Hegseth Texted Highly Classified War Plans to Journalist in Group Chat Mishap

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth texted highly classified war plans to a journalist after he was mistakenly included in the group chat.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist for The Atlantic, wrote in a piece published Monday afternoon that he had received a Signal request, an encrypted messaging service, on March 11 from a user named Michael Waltz, also the name of President Donald Trump's national security adviser.

Thinking the request could be from Waltz trying to discuss anonymously about something important, Goldberg accepted the request. Two days later, the user invited Goldberg to join a channel called "Houthi PC small group."

Although Goldberg expressed his doubts about Waltz being the real national security advisor, the group chat proceeded to include various users with the same names as government officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Other users' names simply consisted of initials or nicknames, such as "MAR." Goldberg noted that Marco Antonio Rubio is secretary of state.

On March 15, Hegseth sent long messages detailing plans against Houthis in Yemen. The journalist's skepticism stopped when hours after receiving the group message, bombs began to fall.

Goldberg proceeded to leave the group, and messaged several of the officials that were in the group about the channel's legitimacy and why he had been included.

"This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain," Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, wrote in a statement to The Atlantic. "The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security."

Several lawyers have since raised concerns about possible violations being committed by organizing a national-security-related action on Signal as the app is not approved for sharing classified information.