Senior Trump administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, are under fire today for allegedly disclosing highly classified U.S. plans to launch airstrikes against Yemen's Houthi militants on an encrypted commercial messaging service text chain that included a journalist.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic magazine, reported today that he was accidentally added to a text chain which spanned several days on the Signal encrypted messaging service that, along with Hegseth, appears to have included Vice President JD Vance, national security adviser Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
According to Goldberg, the text chain included classified operational information about airstrikes launched against Houthi militants last week, including targets, timing and weapon systems. Atlantic has not published the information, which Goldberg said came from an account attributed Hegseth, who is out of the country this week traveling to Asia.
The bombshell story was confirmed by the White House, though President Trump, when asked about it during a press conference, said a reporter’s question was first he’d heard of it.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Brian Hughes, spokesman for the National Security Council, said in an email.
Hughes, who pointed to the apparent success of the Houthi operation as an indication that “there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security” as a result of the disclosure, asserted that the text chain is “a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
Lawmakers, however, felt differently.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told CNN the matter “sounds like a huge screw up.”
Democrats also seized the moment to criticize the Trump administration and call for accountability, especially as the Pentagon has sought to crack down on alleged leakers and hold military officials accountable for the violent and chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, called for an investigation.
“If senior advisers to President Trump in fact used non-secure, non-government systems to discuss and convey detailed war plans, it’s a shocking breach of the standards for sharing classified information that could have put American servicemembers at risk,” he said. “There needs to be an oversight hearing and accountability for these actions.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the story, if true, “represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
“Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line,” he said. “The carelessness shown by President Trump’s cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the administration immediately.”
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, released a statement on X criticizing the Trump administration for selecting senior officials based on personal loyalty to the president, rather than experience serving at the highest levels of national security.
“When you hire based on sycophancy and loyalty f* ups are going to happen,” he wrote. “This endangerment of national security is an unbelievable disaster. We need to put pressure on the Trump administration to get back to focusing on competency, get back to focusing on serving the American people instead of just focusing on going after Donald Trump’s enemies and sucking up to Donald Trump. We need competent government. The Trump administration is not giving that to us.”
Critics of the administration also pointed out that senior government officials like Hegseth and Waltz have access to classified communications systems, rather than Signal, a commercially available app developed by a non-profit group.
Sen. Rueben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote on X that the incident could be summed up as “amateur hour.”
“If I handled classified and sensitive information in this way when I was in the Marines . . . oh boy . . .,” Gallego wrote.
