Trump officials reportedly texted war plans in group chat that included magazine editor
State Department responds to leak of military plans
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce answered questions on the "inadvertent" leak of military plans but top officials on President Trump's administration.
WASHINGTON - Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was allegedly included in a group chat with top national security officials that discussed war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen.
Goldberg published an article about this purported mishap on Monday.
Sec. Pete Hegseth responds to possible leaked plans
On a landing strip at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke about a recent report that Houthi war plans were accidently sent by text message to a journalist.
After landing in Hawaii on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded to the allegations, saying:
"You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes," Hegseth said about Goldberg." This is a guy who peddles in garbage."
What did the texts say?
The text chain allegedly contained sensitive information about "operation details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen."
This includes information about "targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing," Goldberg reported.
It was not immediately clear if the specifics of the military operation were classified, but they often are and at the least are kept secure to protect service members and operational security.
The U.S. has conducted airstrikes against the Houthis since the militant group began targeting commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea in November 2023.
Just two hours after Goldberg received the details of the attack on March 15, the U.S. began launching a series of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
FILE - Image of U.S. Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth on March 21, 2025, inlaid on an image of the Signal logo on a smartphone screen. (Getty Images)
Vice President JD Vance in the chain of the messages questioned whether Americans would understand the importance of strikes that came with the risk of "a moderate to severe spike in oil prices" and if the timing of the operation might be a "mistake."
"I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself," Vance argued. "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."
Vance also made the case that Europe would benefit much more than the U.S. by the action aimed at decimating the Houthis and securing Red Sea shipping lanes.
"If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again," Vance said in a back-and-forth with Hegseth.
"I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied. He added, "I think we should go."
The vice president’s communication’s director, William Martin, in a statement downplayed the debate. He said Vance "unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy."
What is Signal?
Dig deeper:
The messages were sent via Signal Messenger, "an open-source encrypted messaging service for instant messaging, voice calls and video calls," according to the company website.
The National Security Council said in a statement that it was looking into how a journalist’s number was added to the chain in the Signal group chat.
Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, but it is not classified and can be hacked.
In the Biden administration, some officials were given permission to download Signal on their White House-issued phones, but were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the Democratic administration.
The official, who requested anonymity to speak about methods used to share sensitive information, said Signal was most commonly used to communicate what they internally referred to as "tippers" to notify someone when they were away from the office or traveling overseas that they should check their "high side" inbox for a classified message.
The app was sometimes also used by officials during the Biden administration to communicate about scheduling of sensitive meetings or classified phone calls when they were outside the office, the official told The Associated Press.
Trump and lawmakers respond
What they're saying:
Some Democrats have called the alleged mix-up "an unbelievable disaster."
Rep. Adam Smith, Democratic leader of the House Armed Services Committee, posted a response to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday, saying:
"We can't chalk this up to a simple mistake — people should be fired for this," Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), another Armed Services Committee member, told Axios.
When asked about it by reporters on Monday, President Donald Trump said he knew nothing about the incident.
"I know nothing about it," Trump said, adding that The Atlantic was "not much of a magazine." He went on to say, "I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time."
The Source: Information for this article was gathered from The Associated Press, Axios, Rep. Adam Smith’s X account and The Atlantic. This story was reported from Los Angeles.