When Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe’s phone was reviewed last month to preserve messages from his Signal application, a CIA official was unable to locate any “substantive messages,” instead finding only the name of the chat and changes to the app’s settings, according to a sworn filing submitted in court Monday evening.
Hurley Blankenship, CIA’s chief data officer, told a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit challenging the use of Signal that he was only able to retrieve “residual administrative content” from Ratcliffe’s personal Signal account.
CIA Director, John Ratcliffe testifies before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on “Worldwide Threats,” on Capitol Hill in Washington, Mar. 26, 2025.
Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images
“I used that terminology because the screenshot does not include substantive messages from the Signal chat; rather, it captures the name of the chat, ‘Houthi PC small group’, and reflects administrative notifications from 26 March and 28 March relating to changes in participants’ administrative settings in this group chat, such as profile names and message settings,” Blankenship wrote.
The declaration comes after advocacy group American Oversight raised concerns that the settings on some officials’ phones might have triggered the messages to autodelete despite a federal requirement that the communications be preserved.
Officials were able to successfully preserve messages from the devices of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, according to sworn filings.
-ABC News’ Peter Charalambous