Hegseth has disclosed the secret war plans in the group chat with the Atlantic journalist

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth revealed the war plans in a encrypted group chat that included a journalist two hours before the US troops launched attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen, said the White House on Monday, confirming an account in the magazine The Atlantic.

The editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, written in an article Published Monday that he was mistakenly added to the text chat on the commercial messaging app of Michael Waltz, a national security consultant.

It was an extraordinary violation of the American national security intelligence. Not only did the journalist be inadvertently included in the group, but also the conversation took place outside the safe government channels that would normally be used for the planning of the classified and highly sensitive war.

Goldberg said he was able to follow the conversation among the senior members of the national security team of President Trump in the two days preceding the strikes in Yemen. The group also included vice -president JD Vance and the secretary of state Marco Rubio, wrote Goldberg.

At 11:44 on March 15, Mr. Hegseth published the “operational details of the next strikes on the Yemen, including the information on the objectives, the weapons that the United States would have deployed and sequencing the attacks”, wrote Goldberg. “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an opponent of the United States, could have been used to damage American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the wider Middle East.”

In an interview, Mr. Goldberg said that “until Hegseth’s text on Saturday, was mainly procedural and political messages. Then he became war plans and, to tell the truth, that he made me cold along my back”.

Mr. Goldberg has not published the details of the war plans in his article.

Mr. Hegseth, Goldberg wrote, said that “the first detonations in Yemen would feel two hours from here, at 13:45 now oriental. So I waited in my car in a supermarket car park”.

“If this signal chat were real, I thought, Houthi’s goals would soon come bombed,” he added.

Around 1:55, the initial air attacks hit buildings in the neighborhoods inside and around Sana, the capital of Yemen, who were known strongholds of the leadership Houthi, second Officials and residents of the Pentagon. The strikes continued throughout Saturday and the next few days.

Mr. Hegseth wrote Goldberg, declared to the group – who included the journalist – who had been taken steps to keep the information secret.

“We are currently clean on Oopsec,” wrote Hegseth, using the military acronym for operational security.

Several officials of the Department of Defense expressed shock for the fact that Hegseth had put American war plans in a group of commercial chat. They said that having this type of conversation in a group of signal chat itself could be a violation of the espionage, a law that covers the management of sensitive information.

Revealing the operational war plans before the planned strikes could also put American troops directly in danger, the officials said. And former FBI officials who worked on cases of losses described it as a devastating violation of national security. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a significant question of national security.

Former national security officials said that if personal cell phones were used in group chat, the behavior would be even more excellent due to In progress Chinese hacking efforts.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the democratic ranking of the armed services committee, said that “history represents one of the most striking failures of operational safety and common sense I have ever seen”.

“Military operations must be managed with the utmost discretion and precision, using approved safe communication lines, because American lives are online,” he added.

Republican senators faced a burst of questions. Many said they were worried, but most were holding the judgment until they could not receive a complete briefing.

“It seems that errors have been made, there is no doubt,” said Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who is the president of the Chamber’s armed services committee. “We will try to get to the ground and take the appropriate actions.”

The representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who is located in the Chamber’s Intelligence Committee, told CNN that his panel would have sent an investigation to the office of the National H intelligence director and therefore determined if a more complete survey is justified.

But President Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, rejected the idea of ​​further investigations or discipline for the officials involved. “I was told that they are doing an investigation to find out how that number was included, and this should be that,” Johnson told journalists on the Capitol, referring to the officials of the White House. “I’m not sure it requires a lot of additional attention.”

Trump, talking to the journalists of the White House, said he did not know the article in the Atlantic. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said, adding, “I’m talking about it for the first time.”

The Pentagon has postponed questions about the article to the National Security Council. Mr. Hegseth was traveling to Hawaii on Monday, his first stop on a week’s trip to Asia. He spoke with journalists who travel with him after having landed in Hawaii, called Mr. Goldberg an “so -called journalist” and, when he pressed, he said that “nobody was sending messages to war plans, and that’s all I have to say about it.”

But the White House seemed to contradict him. “At the moment, the thread of messages that has been reported seems to be authentic and we are examining how an involuntary number has been added to the chain,” said Brian Hughes, spokesperson for the National Security Council, in a declaration via e -mail. He defined the thread “a demonstration of the profound and thoughtful political coordination between high officials”.

The spokesperson of the State Department, Tammy Bruce, said in a press briefing that would not have commented on Rubio’s “deliberative conversations” and directed further questions to the White House.

The group chat also included a dissent from Mr. Vance, who defined the times of Yemen’s operation a “error”. He and Mr. Hegseth both supported in the chat that European countries benefited from the efforts of the United States Navy to protect shipping lanes from Houthi’s attacks.

“I’m not sure that the president is aware of how inconsistent he is with his message in Europe at this moment,” wrote Vance before the operation. He said he was “willing to support the team’s consent and keep these concerns for me”.

But he added that “I only hate saving Europe”.

Mr. Hegseth replied: “I fully agree with your hatred for free European loading. It’s pathetic.” But, he said, “I think we should go.”

During his first term, Trump repeatedly said that Hillary Clinton, his democratic rival in the 2016 elections, should have been imprisoned for the use of a private e -mail server to communicate with his staff and others while he was a state secretary. Mr. Waltz, for his part, published On social media in June 2023: “The national security councilor of Biden, Jake Sullivan, sent top secret messages to the private account of Hillary Clinton. And what did Doj do in this regard? It’s not a damned thing.”

In his numerous television apparitions before becoming a secretary of defense, Hegseth also expressed Mrs. Clinton for using a private e -mail server. Through the social media on Monday, those critical were reappeared. “Hey @petehegseth_dod, this you?” Read a post, accompanying a video Mr. Hegseth in the fox business saying that Mrs. Clinton “betrayed her country” for “comfort”.

Mrs. Clinton, for her part, republished the history of the Atlantic social media With a comment: “You’re making fun of me”.

The report was contributed by Michael Crowley, Adam Goldman, Maya C. Miller AND MINHO KIM.