White House Admits Accidentally Sent Classified Plan on Yemen Attack to Journalist
The White House confirmed on Monday that an American journalist was accidentally included in a group chat between Donald Trump administration officials that discussed classified details about attacks on Yemen.
The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, announced he was given advance notice of the US strikes on Yemen on March 15 in a personal essay for the magazine.In a response to Goldberg, National Security Council Spokesman Brian Hughes said, "The message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”Speaking about the security breach, Goldberg stated he was first notified of the upcoming strikes on a group chat on the encrypted messaging platform Signal, which included US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.He added, “I knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. Pete Hegseth had texted me the war plan at 11:44 am. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”
Goldberg noted that Hegseth’s post contained “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing”.Goldberg stated that he had initially received a connection request on Signal from national security advisor Michael Waltz on March 11 and was immediately concerned someone was masquerading as Waltz and that he was being entrapped before accepting the request.Two days later, he received a notice that he was being added to a Signal chat group called the “Houthi PC small group".Goldberg said that PC stands for “principals committee” and generally refers to a group of the most senior national security officials, including the secretaries of defence, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA.Senior members of the administration represented on the group chat included Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth; National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard; White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles; Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff; as well as a member of the CIA and National Security Council. In all, 18 people were listed as members of the group.
He added he had “never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app”.On March 14, Goldberg stated a person called JD Vance expressed doubts about carrying out the raids, noting, “I think we are making a mistake. 3 percent of US trade runs through the Suez. 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.”He added that he hated "bailing Europe out again”, referring to the notion that Europe benefits economically from US protection of shipping lanes.A user identified as Hegseth agreed with him, saying, “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”Goldberg added that someone identified as SM, who he believed to be Stephen Miller, said, “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”.
Goldberg stated that communications about highly confidential pending military action over Signal “may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act”.Hegseth told reporters Monday that “nobody was texting war plans”.“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth stated outside a plane in Hawaii after being asked about Goldberg’s access to the chat.Hegseth also called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”Trump has told journalists, "I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time."
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