is that galling hypocrisy, but it reveals Trump’s team is a bunch of amateurs supposedly guiding our national security who are now in the process of a cover-up, apparently testifying to a Senate committee that no classified information was shared in the texts.
John W. Thomas, Fort Collins
Portrait of a president
Re: “Portrait removed after president’s complaint,” March 25 news story
I find it exceedingly interesting that President Donald Trump was neither involved in the text meeting regarding military plans to attack the Houthis in Yemen nor aware of the egregious intelligence leak that followed until he was told about it later in the day by a journalist. He was, however, very aware of and concerned about a portrait of him that he deemed disagreeable that was displayed in the Colorado Capitol building in Denver. Hmmm! It just makes me wonder.
Al White, Winter Park
Ominous headlines prompt donation
Your headlines on page 1A of the March 25 paper, in only a few words, render a clear, devastating verdict on the ineptness, pettiness, and criminality of the Trump administration.
Going from the top of the page to the bottom, these headlines are: “Officials invoke state secrets privilege,” “Portrait removed after president’s complaint,” and “Officials texted war plans to group chat, journalist.”
I’m tempted to laugh at the White House clown show, equally tempted to cry over the ominous rise of authoritarianism, but have settled on a donation to the American Civil Liberties Union and to any other group that isn’t afraid to stand up to the greatest threat ever in our country’s nearly 250 years as a beacon of freedom and individual liberties to the world.
David E. Stauffer, Denver
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