WASHINGTON − Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed secret plans for a U.S. strike on Iran-backed militants in Yemen with a group chat of top Trump administration officials that accidentally included a magazine editor.
The inadvertent leak, by officials using the publicly available encrypted Signal messaging app, raises alarming questions about the potential mishandling of national security information, which federal law dictates should only be shared through the government’s own approved secure platforms, former intelligence officials told USA TODAY.
The chat “appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the White House national security council.
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials,” Hughes said. “The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
In an article published in The Atlantic on Monday afternoon, Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, reported he was accidentally added to the Signal chat titled “Houthi PC small group” earlier this month by Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor.
More: US piles pressure on Yemen’s Houthis with new airstrikes
The group included users whose names matched Trump’s top officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Brian McCormack, a member of the National Security Council. No one realized that Goldberg, whose username appeared as “JG,” had been added, Goldberg wrote.
Signal – available to anyone in the Apple and Android app stores – is not approved by the government for classified communications. Its use by leading Trump national security officials leaves an opening for U.S. adversaries like China, Iran and Russia, national security experts say.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz were all part of a chat group that inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. Hegseth revealed secret war plans for strikes on Yemen in the chat.
Hours before the U.S. launched a wave of strikes targeting the Houthis in Yemen on March 15, Hegseth sent a message with operational information about the strikes including their targets and what weapons would be used, Goldberg wrote. Some responded with a prayer emoji.
Goldberg realized the chat was legitimate when the strikes hit Yemen at the time Hegseth indicated they would in the chat.
“I didn’t think it could be real,” The Atlantic article’s headline said. “Then the bombs started falling.”
More: Trump orders ‘decisive’ airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen while issuing a new warning
Asked about the chat at a news briefing on Monday afternoon, Trump said, “I don’t know anything about it.”
“I’m not a big fan on the Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business,” he said.
“You’re telling me about it for the first time,” he added.
Trump retained confidence in the officials who were on the chat, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was also part of the Yemen airstrikes chat, according to an article in The Atlantic.
“As President Trump said, the attacks on the Houthis have been highly successful and effective,” Leavitt told reporters. “President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to comment in a briefing on Monday. “I have two very short things to say to you. First is that we will not comment on the Secretary’s deliberative conversations,” she said. “And, secondly, that you should contact the White House.”
The Pentagon referred USA TODAY to the National Security Council.
Crackdown on leaks
As recently as last week, the Pentagon announced a zero-tolerance policy for leaks of national security information and promised an aggressive investigation, including the use of lie detectors, and referrals to the “appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution.”
The March 21 memo came after a report in the New York Times regarding a planned briefing for multibillionaire Trump advisor Elon Musk on China. The briefing didn’t happen, and the Trump administration lashed out at the reporting.
More: Elon Musk holds high-level meeting with Pentagon, wants leakers prosecuted
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was part of a group chat where secret national security information was revealed to a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic.
Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, wrote the memo to Pentagon intelligence and security officials that leaks of “sensitive communications with principals within the Office of Secretary of Defense demand immediate and thorough investigation.”
“The use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation will be in accordance with applicable law and policy,” Kasper wrote. “This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense. The report will include a complete record of unauthorized disclosures within the Department of Defense and recommendations to improve such efforts.”
Were the war plans classified?
The specifics provided by Goldberg raised alarms among former U.S. national security officials, who said that all the top Trump administration officials involved – not just whoever started the chat – were, at best, extremely reckless in having these kinds of conversations on Signal.
Gavin Wilde, who served in senior roles at the National Security Agency for over a decade, said that the article raises “serious concerns,” including the potential for an adversary like China, Russia or Iran to get access to the conversations.
“It’s certainly a serious offense to mishandle classified information by discussing it outside of approved facilities and approved technological channels,” including a publicly used app like Signal, he told USA TODAY.
“If you are conducting official business and it’s classified, those certainly wouldn’t be the avenues to carry on those conversations,” he added.
If the chat included actual classified information, then all of those officials who were party to the chat likely broke at least several federal laws including the National Security Act, said one former senior U.S. national security official.
Classified information would include details about the timing of plans and operations, what type of weapons and planes or other delivery devices were used, and the location and identity of targets, said the former official, who served in the Obama, Biden and first Trump administrations. The former official spoke on background for fear of retribution by Trump administration officials and their followers, saying they had previously received threats to their family for speaking critically of Trump.
Similar disclosures of classified information have led to heavy charges and long jail sentences. One such case involved former Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison last year for leaking classified information − although that breach involved intentionally sharing the information with civilians.
The use of Signal raises further issues.
Even if Signal purports to be encrypted, it is likely only “end to end encryption,” meaning the messages can’t be intercepted in midstream, said Wilde, who also worked on the National Security Council and at FBI.
But if even one of the parties wasn’t extremely vigilant about protecting whatever phone or other device they were using from hacks, he said, an adversary could easily read everything in the chat itself.
More: White House urges crackdown on US telecoms after massive Chinese hack
“It certainly raises a deep concern about whether someone’s miskeyed” information and invited the wrong person, as in Goldberg’s case, or included someone using an insecure of compromised phone, Wilde said.
The Presidential Records Act requires federal officials to use government-approved communications channels for all work-related matters – whether they are classified or not, Wilde said. The act dictates that information can be preserved by the National Archives and Records Administration as a public document so the public can eventually see it – unless it’s determined to be classified and not subject to federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
In leaked chat, JD Vance calls Houthi strikes ‘mistake’
The chat also revealed internal disagreements between members of Trump’s innermost team on the strikes.
“I think we are making a mistake,” Vance wrote in the chat, according to Goldberg’s report. “There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” he added, and that the “strongest” reason for it, according to Trump, was “to send a message.”
Hegseth responded, “I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”
More: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and beyond: Who are the Iran-backed groups in the Mideast?
William McMartin, Vance’s communications director, wrote in response to USA TODAY’s questions: “The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations.”
“Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy,” McMartin said. “The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”
Former President Biden launched more than 260 strikes against the militant group in 2024.
After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostage, the Houthis began attacks on vessels passing through the Red Sea as retaliation for Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza. Biden first launched the attacks in an attempt to clear the waterway for U.S. military vessels and for ships carrying goods.
Both Hamas and the Houthis are allied with Iran, which provides them with weapons. As U.S. strikes on the Houthis continued, Iran said on Friday that the group was acting on its own motivations.
More: Four flashpoints in Israel-Hamas conflict that could spark wider war in Middle East
Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents that contained sensitive national security information that he took with him to his Mar-a-lago resort after his first term in office concluded. Those charges were dropped after he took office for the second time.
Trump has vociferously criticized Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for her emails when she served as Barack Obama’s secretary of state, which stirred up a public controversy and sparked an FBI investigation. At a news conference during the 2016 election, he asked Russia to find her emails.
Calls for investigation
Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he was “horrified by reports that our most senior national security officials, including the heads of multiple agencies, shared sensitive and almost certainly classified information via a commercial messaging application, including imminent war plans.”
“If true, these actions are a brazen violation of laws and regulations that exist to protect national security, including the safety of Americans serving in harm’s way,” Himes, of Connecticut, said in a statement.
“These individuals know the calamitous risks of transmitting classified information across unclassified systems,” said Himes, adding that “a lower ranking official under their command” would likely lose their security clearance and be subject to criminal investigation for doing the same.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s top officials accidentally add journalist to classified chat
