‘Signalgate’: how the US government creates and guards its secrets

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The conundrum of when classified information is not deemed top secret is at the heart of the recent “Signalgate” controversy in which the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, shared plans for a military attack on Yemen using Signal, a messaging app.

The recipients were other national security leaders and Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of US magazine The Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the chat. Goldberg published a story about the incident, omitting...