The Integrity Signal Through the Noise

Another week, another example from the Trump Administration of how not to run an organization if you have even a passing awareness of integrity, compliance, and common sense — none of which seem present in this pack of bumblers running the country. Our example is, of course, the Signal debacle.

We presume that by now you know the basics. Two weeks ago, President Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz created a group text chain on the messaging app Signal for pretty much the entire national security team of the Administration. He also invited the editor of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, apparently by accident. 

Goldberg joined the group, suspecting it was a hoax. He soon realized it wasn’t, as he watched everyone in the group — vice president J.D. Vance, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio, national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and others — talk about U.S. plans to bomb Houthi terrorists in Yemen. 

Goldberg first reported on the text exchange on Monday. That led the Trump Administration on Tuesday to deny that any classified material was disclosed, as if that would make any of this remotely OK. So on Wednesday Goldberg published more of the texts, which are even worse than originally thought and make everyone involved (Hegseth in particular) look even stupider than they originally did. By Thursday, attorney general Pam Bondi said she saw no need to launch a criminal investigation into the disclosure. The White House issued new guidance warning employees that if they do use Signal, they must configure it to preserve all communications per records retention rules. Lawsuits have already been filed anyway, accusing Waltz & Co. of using Signal expressly to avoid those records retention rules. 

Sigh. Where should ethics and compliance officers even begin with this mess? 

Compliance, Policy, and Recordkeeping

We might as well start with the compliance failures, which are more complex than you’d assume. 

Contrary to popular belief, the federal government does list Signal as a permissible messaging app for secure communications. As recently as December, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — CISA, the closest thing we have to a cybersecurity regulator in the United States — published guidelines for secure mobile communications, and recommended that government employees should use messaging apps with end-to-end encryption. Signal was mentioned by name. 

Then again, maybe not. In 2021 the inspector general of the Defense Department published a report into the conduct of one Brett Goldstein, former director of the Defense Digital Service. One of the complaints against Goldstein was that he used an “unauthorized electronic messaging application” to discuss official Defense Department information. The app was Signal.

So which is it, Uncle Sam? Is Signal a permitted app because it provides end-to-end encryption; or a prohibited app because it allows users to avoid their records retention duties? Is it permitted for some employees who don’t handle classified or sensitive information, but prohibited for those who do? Can you use it for voice calls, since the encryption keeps those conversations private; but not for text messages, since users can make those messages disappear? 

You get my drift, right? This is a policy management failure. For issues as important as cybersecurity and records retention, every large organization should be crystal clear about which apps are approved for use, by whom, and under what circumstances. If your employees need to dig around to find that policy, you’re doing it wrong.

We can’t even fault the Trump Administration for this particular glitch, since the Biden Administration allowed those conflicting messages about Signal to go out the door.

On the other hand, we can fault the Trump Administration for the real issue here, which isn’t about compliance failures at all. 

The Higher the Leader, the Greater the Duty

The real issue here is about integrity. Waltz, Hegseth, Gabbard, and everyone else in the group text — they all had a duty to handle themselves with the responsibility and discretion that their high leadership roles demand, and they all failed.

The rule for leadership is this: the higher up you go, the more important integrity and probity become. If you don’t conduct yourself with those things at the core of what you do every day, nobody else in the organization will take you — or anything you tell other people to do — seriously. None of Team Trump seem to get that. 

Read the text messages. Nobody speculated about the wisdom of communicating on Signal. Nobody pondered the Presidential Records Act, or even making a record of their decision-making process merely for clarity and posterity. They were too busy having fun with their national security cosplay. They were too busy living their MAGA courtier lifestyle to bother with concerns such as rules, security, and discretion. 

It’s also clear from the text messages that they’ve used Signal before, too. This wasn’t a single lapse in judgment. This was an ongoing habit of the top echelon of the Trump Administration. The leadership failures in all that beggar belief.  

 

A personal favourite -the NSA waltz confirming there are MORE signal chats like this

Hopefully with more creative group names at least pic.twitter.com/DSnLXVAF9Q

— Pyotr Kurzin (@PKurzin) March 26, 2025

Compliance and ethics professionals talk so often about tone at the top, and the importance of senior leaders setting an example for everyone else. Those executives don’t just need to be held to a higher standard; they must hold themselves to that higher standard. Everyone in our profession knows this. Most CEOs (and all of the good ones) know this too. We know it because it’s true.

None of that is likely to happen here. Nobody is going to resign voluntarily, because if they were then they’d have already done it. The Administration won’t launch any investigation and present a report to show mistakes made and lessons learned. At best, Trump might fire one sacrificial lamb (probably Waltz) to look like he takes the matter seriously, but that’s all he’ll do and I doubt he’ll do even that. 

That’s not a recipe for organizational success, and everyone in the private sector knows it. The recipe for organizational success depends on integrity, honesty, humility, and duty. All this outfit seems to able to deliver are self-congratulatory pats on the back and emojis.