How did The Alantic magazine’s editor wind up in a group chat where officials discussed imminent airstrikes? The Trump team’s explanations clash.
Tense back-and-forth over Pete Hegseth’s sobriety during House hearing
A Democratic representative grills Intel heads on whether Pete Hegseth was drinking when information including war plans was leaked to a journalist.
- President Trump said “a bad signal’ may have led to editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s being added to a group chat where officials discussed imminent air strikes.
- National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said he took responsibility for the editor’s inclusion in the chat, then said Elon Musk and “the best technical minds” were “looking at how this happened.”
To Donald Trump, the SignalGate disclosure was a mistake. The CIA director said his involvement was legal, while the director of national intelligence appeared to dodge a senator’s questions about it. And the defense secretary forcefully denied sharing classified airstrike plans in a group chat − and attacked the journalist who received them.
As members of the Trump administration scrambled to answer questions this week about how, why and what they discussed on a group chat that included The Atlantic magazine’s top editor, they sent different messages about who was responsible − even as the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee called for an independent investigation.
“It’s difficult to tell whether this is a coordinated effort to confuse the situation or if the level of incompetence and disregard for security is so steep that they really don’t know who is at fault for this mess,” said Kurt Braddock, a public communication professor at American University. “It could very well be both.”
A week of scrambling
“We are standing behind our entire national security team,” Vice President JD Vance, who was also on the chat, said from a U.S. military base in Greenland on Friday.
The confusion started after a Monday article in The Atlantic revealed how Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, had added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, with top officials discussing plans for a March 15 airstrike in Yemen.
The Atlantic originally withheld the details of the chat that contained Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s descriptions of what weapons would be used against Iran-backed Houthi militants and Waltz’s texts about hitting a key Houthi target. But after the Trump administration attacked The Atlantic’s credibility, it then published screenshots and details of Hegseth’s and Waltz’s disclosures, including screenshots.
“Nobody was texting war plans,” Hegseth told a group of reporters on Tuesday morning. Defense secretary attacked Goldberg as “deceitful and highly discredited.” He repeated Wednesday: “Nobody’s texting war plans.” The White House didn’t return a request for comment.
Hegseth’s texts, according to images published by The Atlantic, included the following:
- 1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)
- 1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)
“It would be fair to characterize that kind of information as operationally sensitive information that should not be released outside of government channels until the operation is concluded,” said Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who has other criticisms of Goldberg’s story.
Michael Williams, a professor of international affairs at Syracuse University who has consulted for the Defense Department, said time, capability, and targets are always classified information at the Pentagon.
“Maybe he didn’t think it was classified information − but I was a very low-level staffer in government and that’s pretty basic,” Williams said.
So what happened?
Trump himself told NBC News, “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.” During the Tuesday interview, Trump placed blame on “a staffer” for having added Goldberg’s number to Waltz’s phone.
But Waltz said on Fox News later that night that he − not a staffer − was responsible. He also asked how Goldberg, whom he attacked as “the bottom scum of journalists,” was “the one who somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into this group.”
Waltz said he was working with tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk and “the best technical minds looking at how this happened.” He suggested Goldberg’s number was in his contacts under another person’s name.
Trump shifted his explanation again Wednesday, telling podcast host Vince Coglianese, “Someone in my group either screwed up or it’s a bad signal. You know, it’s a bad signal. Happens too.”
“But it seems to me that maybe he came in with a staffer and it was by accident from what we can tell,” Trump said.
Some observers said the officials were struggling for a persuasive explanation.
“The administration’s story keeps changing because they keep getting caught lying to try and minimize the magnitude of their mistakes,” said Kori Schake, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Not classified?
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, whom The Atlantic reported was in the chat, told a Senate panel Tuesday his contributions were “entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
Williams said it’s true that national security officials use Signal, but they should only use it to coordinate meetings. “I can call you from a secure location at X,” he used as an example.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, seated next to Ratcliffe in the hearing, declined to answer whether she was the person behind the initials “TG,” on the chat, saying she didn’t want to “get into the specifics.” The user “TG” offered Joe Kent, Gabbard’s acting chief of staff, as a point of contact.
“First of all, there’s a difference between inadvertent release versus malicious leaks of classified information,” Gabbard said. “The second point is, there was no classified information that was on this Signal group chat, and the National Security Council is reviewing how this occurred.”
‘Someone made a mistake’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Atlantic Tuesday night there was “no classified information” in the Signal chat.
“However … that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation,” she wrote, according to The Atlantic. “This was intended to be an internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters he was on the Signal chat in order to update members of Congress and foreign allies, and that his contributions were minimal.
“Obviously someone made a mistake,” Rubio said.
Secretary of Defense Hegseth says ‘nobody’s texting war plans’
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said “nobody’s texting war plans” and pushed back against the characterization of the leaked information.
Rubio said he was assured by the Pentagon that “none of the information on there at any point threatened the operation or the lives or our service members.”
On the podcast the same day, Trump assured the audience his investigation would finish soon.
“We’ll know, pretty much today, I think. We have some pretty good guys checking out the phones,” he said. “But it is something that is not a big deal other than you want to find out who did it and how they did it because you don’t want it to happen in the future.”
USA TODAY has reached out to the White House seeking the results of that investigation.
