Updated Senior Trump administration officials used the messaging app Signal to discuss detailed plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen – and accidentally added a journalist to the group in which they chatted.
That scribe was Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief at The Atlantic, who on March 11 was invited by US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz to join a Signal group named “Houthi PC small group.”
Goldberg reported Monday Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller were also members of the group.
The journo assumed he was invited by mistake, and said he hung around to observe the ensuing discussion. Over the next few days, the top officials shared what one would assume is classified information about planned attacks on Houthi terrorists, including details of an assault scheduled for March 15 and the types of weapons that would be used.
The Trump lieutenants discussed how to explain the airstrikes to the American public, whether European nations would pay for the strikes (under the rationale that the EU would see the biggest benefits from shipping lanes reopening as a result of the military action) and how soon to act.
In one message in the encrypted discussion, Hegseth wrote: “I will do all we can to enforce 100 percent OPSEC [operations security]. I welcome other thoughts."
Goldberg eventually saw a message describing imminent airstrikes. The message arrived two hours before the missiles were fired.
The Signal chat "appears to be an authentic message chain," a National Security Council spokesperson told Goldberg after he contacted the administration for comment.
But, her emails!
Military analyst and retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan has described the use of the secure chat app in this matter as “appalling.”
“By using Signal for such a sensitive issue, the participants demonstrate a cavalier attitude to operational security,” he wrote Tuesday, Australian time. “For a Secretary of Defense who allegedly values a war-fighting ethos, this shortfall in security is appalling. In normal times, this would see people sacked. I don’t expect that in this case though because these are not normal times.”
“Why aren’t they using more secure communications that are assured by the NSA or another government communications agency?” he added. The Register understands chat tools used by those agencies include features that prevent, say, journalists from participating in group chats.
Another question worth asking is why the group’s members used Signal, and why they set at least some of the messages to auto-delete, which may well be a violation of federal records-keeping laws.
Using Signal for this political-administrative discussion is also extraordinary given that a constant refrain of President Trump's 2015 presidential election campaign was the need to "lock up" Hillary Clinton for using a private server for her emails.
And as Ryan pointed out: “By communicating on devices which were transmitting information about a future operation in real time to a journalist, the conversation may also have been compromised by other foreign interested parties. As a result, might the entire operation to strike the Houthis have been compromised, and the lives of military personnel put at risk?”
How many Signal chats with sensitive information about military operations are ongoing within the Pentagon right now?
Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) has called for an immediate probe. "How many Signal chats with sensitive information about military operations are ongoing within the Pentagon right now? Where else are war plans being shared with such abject disregard for our national security? We need answers. Right now."
The OPSEC blunder is doubly embarrassing for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who on March 14 thundered on Twitter: “Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
Goldberg had been a member of the group for three days at the time of that tweet.
Signal co-founder Moxie Marlinspike couldn't hide his glee.
"There are so many great reasons to be on Signal," he opined. "Now including the opportunity for the vice president of the United States of America to randomly add you to a group chat for coordination of sensitive military operations. Don’t sleep on this opportunity…"
At a Monday press conference, President Trump was asked about the affair, and denied any knowledge of it.
"I don't know anything about it," said the commander in chief. "I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me it's a magazine that's going out of business. But I know nothing about it." ®
Updated to add on March 25
A few more interesting details have emerged in the past day or so about the Signal super-SNAFU. First, it turns out the NSA warned its staff last month that Russian snoops were using Signal QR codes in phishing campaigns to trick marks into linking their devices to those controlled by the miscreants so that victims' encrypted messages could be read.
Google, for one, publicly warned everyone about this around that time.
The NSA also said Signal, as well as WhatsApp, must not be used to transmit classified materials.
Secondly, it appears one of the participants in the chatter - President Trump's Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff - was added to the group chat session while on a visit to Russia.
Thirdly, at a US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today, DNI Tulsi Gabbard insisted no classified information was exchanged on the group chat. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) wasn't having any of that, and challenged her to release the full conversation seeing as apparently none of the discussed secret military plans were classified.