In a recent development, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has addressed a shocking recent leak of high-level discussions about US airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Hegseth has called the journalist involved “deceitful” while downplaying the significance of the disclosure.
The unprecedented incident came to light after The Atlantic reported on Monday that its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been accidentally added to a Signal group chat that included top Trump administration officials such as Vice President J.D. Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Hegseth. The group had been actively discussing potential US military operations against the Houthis for days prior to President Donald Trump ordering strikes on Yemen on March 15.
Goldberg claimed that one of Hegseth’s final messages before the attack “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
When asked about the leak on Monday, Hegseth dismissed Goldberg as “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said when pressed on the content of the messages.
Strikes Against Yemen
Last Saturday, Trump ordered a “powerful military action” against the Yemen-based Houthi militants. Trump accused them of conducting an “unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.” The group, officially known as the Ansar Allah movement, has controlled large portions of Yemen – including the capital, Sanaa – since the mid-2010s.
In what The Atlantic described as a “fascinating policy discussion,” senior US officials reportedly acknowledged the difficulty of building public support for a new military campaign.
There are few US presidential actions more sensitive, more fraught with peril, than when and where to use American military force. If such information were obtained by American adversaries in advance, it could put lives – and national foreign policy objectives – at risk.
Fortunately for the Trump administration, a group chat with information about an impending US strike in Yemen among senior national security officials on the encrypted chat app Signal did not fall into the wrong hands. Unfortunately for the Trump administration, the message thread was observed by an influential political journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg.
The Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief, in an article posted on Monday on his publication’s website, says he appears to have been inadvertently added to the chat by White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. Members of the group seemed to include Vice-President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others.
Goldberg says the group debated policy and discussed operational details about the impending US military strike – conversations that provided a rare near-real-time look at the inner workings of Trump’s senior national security team.
“Amazing job,” Waltz wrote to the group, just minutes after the US strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen took place on Saturday, March 15. He followed up with emojis of a US flag, a fist and fire. Other senior officials joined in on the group congratulations.
These White House celebrations may prove short-lived after Monday’s revelations, however. That an outsider could inadvertently be added to sensitive national defence conversations represents a stunning failure of operational security by the Trump administration.
And that these conversations were taking place outside of secure government channels designed for such sensitive communications could violate the Espionage Act, which sets rules for handling classified information.
The White House then released a statement defending the President’s national security team, including Waltz. By Monday evening, however, rumours in Washington were swirling that high-level resignations may ultimately be necessary, with attention focusing on Waltz, whose invitation brought Goldberg into the group conversation. The White House has provided no further comments even as this speculation has grown.
