Security sloppiness at the White House: Yemen war plans shared with Atlantic editor over Signal – News

The National Security Council today said it’s reviewing an incident in which The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal chat in which top White House officials discussed operational war plans against the Houthis in Yemen.

Goldberg, who described the experience in an article today, said he couldn’t believe it was real until the “bombs started falling.” The White House has since confirmed its officials made a major blooper. The National Security Council said that “an inadvertent number was added to the chain” in what was a “deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”

There were 18 people in the chat, including U.S. Secretary of Defense and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth (pictured). Some of the other big names in the group were Vice President J.D. Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.

Goldberg said he received a connection request on March 11 from Waltz, believing at first that it might be a hoax, given what he said was the “Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists.” He didn’t think it impossible that someone might be making him privy to false information to later “entrap” him. Two days later, he received a request to join a group named, “Houthi PC small group.”

“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,” wrote Goldberg. “I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.”

The bizarreness continued as Goldberg saw Vance air his thoughts on the matter of a strike, calling it a “mistake,” noting that the U.S.’s European allies would be the benefactors of such a strike regarding the protection of shipping lanes. Hegseth replied, “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading, it’s pathetic,” a statement that reflects the realism of foreign policy discussion but not something the public is used to hearing.

Goldberg didn’t publish all the details, but said he was also sent “information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.” He waited, and indeed, the bombs started to fall.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump later said when questioned by a reporter about the Signal fiasco. He added, “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine, but I know nothing about it.”

The question now is: Was this highly secretive information sent over a nongovernmental medium a breach of the Espionage Act of 1917? Heads might not roll, but it’s going to take some time to wipe the egg from the Trump administration’s face.

Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr