A new report claims that Trump administration officials accidentally leaked secret plans for U.S. military strikes against the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen to a journalist prior to the recent strikes.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, released a report on Monday regarding the leak of the secret military strike plans, claiming that he has “never seen a breach quite like this.”
In his report, Goldberg said he received a request on Signal, a messaging platform, to connect with a user identified as Michael Waltz, who is President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, on March 11. According to Goldberg, the user then added him to a group chat called “Houthi PC small group” on March 13.
According to The Atlantic, Trump administration officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, used the group chat to discuss secret plans to execute strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
The report claims that Vance told the group he was “willing to support the consensus of the team” but believed the strikes would be “inconsistent” with the President’s “message on Europe right now” and that there was a “strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
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According to Goldberg, Hegseth told the group, “We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should.” Goldberg added that at 11:44 a.m. on March 15, Hegseth provided a “team update” regarding the “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
In response to Monday’s report, Brian Hughes, a National Security Council spokesperson, told The Atlantic, “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials,” Hughes added. “The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
According to Newsweek, Trump told reporters on Monday that he did not know anything about The Atlantic’s report. “I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said. “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. But I know nothing about it.”
After a reporter shared some of the details of The Atlantic’s article, Trump added, “Well, it couldn’t have been very effective because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that. I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.”