Claudine Ebeid
Appearances
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
What kind of fallout could we see with intelligence sharing with other countries after something like this?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
There was no classified material that was shared in that signal.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Janae West and edited by Kevin Townsend. It was engineered by Rob Smirciak. Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. If you like what you hear on Radio Atlantic, remember you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to The Atlantic at theatlantic.com slash podsub. That's theatlantic.com slash podsub.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Hannah Rosen ist die Hostin von Radio Atlantic. Ich bin Claudina Bade, Exekutivproduzentin von Atlantic Audio. Vielen Dank fürs Zuhören.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
With me now is Shane Harris, who covers national security. Hi, Shane. Hi. So, Shane, we just heard Democratic Senator Mark Warner questioning Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. She and other administration officials have reiterated that there was no classified information in the Signal chat.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
What was your reaction to the administration's response after the original story was published?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Und, weißt du, die Idee, was als klassifiziertes Information zählt und was nicht, wer was klassifiziert und wann es klassifiziert, das sind keine neuen Fragen in deiner Arbeit, aber für Leute ohne deine Hintergrund, kannst du uns ein bisschen mehr darüber erzählen, wie wir diese Argumente darüber denken sollten, was es bedeutet, etwas zu klassifizieren?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Und du hast die Texte gesehen, basierend auf dem, was du kennst. Gibt es eine Kategorie, auf die du diese Texte gestellt hättest? Einen Niveau der Klassifikation?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Claudina Bade in für Hannah Rosen. On Monday, The Atlantic reported that our editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal Group chat. It was a thread with senior Trump administration officials that included sensitive military information about an attack on Houthi targets in Yemen. Am Tag des Angriffes, am 15.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
So this isn't the first time we've had a scandal around sensitive information. We've of course, you know, Hillary Clinton email saga. There's Donald Trump was indicted over classified documents in Florida before the case was dropped after his election. Could you put this breach in the context of those past episodes?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
What consequences do you expect for the officials who are on the group chat? You know what, actually, maybe I should ask, given your years of experience, how would you typically expect an administration to respond to this kind of situation?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
März, hat Defensivsekretär Pete Hegseth die operationellen Details zwei Stunden vor den Angriffen geteilt. Und Brian Hughes, der Sprecher für den Nationalen Sicherheitskanzler, hat die Verstärkung des Chat veröffentlicht. Früher diese Woche waren Jeff und Atlantik-Staffreiter Shane Harris auf dem Show.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
There is a lawsuit now filed against administration officials for, you know, violating federal record-keeping laws. Do you think something could come of that?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
You know, Shane, I think I've received more text messages and I should say messages in Signal about this story than anything in a very long time.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Oh man, let me tell you, all my groups have been renamed this week. But I can't imagine what kind of responses you're getting. What are you hearing from people in the intelligence community?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Seitdem haben die Regierungsanwaltinnen und Regierungsanwälte rundherum beurteilt, dass in der Liste irgendwelche klassifizierte Informationen vorgelegt wurden, insbesondere in Testimonien vor dem Kongress.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
Und wir fokussieren uns auf diese eine Textkonversation, die Jeffrey Goldberg darstellt. Wäre es sinnvoll für uns, zu glauben, dass das nicht die erste und einzige Konversation ist, die in Signal oder anderen Gruppen-Chat-Umgebungen passiert?
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
We have been very, you know, in the last couple of days around this story and even in this conversation, like we're very focused on what this means internally in the United States for us.
Radio Atlantic
Classified, or Not Classified?
You know, a couple of weeks ago you were on the show talking with our host Hannah Rosen about this administration's about face from European allies and what kind of effect that has on the intelligence community and sharing of information between the U.S. and countries that we've traditionally thought of as allies.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And that is not something to him that is political. And yet we are at this moment where politics will be the determining factor of whether people in Gaza will have access to water. Marwan is still working in what capacity he can for the water sector in Gaza from Cairo. But how long that will last is unknown. When and if Palestinians like him will be able to go back to Gaza is unknown.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And the precariousness of this political moment for Gaza, it's really hard to overstate.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
Well, just to remind listeners, Marwan is 61 years old. He's a father and a grandfather. And he and his family were living in the north of Gaza, which was where Israel first launched its retaliatory attack to the October 7 attacks. So five days into the war, under Israeli airstrikes, Marwan, his adult children, and two of his granddaughters, they flee the north on foot to the south of Gaza.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And then last summer, like almost 100,000 other Palestinians, he decides to flee once more, but this time from Gaza to Egypt.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
Many people fled to Egypt in this little sliver of a window where the border was open and people planned to get out through basically this company, this Egyptian company charging $5,000 for an adult and $2,500 for a child to get people out. So, you know, it's not an altruistic endeavor. Yeah. Ultimately, there were two reasons that really pushed Marwan to leave.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
From the professional side, he was starting to get pressure, counsel, counsel I think is the right word, from his boss that if he could get out, he should because his work was really valuable to them and they needed him alive. Oof.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
The second reason was this moment that he described to me where he was driving his car and the car in front of him exploded and, you know, shrapnel from the car busted through his windshield, injured his shoulder. And I think it was just too close of a call. So, you know, when he described that moment to me, he said three weeks later, he and his family, they were gone.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
It's true. Water was never a sure thing in Gaza. It's a total patchwork of a system there. basically have a combination of water sources. One is coming from Israel. That's about 10% of their water. And that comes from three main connection points. The rest is coming from groundwater that gets treated.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
So the Palestinian Water Authority says that before the war, there were 306 groundwater wells as primary sources of water. They also have three desalination plants. They're situated along the coast. And they're basically treating seawater. The output is not huge. And then they also have a lot of small-scale desalination plants and water tankers that are just kind of filling in the gaps.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
So it's not an ideal system. You have a lot of moving parts. And the source water that you're starting with is already not a great starting point. How much water did make it to Palestinians with that arrangement? The average person in Gaza was getting around 80 liters of water a day. And most Americans, we use about 300 liters of water a day. So that's what was going on before October 7th.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
So pipes are getting blown up and teams are rushing out to try to repair, you know, what they can, what damage is happening in various locations, and they don't know what they're walking into. So we do know that there were two separate occasions in which workers who were either doing a water repair or heading to a water repair were killed. So the conditions were really dangerous.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And, you know, I'm sure you and many people have seen the images of the destruction in Gaza. And when I was in Egypt, Marwan shared some of his photos with me.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
Yeah. Yeah. This is the Palestinian Water Authority office in Gaza.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
By the summer of 2024, almost every connection point, every desalination plant, every sewage station had either been totally destroyed or had sustained some amount of damage.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
This kind of massive destruction of water infrastructure, it does not just affect the water supply. It also leads to diseases. So by the summer of last year, we know that about 600,000 cases of acute diarrhea were reported and 40,000 cases of hepatitis A. And those are diseases that come from contamination of water and from having an open sewage system.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And then around that same time, humanitarian aid workers become extremely concerned because they find that a 10-month-old baby has tested positive for polio.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And polio is something that can spread through contaminated water. And this was the first confirmed case in Gaza of polio in a quarter of a century. So they go on a massive campaign to vaccinate kids for polio. And that campaign is still ongoing today.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
For most of the war, people were getting somewhere near three liters of water a day, which is like so little. And that was for cooking, for hygiene, for drinking. After the ceasefire in January, some people in Gaza were starting to get around seven to 10 liters a day. So a little bit better. A little bit better, you know, not a crazy jump, but it was an improvement.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And last month, when I checked in with the Palestinian Water Authority, at least one connection point with Israel was flowing again, and one main desalination plant was reconnected to Israel's power grid. And so that was helping. Okay. But this week, as you mentioned, Israel cut off the electricity to that desalination plant.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
So it's very possible that the water situation could turn dire again very quickly. I will say that Marwan and his colleagues at the PWA, they do have a six-month plan that they have started implementing during this ceasefire. Whether they can continue to implement that plan is really up in the air at this moment.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
Trump's vision is a Middle Eastern Riviera, as he called it. And in that plan, he talks about displacing all of the Palestinians that live in Gaza and having them get absorbed by Arab countries and then the U.S. taking ownership of Gaza. So, you know, presumably then whoever Trump wants to contract with will come in and rebuild Gaza.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
However, last week, Arab countries came together in Egypt and they agreed on a plan that could potentially include the water authority. They say their plan will cost $53 billion. It would be one that calls for rebuilding Gaza in a way that doesn't displace Gazans. And it calls for a Palestinian government to manage the rebuilding. So that vision, very different from Trump's vision.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
You know, Marwan has been building and rebuilding the water infrastructure for decades. You know, one of the reasons that I was interested in following him was that his personal life and his career really kind of let you see the track of what happened in Gaza since 1993.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
The Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and this was a really important moment.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
At that time, there was hope. There was hope that this would be an area that would be able to govern itself. It would be able to build for itself. It would be able to think about its infrastructure for itself. And, you know, Marwan's life and his career sort of maps out what happened.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
Yeah. You know, he was born and raised in Gaza, studied water engineering in Gaza, and left for a small time to go be a water engineer abroad. After the Oslo Accords are signed, he sees this as his opportunity to come home and to put his engineering abilities to work in Gaza. He's there raising a family, and he describes, you know, the beginning of as a very heady time.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
There was an idea that the Palestinian Authority was in charge and that they were going to be able to build a water system. Can you remember that time?
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
That was the part that just kind of like hit me in my heart when he described to me like they were young, they were full of hope. And he talks about getting plans from other small nations so that they can, you know, get an example of what are the other lessons learned? What are the things that we should be thinking about?
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
And I don't know, could you imagine, like, we've studied to be water engineers, and now we get to build our home's water system.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
Yes, but more than a decade later, in 2006, Hamas wins an election, and with that comes a period of violence between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Eventually, Hamas controls Gaza, but the Palestinian Water Authority was allowed, I should say, by Hamas to continue doing its work. And I think this is because they knew that the PWA knew what to do.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
They had the engineers and people need water. And Marwan, he essentially keeps his head down during this time.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
I think Marwan's someone who just feels a great responsibility, a great responsibility to the people of Gaza and also to his own family.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
This is like your safe place is to think about the water issues.
Radio Atlantic
Water Is Not Political
I think it is a safe place to be to think about the thing that you have control over and you know what to do. And it's based on plans and it's based on equations. And, you know, yes, sometimes it's based on diplomatic effort and trying to get other countries to help you. But it's all in service of something that is a clear human necessity, which is water.