WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and other senior national security and White House officials earlier this month planned bombings on Houthi rebels in Yemen in a text message group chat on the app Signal that accidentally included The Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, according to the longtime foreign policy reporter.
In a lengthy column Monday, Goldberg revealed the existence of the group chat — which he said included 17 senior Trump administration officials total, including people whose accounts on Signal identified them as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, national security adviser Mike Waltz, senior diplomatic adviser Steve Witkoff and another account labeled “MAR,” which Goldberg suspected was Secretary of State “Marco Antonio Rubio." The article detailed Vance’s questioning of President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb the Houthis, debate over the merits of the strikes and specifics on the United States’ targets, weapons and methods, including the exact timing the bombs would be detonating in Yemen.
The conversations began on March 13 and carried through the bombings on March 15, with many of the chat participants congratulating one another on an “amazing job,” as the account purportedly belonging to Waltz wrote, with plaudits and emojis. The strikes — retaliation on the Houthis for attacking merchant vessels in response to Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip and blocking of aid to Palestinians — killed at least 53 people, including children, according to health officials in the region.National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes confirmed the group chat was an “authentic message chain” in a statement to Goldberg and The Atlantic. Spectrum News obtained a similar statement from Hughes and also reached out to the White House, CIA, Pentagon and State Department for comment. The Pentagon referred comment requests to the NSC, and State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to address the report at a briefing Monday, referring questions to the White House.
On Monday afternoon, hours after The Atlantic published Goldberg’s report, Trump was asked about the breach at an economic event at the White House, standing alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other officials. He claimed to know nothing about the report or the conversations. The president later appeared to joke about the breach on social media.
“I don't know anything about it," he said. "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."
"You're saying that they had what?” Trump asked a reporter. “You mean the attack on the Houthis? Well, it couldn't have been very effective because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that. I don't know anything about it.”
By early evening, the president jokingly brushed it aside. He amplified a social media posting from Elon Musk spotlighting a conservative satirical news site article with the cutting headline: “4D Chess: Genius Trump Leaks War Plans to ‘The Atlantic’ Where No One Will Ever See Them."
Overnight, Trump had launched additional strikes on Yemen, extending the United States’ most recent air campaign against the Houthis into its 10th day.
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials," Hughes, the NSC spokesperson, said. "The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.
Hughes said the administration was “reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
Goldberg wrote he received a connection request on Signal from a user purporting to be Waltz, the national security adviser, on March 11 and received no further communication until being added to the group chat titled “Houthi PC small group” on the afternoon of March 13. The “principals committee,” or “PC,” is a term usually used in national security contexts to refer to the country’s senior most national security officials, including Cabinet secretaries and the CIA director.
Signal is an encrypted messaging service often used for its increased security and privacy than standard text message or other applications, but it is not impenetrable — particularly if users add the wrong people to group chats — and its use for conversations involving sensitive national security and classified information is a potential violation of the Espionage Act and other federal laws. A 2023 Defense Department memo from the department’s chief information officer and addressed to “senior Pentagon leadership” explicitly names Signal as “NOT authorized to access, transmit, process non-public” Defense Department information.
“This administration is playing fast and loose with our nation’s most classified info, and it makes all Americans less safe,” wrote Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat and senior member of the influential Senate Intelligence Committee. Delaware Sen. Chris Coons wrote on the social media platform X that “every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally,” but later deleted the post and called for hearings in a statement.
“This is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a floor speech Monday afternoon.
Goldberg initially doubted the messages were really from officials that purported to be sending them, suspecting an elaborate hoax orchestrated by a foreign government or a malicious political outfit in the U.S. But the attacks were carried out as they were planned in the group chat, which Goldberg did not participate in and wrote that he left after the bombings occurred, and the NSC spokesperson confirmed the messages’ veracity. (Most of the accounts, according to Goldberg, were identified with full names, while some only used initials like one “S M,” which Goldberg wrote he believed was for White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.)
At 11:44 a.m. EDT on the day of the strikes, the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” updated the group chat with “details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” according to Goldberg. The bombs would begin dropping at 1:45 p.m., Hegseth wrote. “I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance responded.
“I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot," Goldberg wrote. "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."
One day earlier, as the officials coordinated the bombings in the group chat, Vance questioned the president’s decision to bomb the Houthis.
“Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake,” the account labeled “JD Vance” wrote as the vice president did indeed travel to Michigan for an economic event that day. “3 percent of US trade runs through the [Suez Canal]. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”
Vance went on to question whether Trump “is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now” and that further conflict in the region could drive up oil prices. But, Vance wrote, “I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself,” according to Goldberg.
Even some Republicans were swift to express frustration with the Trump administration’s handling of a sensitive military operation.
“Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels — and certainly not to those without security clearances, including reporters. Period,” New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican and Trump backer whose seat is a biennial target of House Democrats, wrote. “Safeguards must be put in place to ensure this never happens again.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday, “We’re very concerned about it and we’ll be looking into it on a bipartisan basis.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he wants to learn more about what happened.
“Obviously, we got to to run it to the ground, figure out what went on there,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
Hegseth in his first comments on the matter attacked Goldberg as “deceitful” and a “discredited so-called journalist” without offering further explanation. He did not shed light on why Signal was being used to discuss the sensitive operation or how Goldberg ended up on the message chain.
“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said in an exchange with reporters after landing in Hawaii on Monday as he makes his way to the Asia Pacific on his first overseas travel as defense secretary.
In a statement late Monday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the president still has the “utmost confidence” in Waltz and the national security team.
Spectrum News’ Taylor Popielarz contributed to this report. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
