The Atlantic on Wednesday published a transcript of text messages showing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailed U.S. military attack plans in Yemen in a Signal group chat that inadvertently included the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
In an article titled “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal,” Goldberg quoted from texts in which Hegseth specified types of U.S. military aircraft and the timing of recent airstrikes against Houthi militias in Yemen. The texts did not include information about specific targets.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” one of the texts says, referring to a type of military aircraft. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) — also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”
Goldberg and Shane Harris, a national security and intelligence reporter at The Atlantic, published the latest article a day after President Donald Trump’s administration tried to downplay the magazine’s first report about the Signal thread.
Asked about the matter Tuesday, Trump said: “It wasn’t classified information.” Hegseth, speaking to reporters Monday, said in part: “Nobody was texting war plans.”
On Wednesday, Trump was less definitive. Asked by reporters in the Oval Office if he still believes nothing classified was shared, Trump responded: “That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know. I’m not sure. You have to ask the various people involved. I really don’t know.”
In testimony at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe both claimed no classified material was shared in the group chat. Ratcliffe said his “communications ... in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
The intelligence officials both testified Tuesday that Hegseth was the “original classifying authority” on the chat.
Goldberg and Harris wrote in the article published Wednesday that “statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump — combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts — have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions.”
“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” Goldberg and Harris added.
Information about an upcoming U.S. military attack on an adversary is typically considered to be classified, according to at least four former national security and intelligence officials who handled legal matters.
The former officials did not know anything specific about the status of the information in the Signal chat, but they said it would be difficult to imagine a scenario in which details of military operations would not be treated as secret and damaging if disclosed.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt forcefully pushed back against The Atlantic’s latest report at a briefing later Wednesday.
"We have said all along that no classified material was sent on this messaging thread," she said. "There were no locations, no sources or methods revealed, and there were certainly no war plans discussed."
The National Security Council said Monday it was reviewing how Goldberg was accidentally added to a group text on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform that is widely believed to be more secure than other commercial texting applications but traditionally is not used for high-level government communications.
Leavitt said Wednesday that Elon Musk's team at the Department of Government Efficiency would also look into how Goldberg was added to the chat.
Goldberg reported that he had been added to a group chat called “Houthi PC small group” on March 13. He described his initial skepticism, recalling that he discussed with colleagues whether the texts were “part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service, or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization” seeking to embarrass journalists.
When the journalist came to believe the chat was authentic, he left it. “No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left — or, more to the point, who I was,” Goldberg wrote.
The incident has provoked intense criticism from Democratic lawmakers, some of whom have called for the resignations of Hegseth and Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz. (Goldberg has said a Signal user named “Michael Waltz” added him to the chat in the first place.)
Sen. Dick Durbin, of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday that he believes Gabbard and Ratcliffe “intentionally misled Congress yesterday in trying to make us believe that this was a casual conversation.”
“This is a serious life and death matter and should be treated as such," Durbin wrote in a statement on X.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said Wednesday he would request an “expedited” inspector general’s report into the matter.
Asked directly whether he believes the information discussed in the chat is — or should be — classified, Wicker replied: “The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified.”
Gabbard testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that the leaked group text chat was a mistake but reiterated her claim that no classified information was shared on the chain.
“The president and national security adviser Waltz held a press conference yesterday with a clear message [that] it was a mistake that a reporter was inadvertently added to a Signal chat with high-level national security principals having a policy discussion about imminent strikes against the Houthis and the effects of the strike,” Gabbard said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the participants in the group chat, told reporters Wednesday that it was "set up for purposes of coordinating how everyone was going" to notify people outside of the group, including members of Congress and foreign ambassadors.
Asked whether any classified information was shared in the chat, Rubio said, "Well, the Pentagon says it was not, and not only do they say it was not, they make very clear that it didn’t put in danger anyone’s life or the mission."
