When Central Intelligence Company Director John Ratcliffe’s cellphone was reviewed final month to protect messages from his Sign software, a CIA official was unable to find any “substantive messages,” as an alternative discovering solely the identify of the chat and adjustments to the app’s settings, in accordance with a sworn submitting submitted in court docket Monday night.
Hurley Blankenship, CIA’s chief information officer, advised a federal choose overseeing a lawsuit difficult using Sign that he was solely in a position to retrieve “residual administrative content material” from Ratcliffe’s private Sign account.
CIA Director, John Ratcliffe testifies earlier than a Home Everlasting Choose Committee on Intelligence listening to on “Worldwide Threats,” on Capitol Hill in Washington, Mar. 26, 2025.
Drew Angerer/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
“I used that terminology as a result of the screenshot doesn’t embrace substantive messages from the Sign chat; moderately, it captures the identify of the chat, ‘Houthi PC small group’, and displays administrative notifications from 26 March and 28 March referring to adjustments in individuals’ administrative settings on this group chat, similar to profile names and message settings,” Blankenship wrote.
The declaration comes after advocacy group American Oversight raised considerations that the settings on some officers’ telephones might need triggered the messages to autodelete regardless of a federal requirement that the communications be preserved.
Officers had been in a position to efficiently protect messages from the units of Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in accordance with sworn filings.
-ABC Information’ Peter Charalambous
