Published Mar 24, 2025 at 1:55 PM EDT
Updated Mar 24, 2025 at 2:18 PM EDT
Trump administration officials accidentally included a high-profile journalist in a group chat in which they discussed sensitive U.S. military plans for strikes against Yemen earlier this month.
That's according to Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who wrote that he'd "never seen a breach quite like this" in a piece for the magazine published Monday.
Newsweek reached out to the Pentagon for comment via email.
Why It Matters
The Atlantic story about the apparent security breach is making waves across Washington, with members of Congress and former national security staffers taking to social media to blast it as "incompetence" and "amateur hour."
"If House Republicans won't hold a hearing on how this happened IMMEDIATELY, I'll do it my damn self," wrote Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat from New York who sits on the Armed Services Committee, in a social media post.
What To Know
Goldberg wrote that the conversation in the Signal group chat culminated in Secretary of Defense 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.
It started on Tuesday, March 11, Goldberg wrote.
Two days later, on March 13, Goldberg said he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat called "Houthi PC small group."
Someone identified on Signal as "Michael Waltz" sent the following message to the group, according to Goldberg: "Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the [Situation Room] this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening."
Mike Waltz is President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
A minute after "Michael Waltz" sent the message, a Signal user identified as "MAR" wrote, "Mike Needham for State." Trump's secretary of state is Marco Antonio Rubio.
Another user identifed as "JD Vance" chimed in with who would represent the "VP," and one minute later, someone with the initials "TG" wrote, "Joe Kent for [the Director of National Intelligence]."
Trump's DNI is former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard.
Shortly after, a Signal user identified as "Pete Hegseth," Trump's secretary of defense, wrote that someone named Dan Caldwell would be in for "DoD," referring to the Pentagon.
Several other users also replied with the names of people who would represent the Treasury secretary, the National Security Council and the CIA.
Goldberg wrote that he was deeply skeptical at first that the group chat was legitimate because he couldn't fathom that senior U.S. national security officials, Cabinet secretaries and the vice president would be so reckless as to accidentally include a journalist in the message chain.
The officials discussed specific plans being drawn up to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen over the next two days, debating the pros and cons of carrying out the strikes. The user identified as Vice President Vance, notably, deviated from Trump's position on the strikes and said he thought the administration was "making a mistake."
He said he wasn't sure Trump was "aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now," per The Atlantic.
The vice president went on to say he was "willing to support the consensus of the team" and keep his concerns to himself, but added that he felt there was a "strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc."
Hegseth disagreed, writing that delaying the bombing campaign would "not fundamentally change the calculus."
He went on to write that if the administration waited on launching the strikes, there was a risk that the plan could leak and that "we look indecisive."
"We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should," Hegseth wrote, according to Goldberg. "This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which [former President Joe Biden] cratered. "But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% [operations security]."
Operations security, or OPSEC, refers to the process of concealing critical information about a person, plan or conversation in order to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive data.
On Friday, March 15, at 11:44 a.m. ET, the user identified as Hegseth sent a "team update" in which he disclosed 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."
They went on to say that the first explosions in Yemen would be heard two hours later, at 1:45 p.m. ET., according to Goldberg. At 1:55 p.m. ET, Goldberg saw reports of explosions being heard in the capital city of Sanaa.
What People Are Saying
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."
A spokesperson for Vance said the vice president is in lockstep with Trump, telling Goldberg: "The Vice President's first priority is always making sure that the President's advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations. Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration's foreign policy. The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement."
Leon Panetta, former CIA director and former Secretary of Defense, told CNN: "It's obviously a very serious mistake on the part of whoever included Goldberg in this highly classified chain-of-command messaging that went on that involved war plans. To have had somebody from The Atlantic on that chain, without question, was a serious mistake. And I hope the White House takes this seriously because the last thing you want to do when you're talking about war plans is to have a serious leak like this that could undermine the war plans but also jeopardize lives. So, I hope they take this seriously."
Panetta added that the Trump administration should conduct a "full investigation as to who included this name on that chain involving the highest officials in national security, ... how the name of a journalist was added to that list. This is just a serious blunder and not only could violate the espionage laws, but more importantly, could undermine our national security."
Well, that's a new incompetence.
