According to an online article published on Monday by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, America’s top national security officials under President Donald Trump were discussing war plans for near-future military actions in Yemen on a group text thread in a secure messaging application with the Secretary of Defense.
According to the National Security Council, the SMS sequence “seems to be genuine.”
The text chain contains, according to editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. Contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, including targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and timing of the attacks.
Although it was unclear at the time whether the military operation’s specifics were classified, they usually are, or at the very least, kept safe to safeguard service members and operational security.
From November 2023, when the Houthis started attacking military and commercial ships in the Red Sea, the United States has launched airstrikes against the rebel organization. The United States launched a series of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen on March 15, just two hours after Goldberg was briefed on the attack.
According to a statement by the National Security Council, investigators looked into how a journalist’s number had been added to the chain in the Signal group conversation. Vic-President J D Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were some of them. Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, invited Goldberg to the Signal group conversation, according to the latter.
Without providing any additional context, Hegseth’s initial remarks on the subject denounced Goldberg as “discredited so-called journalist” and “deceitful.” How Goldberg got on the messaging chain and why Signal was being used to discuss the sensitive operation were not explained by him.
Hegseth stated upon his arrival in Hawaii on Monday that there was no texting of war plans and that is all he has to say regarding this matter, as he travels in the Asia Pacific on his first international trip as secretary of defense.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said late Monday night that the president continues to have 100 percent confidence in his middle and national security team, Waltz. Trump told reporters earlier in the day, “I have no knowledge of it. For the first time, you’re telling me about it.” He said of The Atlantic, “It wasn’t much of a magazine.”
By evening the president was joking. He shared a social media post by Elon Musk linking to the article from the conservative satire news site taunting, “4D Chess: Genius Trump Leaks War Plans to The Atlantic Where No One Will Ever See Them.”
Signal, an unclassified and hackable platform, has been utilized by government officials for organizational correspondence. According to IT and privacy experts, the well-known phone call and end-to-end encrypted messaging software is safer than traditional texting.
The disclosure coincides with Hegseth’s administration recently announcing a crackdown on critical information leaks, which may involve employing polygraphs on defense workers to ascertain how media obtained information.
When asked why the defense secretary released war operational plans on an unclassified app, Hegseth spokesman Sean Parnell did not immediately reply.
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, called for a thorough probe as Democratic senators promptly denounced the administration’s handling of the extremely sensitive information.
Under the century-old Espionage Act, handling national defense information is carefully regulated by law. This includes clauses that make it illegal to remove such material from its “proper place of custody,” even in cases of egregious negligence.
Although final recommendations against charges were made by the FBI and none were followed up by the Justice Department for consideration, it researched whether or not former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had broken the laws concerning discussing classified information with her aides over a private email server she created in 2015 and 2016.
For example, some officials in the Joe Biden administration were allowed to download Signal on their White House-issued phones but told to use it with great reserve. A former national security official who worked in the Democratic administration stated:
Without giving a name, the official disclosed that Signal was mostly used internally to send what the official called ‘tippers’ to others, notifying someone to check their classified inbox if they were overseas or out of office. In this discussion about how confidential information gets shared, the official asked not to be named.
During the Biden administration, officials occasionally used the app to schedule private meetings or make classified phone calls while they weren’t in the office, the individual said.
