Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to answer difficult questions from reporters about inconsistencies in his public statements about a leaked Signal war plan chat after The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the group, revealed full text of the chat Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters at an airport in Hawaii, Hegseth insisted that the information he shared in the unsecured Signal chat was not classified war plans and attacked The Atlantic for referring to the leaked plans as “attack plans” instead of “war plans.”
“Nobody’s texting war plans,” he told reporters. “As a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans, because they know it’s not war plans.”
“There’s no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information,” he added.
Hegseth then headed for the plane as reporters who were assembled peppered him with questions about the inconsistencies in his public comments and what the messages show.
“Mr. Secretary, how do you square what you said with what your messages show?” one reporter shouted.
“Mr. Secretary, did you share classified information? asked another. Mr.Secretary, did you declassify that information before you put into text?” a third reporter shouted as Hegseth fled.
Goldberg posted pictures of messages Hegseth sent the chat listing the planned launch times of F-18s and Tomahawks in an attack against Houthis in Yemen before the strike.
A senior defense official told CNN that the plans would have been classified at the time of Hegseth’s text and that anyone in uniform would have been court martialed of the did what Hegseth did.
