National security adviser Mike Waltz and other members of the National Security Council have used their personal email accounts to conduct official government business, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The Post cited documents that it reviewed as well as interviews with three U.S. officials.
Waltz’s reported use of Gmail comes two weeks after The Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had been added by the NSA to a group thread on the encrypted app Signal regarding military activity and plans against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
While the White House has declared review of the Signal flap closed, the Post report reopens Waltz’s handling of national security on a personal email account less secure than Signal.
NSC spokesman Brian Hughes told the Post that Waltz “didn’t and wouldn’t send classified information on an open account.” Further, Hughes said Waltz CC’s his government email to ensure compliance with federal records laws.
A Waltz aide, however, used Gmail to communicate “sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict” to colleagues at other agencies, the Post reported.
Hughes told the Post that NSC staff have had guidance about only using “secure platforms for classified information.”
“Unless you are using GPG, email is not end-to-end encrypted, and the contents of a message can be intercepted and read at many points, including on Google’s email servers,” Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Post.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Waltz was on thin ice with President Donald Trump and within the White House over the Signal flap. The New York Times reported that Trump met with Vice President J.D. Vance and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles last Wednesday about whether to fire Waltz before ultimately opting against it.
It’s unclear to what extent, if any, the Post report has on Waltz’s future.
“This incident badly damaged Waltz,” one official told the Post regarding the Signal saga.
Newsmax has reached out to the White House for comment.
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