The early months of President Donald Trump's second term have been characterized by a sort of weaponized bumbling: an oafishness and lack of care that has made his administration no less effective at dismantling the checks on the executive branch. However, knowing that the administration will approach all sensitive situations with disdain and disregard doesn't make the latest story from The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg any less shocking.
Goldberg reports that he was accidentally added to a group chat on the messaging app Signal by Trump Security Adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month. In the chat, Waltz spoke with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio about their then-upcoming attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Goldberg initially believed that the message was a cleverly orchestrated hoax, a ploy put forth by press-hostile actors to embarrass journalists by getting them to report false information. Goldberg's reluctance came from the belief that high-level officials would be more careful with sensitive data like the movements of the American military.
"I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans," he wrote.
Those doubts were put aside when Hegseth shared detailed info about the then-upcoming airstrikes on Houthi-held targets. Goldberg said he waited on the news from Yemen to confirm that the chat, hosted well outside of established security protocols for government officials, was legitimate. When Yemen's health ministry reported that 53 people had been killed by U.S. strikes on March 15, Goldberg knew that he had inadvertently been given the genuine article.
Goldberg did not share specifics on the operational information that Hegseth shared, for fear that the messages' content could endanger American operations.
"The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility," he wrote. "What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing."
The news of the leak shocked lawmakers in Washington. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., called the "incompetence" of Trump officials "staggering" in a post to social media. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said on X that such carelessness with government secrets "would normally involve a jail sentence."
"Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime," Coons wrote. "We can’t trust anyone in this dangerous administration to keep Americans safe."
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said that the administration was "playing fast and loose with our nation's most classified info" and chastised the Trump officials in a series of posts to X.
"Make no mistake: our allies are reading this war-plan-disclosure story too, and it’s making it less and less likely that they’ll want to share sensitive intel with us," he wrote.
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