Trump administration officials are facing a firestorm after a high-profile journalist said he was accidentally included in their group on the publicly available Signal chat app to discuss sensitive U.S. military plans for strikes against Yemen.
The Context
Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote Monday that there were 18 people in the group chat discussing the attack plans, including users he identified as national security adviser Michael Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA director John Ratcliffe and others.
Goldberg wrote that he was first added to the group chat by someone who identified themselves on Signal as "Michael Waltz."
The text discussions Goldberg was party to took place over the course of several days and culminated in the account named "Pete Hegseth" sharing highly sensitive and classified details about the Pentagon's plan to carry out military air strikes against the Houthis, who have been launching attacks on Western commercial vessels in the Red Sea for more than a year.
"Pete Hegseth" shared what Goldberg described as "operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing."
Goldberg did not quote directly from the message, writing that if a U.S. adversary read the information contained in it, they could use it to harm American military and intelligence personnel.
What To Know
Signal is a private messaging app that markets itself as offering "state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption."
"We can't read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either," the website says, "privacy isn't an optional mode — it's just the way that Signal works."
Signal was reportedly used extensively during Trump's presidential campaign and has continued to be widely used since he took office.
But former national security adviser John Bolton cast doubts on this, arguing that Signal's security would be incomparable to protected government messaging systems.
"I couldn't imagine anybody would use Signal," he told CNN's Kasie Hunt on the show The Arena.
"You know, some of the guests have commented that Signal's highly encrypted," he added, "I'll just say this, if you think Signal is equivalent to U.S. government secure telecommunications, think again."
He continued: "How can you conduct official government business over a nonofficial channel? Maybe there's some in extremis situation, when you're—you're on Samoa or something, and there aren't any official channels. But ... they were, they were in Washington, probably in their offices."
Similarly, Democratic Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran, wrote on X: "There is no world in which this information should have been shared in non-secure channels. Hegseth is in so far over his head that he is a danger to this country and our men and women in uniform."
What People Are Saying
Trump responded to Goldberg's article on Monday afternoon, telling reporters: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?"
When a reporter elaborated on the details of Goldberg's reporting, Trump said: "Well, it couldn't have been very effective because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that. I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time."
Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the NSC, confirmed the veracity of the Signal group text to Goldberg: "This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security."
What Happens Next
Democrats and Republicans alike erupted over Goldberg's reporting, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for an investigation into how the leak happened in the first place and the steps the administration will take to ensure it doesn't happen again.
