Top Trump administration officials mistakenly disclosed war plans in a messaging group that included a journalist shortly before the US attacked Yemen\u2019s Houthis, the White House said on Monday, following a first-hand account by The Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers swiftly blasted the misstep, saying it was a breach of US national security and a violation of law that must be investigated by Congress.<\/p>\n
The Atlantic\u2019s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said in a report on Monday that he was unexpectedly invited on March 13 to an encrypted chat group on the Signal messaging app called the \u201cHouthi PC small group\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the group, national security adviser Mike Waltz tasked his deputy Alex Wong with setting up a \u201ctiger team\u201d to coordinate US action against the Houthis.<\/p>\n
National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said the chat group appeared to be authentic.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump launched an ongoing campaign of large-scale military strikes against Yemen\u2019s Houthis on March 15 over the group\u2019s attacks against Red Sea shipping, and he warned Iran, the Houthis\u2019 main backer, that it needed to immediately halt support for the group.<\/p>\n
Hours before those attacks started, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth posted operational details about the plan in the messaging group, \u201cincluding information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing\u201d, Goldberg said.<\/p>\n
His report omitted the details but Goldberg termed it a \u201cshockingly reckless\u201d use of a Signal chat.<\/p>\n
Accounts that appeared to represent Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and senior National Security Council officials were assembled in the chat group, Goldberg wrote.<\/p>\n
Joe Kent, Trump\u2019s nominee for National Counterterrorism Center director, was apparently on the Signal chain despite not yet being Senate-confirmed. Trump told reporters at the White House that he was unaware of the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about it. I\u2019m not a big fan of The Atlantic,\u201d Trump said. A White House official said later that an investigation was under way and Trump had been briefed on it.<\/p>\n
The NSC\u2019s Hughes said in a statement: \u201cAt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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 our servicemembers or our national security.\u201d Hegseth denied sharing war plans in the group chat.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody was texting war plans, and that\u2019s all I have to say about that,\u201d he told reporters while on an official trip to Hawaii on Monday.<\/p>\n
Goldberg responded to Hegseth\u2019s denial in an interview on CNN late on Monday by saying, \u201cNo, that\u2019s a lie. He was texting war plans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top Trump administration officials mistakenly disclosed war plans in a messaging group that included a journalist shortly before the US attacked Yemen\u2019s Houthis, the White House said on Monday, following a first-hand account by The Atlantic. Democratic lawmakers swiftly blasted the misstep, saying it was a breach of US national security and a violation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7359,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7357\/revisions\/7359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}