(NEW YORK) — The Atlantic on Wednesday published a new article detailing purported information about recent American strikes in Yemen it says was accidentally shared with a journalist via Signal by senior members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council.
The follow-up article in The Atlantic disputes the administration’s claims that no classified information was shared on the group, to which editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added. Officials within the administration are “attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the article said.
The article suggested that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth updated members of the “Houthi PC small group” Signal chat on “favorable” weather conditions ahead of planned airstrikes on Houthi leaders and other targets in Yemen.
The article said Hegseth also notified the group of a planned timeline for flights of F-18 strike aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles that were launched for the mission.
“THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets,” Hegseth wrote ahead of the operation, referencing the time stamp of “1415,” or 2:15, according to The Atlantic.
U.S. Central Command confirmed those details on the day of the strikes by releasing footage as well as other images showing the take off of Navy F-18’s from the carrier USS Harry S Truman in the Red Sea.
The White House has insisted the communications in the group chat were not war plans, that the information was not classified and criticized The Atlantic journalist who detailed the account — though it has not disputed the authenticity of the messages.
“No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests,” national security adviser Michael Waltz posted on X.
“Nobody’s texting war plans,” Hegseth said on Wednesday. “I noticed this morning out came something that doesn’t look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans because they know it’s not war plans.”
“It’s very clear Goldberg oversold what he had,” Vice President JD Vance posted to X.
Goldberg, during an interview with ABC News Live anchor Kyra Phillips, responded to the administration pushback.
“They have decided obviously, instead of simply saying, ‘Yeah we had a security breach and we’re going to try to plug that breach and do better next time,’ they’ve decided to blame the guy who they invited into the conversation,” Goldberg said.
“It’s a little bit strange behavior, honestly,” Goldberg continued. “I don’t know why they’re acting like this, except to think that they know how serious a national security breach it is and so they have to deflect it and push it on to the guy, again, they invited into the chat, namely me.”
Goldberg criticized the administration for going after The Atlantic’s description of the chat as war plans, calling it “semantic games.”
“They’re throwing up all these smokescreens to avoid being questioned about why they were so reckless as to have sensitive conversations like this in Signal and why they invited a journalist and didn’t even know that a journalist was there,” he said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged on Wednesday that “obviously someone made a big mistake,” but insisted that the overall mission was never jeopardized.
ABC News contributor Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official and CIA officer, said the information shared on the commercial app appeared to detail an ongoing operation that shouldn’t be shared publicly.
In Mulroy’s opinion, “It is highly classified and protected. Disclosure would compromise the operation and put lives at risk. Next to nuclear and covert operations this information is the most protected.”
The initial story in The Atlantic only described the operational part of the message chain, but did not divulge specifics.
According to the article, Hegseth later messaged the group with after-action updates, notifying members that specific Houthi leaders had been located and identified immediately before strikes on their locations.
Democrats are demanding answers after the mishap as they express alarm about the administration’s handling of national security information.
Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee, criticized top intelligence officials as they appeared for a hearing on Wednesday.
“I think that it’s by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now,” Himes said. “Two general officers sitting at the table and the people who work for all of you know that if they had set up and participated in the Signal chat, they would be gone, and they know that there’s only one response to a mistake of this magnitude.”
“You apologize, you own it and you stop everything until you can figure out what went wrong, what went wrong, and how it might not ever happen again. That’s not what happened,” Himes said.
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