Top Trump officials included The Atlantic editor in group chat about plans to bomb Yemen
Washington — Top Trump officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance allegedly discussed the details of a highly sensitive operation to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen in a group chat that inadvertently included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Goldberg wrote on Monday.
As a Cabinet meeting unfolded at the White House on Monday afternoon, Goldberg published a piece detailing how he was added to the 18-person chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal earlier this month by an account sharing the name of White House national security adviser Mike Waltz. Later, Goldberg said an account named “Pete Hegseth” laid out a plan for strikes in Yemen that included precise information about “weapons packages, targets, and timing” of the attack shortly before it took place.
The National Security Council stated that the messages seem to be “authentic” in a statement to CBS News after the story was published.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” a National Security Council spokesman said. “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 our service members or our national security.”
When asked about the Goldberg story at the White House on Monday afternoon, President Trump told reporters he had not heard about it.
“I don’t know anything about it,” the president responded. “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it.”
In a later statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”
Speaking to reporters in Hawaii, Hegseth denied that he shared war plans with a journalist and did not answer a question about whether the information was classified.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth says “nobody was texting war plans” after Atlantic report
05:33
Goldberg told CBS News, “People have devices that are extraordinarily convenient, and government officials are just like you and me — they like convenience. They’re just like you and me — they sometimes send texts to people they didn’t mean to send texts to. The consequences here are a lot higher for that sort of thing than in regular civilian life.”
The Atlantic story
In his piece, Goldberg said he received a connection request on Signal on March 11 from a user with the name “Mike Waltz” without explanation. On March 13, Goldberg said he was added to a group chat in Signal titled “Houthi PC small group,” which he took to be a reference to a “principals committee,” or group of high-ranking officials.
The chat included a total of 18 people, including those who appeared to be Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, according to Goldberg.
Goldberg wrote that he was initially skeptical of the authenticity of the group, saying he believed it could have been “part of a disinformation campaign” or an effort to embarrass journalists.
“I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans,” Goldberg wrote.
The Houthis are an Iranian-backed rebel group in Yemen that has attacked commercial ships and warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for more than a year, threatening maritime trade. The Houthis have used the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas to justify the attacks. The president said last week that he considered Iran to be behind the attacks and warned that it would “suffer the consequences” of additional strikes.
On March 14, the officials in the Signal chat debated the timing of an operation to target the group, according to Goldberg. The account with the name “JD Vance” expressed concern that taking action against the Houthis would primarily benefit Europe at a time when Mr. Trump has been pressuring European allies to do more to provide for their own security.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices,” Vance wrote, according to Goldberg. “I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
Goldberg wrote that Hegseth responded: “VP: I understand your concerns — and fully support you raising w/ POTUS. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (economy, Ukraine peace, Gaza, etc). I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what — nobody knows who the Houthis are — which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”
On Saturday, March 15, Hegseth posted an update and others responded in texts that Goldberg said he would not publish because “the information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility.”
“What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg wrote.
Goldberg said Hegseth told the group that the strikes against the Houthis would commence at 1:45 p.m. ET.
“So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city,” he wrote.
He said he checked the Signal chat and found a string of congratulatory messages from Waltz and others:
The Atlantic
“The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, ‘Michael Waltz,’ that I had left,” Goldberg continued. “No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left — or, more to the point, who I was.”
At 2:29 p.m., Mr. Trump posted a message on Truth Social announcing the attack.
“Today, I have ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen. They have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”
Congressional reaction
The story ricocheted through Washington on Monday afternoon, with Democratic lawmakers demanding an investigation into why highly classified information was being discussed on a commercially available messaging app, rather than secure government channels. Goldberg also alleged that Waltz had set some of the messages in the group chat to disappear after one week, and others after four weeks, which could be a violation of federal law requiring the preservation of official records.
Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the episode, if true, “represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
“Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line. The carelessness shown by President Trump’s cabinet is stunning and dangerous,” Reed said in a statement. “I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately.”
At the Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the administration’s handling of the incident and said he did not think Hegseth or Waltz should be disciplined.
“The administration is addressing what happened, apparently, an inadvertent phone number made it onto that thread. They’re going to track that down and make sure that doesn’t happen again,” the Louisiana Republican said. He said the conversation showed “top-level officials doing their job, doing it well and executing on a plan with precision. That mission was a success. No one was jeopardized because of it. We’re grateful for that, but they will certainly, I’m sure, make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”
GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who has at times been critical of the administration’s foreign policy, said that “we’ve all sent a text to a wrong person, but the bigger problem is they are not using secure phones to discuss war plans.”
“This can get our troops killed. Secure phones are mandatory for these kinds of communications. Russia and China are definitely monitoring their unclassified phones hoping they share info like this,” Bacon said.
Eleanor Watson and
contributed to this report.
Caitlin Yilek
Source: cbsnews.com