Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth revealed ‘court- martial’ level secrets during a Signal chat with other Trump administration national security officials.
On Monday, The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported that national security officials in the Trump administration accidentally added him to a group text chat about strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
Goldberg’s report withheld certain information at the time, but he decided to release the full texts as the White House and cabinet officials insisted under oath that the information was not classified and no war plans were being discussed.
“The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions,” Goldberg wrote in the article disclosing the full texts.
The texts from the “Houthi PC small group” are unredacted, except for the name of one CIA intelligence officer, The Atlantic said.
The new messages revealed that Hegseth shared sensitive information, including timings for airstrikes against the Houthis before they began.
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 for it.
“The information Secretary of Defense Hegseth disclosed in the Signal chat was classified at the time he wrote it, especially because the operation had not even started yet,” Natasha Bertrand, CNN correspondent covering the Pentagon and national security, wrote on X, citing the U.S. defense official.
“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this,” the official said. “We don’t provide that level of information on unclassified systems, in order to protect the lives and safety of the servicemembers carrying out these strikes. If we did, it would be wholly irresponsible. My most junior analysts know not to do this.”
