Washington, D.C. – Today, Democracy Forward, the national legal organization that has emerged as an essential player in the legal pushback to extreme attacks on people and democracy, sent formal demands to the National Archives and a series of federal agencies calling for the retention of records relating to a story published yesterday by The Atlantic, which indicated that the nation’s highest-ranking national security officials are communicating on Signal threads to coordinate classified operations.

“At a time when unvetted political staff are being allowed to access our nation’s most sensitive documents, the news that senior government officials are discussing sensitive, life-and-death military efforts on unclassified messaging systems is incredibly concerning. These are serious times that require the utmost diligence, and that’s not what we are seeing from government leaders,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “This administration is advancing a broad range of unprecedented national security positions that are very serious matters of national security and great public interest. The American people deserve to know whether or not they can trust government officials.”

The Democracy Forward letter sent today demands that the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), as well as the State Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Departments of the Treasury and Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency all take immediate remedial action to recover any federal records that have been unlawfully removed or taken from agency custody, and to preserve any record at risk of deletion without preservation. Additionally, the letter asks that Secretary of State and acting director of NARA Marco Rubio, as well as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of Central Intelligence John Ratcliffe all appoint senior career officials to consider this matter at each agency, given that each official given that was personally a participant in the Signal thread mentioned in The Atlantic coverage. This request is the minimum appropriate action in this matter to avoid a conflict of interest.

Beyond the concerning implications of federal officials using apps designed to avoid the Federal Records Act, The Atlantic’s reporting demonstrates an alarming lack of care with which these officials are handling sensitive and classified information, including inadvertently including a journalist on the Signal thread. Given standard security parameters integrated into classified communications systems, the inadvertent inclusion of an individual outside government strongly suggests that these communications took place through unclassified–and possibly personal devices–a serious breach of important security protocols. 

For more information about Democracy Forward, please visit www.democracyforward.org.

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Democracy Forward is a national legal organization that advances democracy and social progress through litigation, policy, public education, and regulatory engagement. For more information, please visit www.democracyforward.org.