The White House is currently reviewing how a journalist was accidentally added to a private chat thread discussing war plans.
On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg made the bombshell claim that he had received a connection request on the encrypted messaging service Signal on March 11, from someone identified as ‘Michael Waltz’.
While he initially did not believe it was the real Michael Waltz, who is President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, he accepted the request anyway, in case it was the real Waltz trying to reach out privately about something newsworthy.
However, he was later added to a group called ‘Houthi PC small group’ which had 18 members including ‘MAR’ who he believed was secretary of state Marco Antonio Rubio, ‘JD Vance’, ‘TG’ who he believed was Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, ‘Pete Hegseth’, and ‘Scott B’, who he believed was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The group engaged in detailed discussions about policy as well as explicit operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including which weapons the US would deploy as well as information on targets, shared by the account named as Pete Hegseth.
While he was initially skeptical about the legitimacy of the group after receiving the messages, Goldberg began to think it was authentic once the members began celebrating in the chat when bombs were dropped against Houthi militants in Yemen.
The Atlantic shared screenshots of some of the messages shared between the group, and the National Security Council said it believed the thread to be authentic.
The National Security Council said in a statement, shared by NBC News: “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
When asked about the incident and whether the material was classified, Hegseth made disparaging remarks about Goldberg, calling him a “so-called journalist”, and adding: “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
Goldberg responded to his comments by telling MSNBC during an interview on Monday: “He can say that it wasn’t a war plan, but it was a minute-by-minute accounting of what was about to happen organized by CENTCOM [Central Command].
“This is their plan, and he was taking their plan and sharing it with a bunch of civilian leaders.”
He added that Hegseth appeared to be “trying to deflect from the fact that he participated in a conversation on an unclassified, commercial messaging app that you probably shouldn’t participate in.”
The National Security Council added in its statement: “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”
Goldberg’s article reports that the user named JD Vance had initially appeared to push back on the airstrike plans, saying: “I think we are making a mistake,” raising concerns about oil prices spiking, as well as Europe benefiting from US protection of global shipping lanes.
The same account later responded to the user named Pete Hegseth to say: “if you think we should do it let’s go.”
Vance’s office told NBC News in a statement that the vice president’s “first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations.
“Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”
He later made light of the incident by sharing a post by Elon Musk berating the publication. Musk had written: “Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic magazine because no one ever goes there.”
It was reported that Trump later read the article, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on a statement on Monday that the president “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”
Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate, who had previously faced intense criticism from Republicans for her use of a private email server, responded to the news by tweeting a screenshot of the Atlantic article and adding: “[Side-eye emoji] You have got to be kidding me.”
