Top officials in the administration of US President Donald Trump texted a group chat including a journalist plans for strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the White House said, an extraordinary security breach that shocked the political elite.
Trump announced the strikes on March 15, but The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg on Monday wrote that he had hours of advance notice via the group chat on Signal, which included US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and US Vice President J.D. Vance.
Top Democrats were quick to condemn the breach, saying it was potentially illegal and calling for an investigation to find out how it happened, while Republicans tried to play down the incident.
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“The message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said.
The White House said Trump “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team,” after the US president earlier said he did not “know anything about” the issue.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host with no experience running a huge organization like the Pentagon, took no responsibility for the security breach as he spoke to reporters late on Monday.
He instead attacked Goldberg and insisted that “nobody was texting war plans,” despite the White House confirming the breach.
Goldberg wrote that Hegseth sent information on the strikes, including on “targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” to the group chat.
“According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45pm eastern time,” Goldberg wrote — a timeline that was borne out on the ground in Yemen.
The leak could have been highly damaging if Goldberg had publicized details of the plan in advance, but he did not do so.
The journalist said he was added to the group chat two days earlier, and received messages from other top government officials designating representatives who would work on the issue.
A person identified as Vance on March 14 expressed doubts about carrying out the strikes, saying he hated “bailing Europe out again,” as nations there were more affected by Houthi attacks on shipping than the US.
Group chat contributors identified as US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Hegseth both sent messages arguing only Washington had the capability to carry out the strikes, with the latter official saying he shared Vance’s “loathing of European free-loading.”
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described it as “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about,” and called for a full investigation.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton — who was repeatedly attacked by Trump for using a private e-mail server while she was in office — posted on social media: “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Some of these issues ... they should only be discussed face to face,” former US national security adviser John Bolton told CNN. “I have no faith that the Department of Justice will prosecute anyone involved.”
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