Trump White House confirms war plans shared in Signal chat with journalist
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The news: Top Trump administration officials, including Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussed highly classified US plans to launch airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi militants in a Signal group chat that mistakenly included a journalist, The Atlantic’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg detailed the exchange, including some of the texts he received, in an article published Monday (Tuesday AEDT) that showed the war plans were discussed in the commercial messaging app two hours before US forces launched attacks on the Houthis in Yemen.
The White House confirmed Goldberg’s account in The Atlantic.
The chat took place outside of secure government channels and included operational details “including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg wrote in the article.
The conversation among senior Trump national security officials unfolded in the two days leading up to the March 15 strikes and included accounts appearing to belong to Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, among others.
Goldberg was mistakenly added to the group by an account that appeared to belong to National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
He said the chat group, named “Houthi PC small group”, included 18 users and that officials debated whether to delay the strike, with Vance warning it could cause a spike in oil prices.
Goldberg’s article says the account labelled “JD Vance” wrote: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But 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.”
The Vance account then continues: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
What they said: Asked about the article at the White House, President Trump said, “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic.”
National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes confirmed the thread “appears to be authentic” in statements to media, adding it was “a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
Several unnamed Defence Department officials told the New York Times that having that type of conversation in a Signal chat group could be a violation of the Espionage Act. Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat, said the episode represented “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
The sources: The Atlantic , The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times
