In a major embarrassment to the Donald Trump administration, one of his top officials revealed the US's war plans in Yemen in a group chat on a messaging platform that also had a journalist. Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense, shared the plan to attack the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen in a group chat on Signal around two hours before it was carried out.
One of the members of the Signal group was Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who revealed that he was mistakenly added to the text chat by Michael Waltz, the National Security Adviser.
Other members of the group included US Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and senior National Security Council officials.
The group was named Houthi PC small group, and Waltz had tasked his deputy, Alex Wong, with setting up a "tiger team" to coordinate the action against the Houthis.
According to Goldberg, he was able to follow the conversation among senior members of President Donald Trump¡¯s national security team in the two days leading up to the strikes in Yemen.
The war plan shared in the group included information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
¡°Up until the Hegseth text Saturday, it was mainly procedural and policy texting. Then it became war plans, and to be honest, that sent a chill down my spine,¡± Goldberg noted.
While Goldberg has not revealed the exact details of the secret war plan he had access to, the use of Signal, an encrypted yet commercial app, to share and discuss such sensitive information has raised some eyebrows.
Some also argued that this could be seen as a violation of the Espionage Act, a law covering the handling of sensitive information.
After Goldberg went public with the incident, Hegseth denied claims that war plans were shared in the group chat.
"Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that," he said.
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