OPINION:
It is not uncommon for me to receive misdirected emails or text messages. I also often find myself invited to meetings by mistake. The use of electronic methods of communication seems to invite errors.
Various computer features have a nefarious tendency to make erroneous assumptions. When we enter a name in an email or text, our systems have a built-in presumption that the person whose name we have begun is someone with whom we may have recently communicated. Begin entering a common name, and our eager applications can fill in the blank with incorrect information. Of course, as the adage tells us, haste makes waste, and we frequently act too hastily in using electronic communications.
Most people follow an unwritten protocol whenever such an error occurs. A misdirected email is most commonly deleted. The recipient may notify the sender that the email has been misdirected. This allows the sender to learn about the error and correct it.
Assuredly, I would never disseminate a misdirected email or other electronic communication to others. This would constitute a breach of an unstated but important contemporary etiquette. If I had erroneously sent an email to someone, I would expect and hope that the recipient would be courteous in disregarding the communication and letting me know of my error. I would certainly not expect the recipient to take my email and publish it.
In a nutshell, I am deeply concerned about what has transpired regarding the chats to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, was invited when he evidently should not have been.
Based on the information I have seen, Mr. Goldberg must have had little doubt that being linked to a chat involving senior intelligence and military officials was an error. It had to appear as a serious error at best and as a demonstration of poor judgment at worst.
In light of this evident error, the logical, courteous and decent response should have been to destroy the link and any information gleaned from it and, ideally, to have notified one of the parties of the error to make certain the initiator was aware of what had transpired with the hope that the error would not be repeated. This would have been the best course of action for Mr. Goldberg and the patriotic and, probably, the legal thing for him to do.
However, Mr. Goldberg is a journalist who leans left. Apparently, instead of deleting the chat and notifying one of the other participants of the evident error, he seized an opportunity to promote himself and his magazine. That divulging the information he had received could harm people and our nation does not appear to have been part of his calculation. Foremost in his mind seems to have been the thought that he might be able to embarrass the Trump administration and derive a considerable benefit for his magazine and himself.
The person responsible for the egregious error should be appropriately reprimanded, and measures should be implemented to prevent it from occurring again. The breach of national security is a serious matter that must be addressed appropriately, but the more troubling aspect of this matter are the reactions of Mr. Goldberg and much of the legacy press.
A potentially damaging error has been seized upon not as a vehicle for remedying an apparent flaw in intelligence officials’ electronic communications but rather as a cudgel to whip a political foe.
Mr. Goldberg could have divulged the inappropriate use of a communications application discretely, thereby enhancing our nation’s security. He could have let it be known privately that certain members of the new administration were too cavalier in disseminating confidential information.
Still, Mr. Goldberg chose to use this unfortunate occurrence to garner attention and make political hay by disclosing an evident security breach within the highest echelons of our nation’s intelligence apparatus.
Mr. Goldberg’s choice is one that we have most likely faced at a far less significant level and will assuredly face multiple times in the future. I doubt that most people who receive misdirected communications seek to take advantage of that situation. Some people, of course, do. We would consider them to be boors who have failed to comport themselves decently.
How much more regrettable can it be when someone takes a misdirected electronic communication potentially detrimental to the security and welfare of our nation and, instead of deleting it, publicizes it and uses it for personal benefit? What should we call that person? The word boor seems inadequate. Stronger words might come to mind.
• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality, Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution,” published by HUC Press.
