Journalist Was Accidentally Included in War Plan Chat

In what Democratic lawmakers say was an "outrageous national security breach," the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic was included in a group chat where high-ranking members of the Trump administration discussed plans for strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen. Jeffrey Goldberg says that on March 15, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted him "precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing." Goldberg says he wasn't sure the chat was real until bombs started falling on Yemen around two hours later.

• The Signal chat. Goldberg says he received a connection request on March 11 from someone called Michael Waltz, but he wasn't sure if it really was President Trump's national security adviser. Two days later, he says, he was invited to a chat titled "Houthi PC small group" with 18 members, including people identified as Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and senior National Security Council members.

• The Signal chat, II. Goldberg says the chat included disagreement on the strikes, with Vance calling it a "mistake," noting that Houthi rebels' targeting of shipping affects European trade much more than American trade. Goldberg says Hegseth told Vance he shared his "loathing of European free-loading," but he agreed with Waltz's assessment that "we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this." Goldberg says he removed himself from the chat when it became clear that it wasn't some kind of hoax. "No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there," he says. "And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was."
• Confirmation. "This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain," a National Security Council spokesperson told Goldberg.
• Shock in Washington. Democratic lawmakers said they were shocked by the security lapse and called for an investigation, Politico reports. "Only one word for this: FUBAR. If House Republicans won't hold a hearing on how this happened IMMEDIATELY, I'll do it my damn self," Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a post on X. "This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll," Rep. Chris Deluzio, another Democratic member of the committee, said in a statement to Axios.

• The app. Officials are being criticized over the use of the app as well as the leak to a journalist. Signal is not classified and can be hacked, the AP notes. Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that if reports are true, the lapse "represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen." Military operations, he said, "need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line. The carelessness shown by President Trump's cabinet is stunning and dangerous." Goldberg notes that in his text with details of the strikes, Hegseth wrote, "We are currently clean on OPSEC," meaning operational security.
• Trump weighs in. Asked about the group chat Monday, Trump said he didn't know anything about it and criticized the magazine. "I'm not a big fan of the Atlantic," he said, per CBS News. "It's, to me, it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it's not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it.

(More national security stories.)