The Trump administration is facing political uproar after the White House confirmed that a journalist had been inadvertently added to an unsecure group chat in which US national security officials planned a military strike in Yemen.
The Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported that he had been added to a Signal message group which apparently included Vice-President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
He said he had seen classified military plans for US strikes on Houthi rebels, including weapons packages, targets and timing, two hours before the bombs struck.
The report sparked a firestorm of criticism from opposition Democrats and concerns among several Republicans.
Goldberg said he had been added to the message chain, apparently by accident, after receiving a connection request from someone who appeared to be White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday afternoon that he was not aware of the Atlantic article.
The defence secretary also defended the military operation discussed in the chat, citing its success. When pressed by reporters, Hegseth criticised Goldberg as a “deceitful and highly discredited” journalist and resisted questions about the content of the messages.
House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said the breach had been a mistake, but argued that the chat showed “top level officials doing their job, doing it well”.
Democratic lawmakers demanded an investigation, casting the episode as a national security scandal.
Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said his panel planned to investigate the matter.
Atlantic editor-in-chief Goldberg writes in his article that he received a connection request on 11 March on the encrypted messaging app Signal from an account that purported to be Waltz’s.
Goldberg said he was then added to a chat entitled “Houthi PC small group”.
He had initially wondered if the messages in the chat might be a hoax until four days later, Saturday 15 March, when he was sitting in a supermarket car park, watching Signal communications about a strike.
When he checked X for updates about Yemen, he wrote, he was stunned to see reports of explosions in the capital city of Sanaa.
A Houthi official posted on X at the time that 53 people had been killed in the US air strikes.
Signal is generally used by journalists and Washington officials because of the secure nature of its communications, the ability to create aliases, and to send disappearing messages.
A number of accounts that appeared to belong to cabinet members and national security officials were included in the 18-person chat, Goldberg reported.
Accounts labelled “JD Vance”, the name of the vice-president; “Pete Hegseth,” the defence secretary; and “John Ratcliffe,” director of the Central Intelligence Agency; were among names in the chain.
Top national security officials from various agencies also appeared in it, including Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
At one point during the communications over the strikes, the account labelled “JD Vance” seemed to disagree with Trump, Goldberg reported.
