WASHINGTON — President Trump’s cabinet officials revealed “pretty detailed” classified information on a chat group with a journalist earlier this month about impending US airstrikes against Houthi terrorists in Yemen, with one expert calling the snafu “really scary”, and another saying he was “floored” by what was revealed.
The full exchange from the encrypted Signal chat — which included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Michael Waltz — was released Wednesday by Atlantic magazine editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently added to the private group.
“TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch,” Hegseth told participants on March 15.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth continued, before adding: “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”
The “classified” operational details covered the “method of targeting,” the timeline for the operation and who pulled the trigger on the Houthi targets, according to Dan Meyer, a national security partner at New York law firm Tully Rinckey.
“The pilots were using their sensors, using their triggers to confirm identification and they let the drones deliver the weapons,” said Meyer, a 25-year veteran of national security law and former official at the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General.
Hegseth also wrote in the Signal thread that at 2:10 p.m., “more F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package).”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets),” the Pentagon leader said. “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
“That’s when bombs would actually drop,” Meyer said of Hegseth’s “1415” missive. “So what that tells me is the pilots weren’t launching weapons.”
Meyer explained that the other texts were “pretty detailed.”
“That’s when bombs would actually drop,” he said, referring to Hegseth’s “1415” missive. “So what that tells me is the pilots weren’t launching weapons.”
“Somebody flying the drone, you know, could be [operating out of] a strip mall down in New Jersey,” he added.
US officials are required to consider information whose “unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or indescribably damage to the national security” for classification, which falls under three sensitivity categories: confidential, secret and top secret, according to federal law.
The strike plan could be considered top secret — the highest classification level — because it fits the legal definition of “information providing indication or advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s official classification tiers.
While Hegseth claimed Wednesday that the strike plans were given “in real time” and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said it happened while the plan “was underway,” Signal time stamps indicate the defense secretary sent the messages before the first strike was carried out.
“Really scary that that went out over Signal because that reveals a method of targeting that you can read online in some places, but you really don’t want to know in specific instances when ‘trigger-based’ targeting is being done,” Meyer said.
Here is the latest on the Yemen Signal group-chat:
The national security expert also noted that Hegseth believed “all the details of the actual security of the operation” were “good” — “We are currently clean on OPSEC,” the defense secretary wrote, despite Goldberg eavesdropping on the entire exchange.
“There’s a checklist you go through to make sure that the operational security of the mission is not going to compromise the actual ability to deliver the weapons,” Meyer explained.
Michael Pastor, a New York Law School professor specializing in cybersecurity, said Wednesday that “those of us who are in the cybersecurity community, we don’t tend to shock easily. I’m floored by what I’m seeing here.”
“I don’t know if we can grasp the extent of the potential harm,” he added.
| THEY SAY … | BUT … |
|---|---|
| National security adviser Michael Waltz said, “I’ve never met, don’t know” and “never communicated with” Atlantic editor Jeffery Goldberg. President Trump says it was “one of Michael’s people” who added Goldberg to the Signal chat. | Atlantic top editor Jeffrey Goldberg says he received a Signal request “from a user identified as Michael Waltz.” Waltz told Fox News he created the group and somehow Goldberg’s contact number got “sucked” onto someone else’s name in his address book. |
| Officials including Trump insist no “classified information” was discussed. | Even if it doesn’t fit the definition of “classified,” it was certainly sensitive and the administration is against releasing the portions Goldberg held back. “Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of ‘national defense’ information,” Goldberg says. |
| “I do not remember mention of specific targets,” said Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence. | “It was, ‘At 1:45, this is going to happen. At 1:52, this is going to happen,’ ” Goldberg insists. “The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing.” |
| It was an ordinary discussion and did not compromise national security, the White House insists. | “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel,” Goldberg says. |
| Some commentators have suggested that Goldberg, a well-known liberal adversary of Trump, was added to the group on purpose by an aide trying to undermine the administration. | The White House hasn’t backed that theory and presumably they would very easily know exactly who added Goldberg. |
Hegseth claimed in an X post Wednesday that the plans included “No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.”
“We will continue to do our job, while the media does what it does best: peddle hoaxes,” he added.
“This was the secretary of defense relaying operational information regarding our ongoing actions against a foreign adversary,” Meyer countered Wednesday. “It’s operational data. It’s about an ongoing mission. It was classified, and it doesn’t have to be marked. It doesn’t have to say secret or top secret on it. It was classified.”If you’re a sailor on the USS Ronald Reagan and you write home to mama and you say the ship is going to make a port call in Roda, Spain, at the end of the deployment in a month — that’s classified information,” he emphasized. “We used to have to lecture our men about not sending movement details even for something as silly as liberty call in a port in Spain, where the sailors are all going to go out and drink themselves blind on Saturday night. That’s still classified because it’s about the movement of our military units.”
“So all this talk about war plans and was there a declared war,” Meyer said, “all that is. is novices, people who are not experienced in our military affairs, not understanding what they’re working with.”
Hegseth wasn’t the only one who shared classified information.
“VP. building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job,” Waltz messaged the group after the strike, later adding: “The first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
Meyer said Waltz was communicating what’s called a BDA, or battle damage assessment.
“When you get to somebody having gone in the building, bomb gone off, building collapsed, that’s BDA,” he said. “So that is classified because it’s about what we know about the success of our mission.”
“So you’re in a whole different world now,” he explained. “You’re not protecting that information because it could damage our operations. You’re protecting that information because we don’t want for an enemy to know we know we succeeded, right?”
“You don’t want to give out your BDA — and that was giving out the BDA,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time, were among the 18 officials included in the Signal messaging channel.
“Our cybersecurity enemies work 24/7 to inflict harm on our government, on our critical infrastructure and our people,” said Pastor. “What they are thinking right now is that if the people at the apex of the national security apparatus in America are this careless with cybersecurity hygiene, can you imagine how many vulnerabilities there must be all the way through the ranks of the CIA, and the Department of Defense and the State Department?”
“What you have here is a leak of sensitive and classified information to a non-government entity,” he added. “People go to jail for that.”
“I take full responsibility,” Waltz told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Tuesday night. “I built the group. My job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”
In a Wednesday X post, the former Florida congressman added: “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests.”
Goldberg fired back on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday: “March 11th, he reached out. March 13th, I’m added to the ‘Houthi PC small group’ [channel]. March 15th, they announced to the small group before the attack occurs that the attack is occurring and what weapons they’re using.”
“And then I began the process of writing up what I thought was a story about a massive security breach at the highest levels of the United States government,” the Atlantic scribe said. “That’s the story.”
“The secretary of defense should have known better, not only because he’s the secretary of defense, but he’s a veteran. He has been trained in this already,” Meyer said. “He didn’t serve as some special adviser to some donut-eater in the [Pentagon] E ring. He actually was out there with boots on the ground. So he knew better. And the same with the national security adviser. His whole job is to set up secure communications for the president.
“All these people have walked the president off the plank,” he thundered. “He deserves better from his advisers.”
