U.S. officials face questions after reporter included in Yemen plans chat

The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic on Monday said national security advisors inadvertently included him in a group chat where they planned airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. Jeffrey Goldberg said he received details of targets, weapons to be used, and attack sequencing. He was also privy to discussions about whether the strikes were in America’s best interests.

The strikes, which have continued for more than a week, began just over two hours after Goldberg reportedly received the plans.

The group chat on encrypted commercial messaging app Signal included 18 top officials. Goldberg said National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added him to the chat.

Is the group chat authentic? Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told Goldberg the chat appeared to be authentic and served as an example of the tight coordination between senior policy officials, The Atlantic reported. However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was allegedly part of the chat, told Fox News nobody was texting war plans.

How did the White House respond to the incident? White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Goldberg’s story was overblown and that no classified information or war plans were sent to the group chat. She said the White House is investigating how Goldberg was inadvertently included in the group. Trump still has confidence in his national security team, including Waltz, she said.

President Donald Trump appeared to be unaware of the situation until a journalist asked him about it after a Monday cabinet meeting. Trump later shared a link to a satirical article by the Babylon Bee that lampooned what it characterized as The Atlantic’s low readership.

A Friday Defense Department memo published before the news broke said top officials’ unauthorized disclosures of national security information would be thoroughly investigated. The Office of the Secretary of Defense planned to refer responsible parties for criminal prosecution.

How did other elected officials respond? In a Tuesday Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) characterized the breach as part of a continuing pattern of security failures by the Trump administration. Warner in an earlier X post also said Hegseth and Waltz should resign. But the intelligence committee’s chairman, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), told Fox that the presentation of the annual Worldwide Threat Report was a much more important topic of the hearing. Cotton also said the Signal app is standard for much of internal government communication.

Did intelligence officials give more details about the group chat during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing? Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did not respond to Warner’s questions about the chat during the hearing, saying the incident was still under review by the National Security Council. She also did not confirm whether the information discussed was classified. FBI Director Kash Patel said he had just been briefed about the leak and could not give an update as to whether his agency was investigating it.