The journalist who was added to a group chat which divulged US war plans in Yemen said he is considering whether or not to release the full messages.
Editor in Chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, told the Bulwark Podcast today: ‘My colleagues and I and the people who are giving us advice on this have some interesting conversations to have about this.
‘But just because they’re irresponsible with material, doesn’t mean that I’m going to be irresponsible,’ he added.
Earlier today, President Donald Trump defended a key member of his cabinet after texts about military strikes in Yemen were leaked in a group chat which included the editor-in-chief of a major magazine.
Speaking to NBC, Trump said: ‘Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,’ before adding, ‘It’s the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.’
Mr Trump initially told reporters he was not aware that the highly sensitive information had been shared, more than two hours after it was reported. He later appeared to joke about the breach.
It’s a ‘need-to-know’ type conversation, limited to Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Encrypted messaging platform Signal should be a relatively secure place for the top ranks of Donald Trump’s administration to share details of the targets and weapons in a planned bombing campaign against the Houthis.
And, it turns out, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg – or, as Hegseth calls him, a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes’.
But this leaking of potentially classified ‘war plans’ is no hoax. According to the National Security Council, the text chain ‘appears to be authentic’.
Senator Gary Peters, the most senior Democrat on the Senate security committee, said: ‘This is a flagrant failure and a huge breach of national security.
‘Our servicemembers deserve more from those in command. The carelessness of this level is simply unacceptable.’
President Trump appears not to care, branding The Atlantic ‘not much of a magazine’ and telling reporters: ‘I know nothing about it.’
On his Truth Social platform, he shared an X post by his ally, tech billionaire Elon Musk, saying: ‘Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic Magazine, because no one ever goes there.’
Messages had detailed plans for military strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi militias who have launched missile attacks from Yemen against Israel and Red Sea shipping, in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
The US has conducted air strikes against the Houthis since the militant group began targeting commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea in November 2023.
Hegseth insists: ‘Nobody was texting war plans.’
Even Goldberg was sceptical, saying he ‘could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans’.
But just two hours after Goldberg received the details of the attack on March 15, the US began launching a series of air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
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 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, which included Tulsi Gabbard, Mr Trump’s director of national intelligence, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Goldberg said he received the Signal invitation from Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, who was also in the group chat.
In a statement late on Monday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the president still has the ‘utmost confidence’ in Waltz and the national security team.
Trump told reporters he was not aware of the apparent breach in protocol: ‘I know nothing about it,’ he said, adding that The Atlantic was ‘not much of a magazine’.
Government officials have used Signal for organisational correspondence, but it is not classified and can be hacked.
Privacy and tech experts say the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging and voice call app is more secure than conventional texting.
Messages in the 'Houthi PC small group' chat
‘PC’ stands for principals committee – or senior members of national intelligence.
In one message, Pete Hegseth replied to JD Vance writing:
‘VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.
‘But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing.
‘I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.’
A group member named ‘SM’ then replied:
‘As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement.
‘EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.‘
US strikes into Yemen escalated last week when these messages were sent.
The sharing of sensitive information comes as Defence Secretary Hegseth’s office has just announced a crackdown on leaks of sensitive information.
The breach in protocol was swiftly condemned by Democratic legislators.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called for a full investigation, saying: ‘This is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time.’
The handling of national defence information is strictly governed by law under the century-old Espionage Act.
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The act includes provisions that make it a crime to remove such information from its ‘proper place of custody’ even through an act of gross negligence.
The Justice Department in 2015 and 2016 investigated whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broke the law by communicating classified information with her aides on a private email server she set up.
The FBI ultimately recommended against charges, but none were brought.
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.
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