Alarming element in Trump’s leaked conflict chat as journalist mistakenly added to high secret group textual content message tells all
The journalist added to a group chat involving several of Donald Trump’s most important cabinet members discussing war plans has shot back at Pete Hegseth’s blistering denial of the story.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, made the jaw-dropping revelation on Monday when he found himself added to a conversation on Signal, an encrypted messaging app.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz started the chat which included users identified as Vice President Vance , Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a CIA representative, Trump adviser Stephen Miller and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Goldberg spoke to CNN Monday night, revealing how the chat included ‘attack plans,’ locations and identities of targets and the ‘sequence’ of strikes against the Houthis which showed Hegseth’s denial of the story was ‘a lie.’
‘No, that’s a lie. He was texting war plans, he was texting attack plans. When targets were gonna be targeted, how they were gonna be targeted, who was at the targets, when the next sequence of attacks were happening,’ he said.
The defense secretary, appearing for the first time since the story was published after a flight to Hawaii, lashed out at Goldberg similar to how President Donald Trump slammed his magazine.
‘So you are talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes, time and time again.’
He cited various stories The Atlantic has run on Trump‘s alleged connections to Russia, his ‘very fine people’ comments after the Charlottesville riots being taken out of context and the alleged ‘suckers and losers’ comments on soldiers killed in war.
The journalist added to a group chat involving several of Donald Trump’s most important cabinet members discussing war plans shot back at Pete Hegseth’s blistering denial of the story
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, made the jaw-dropping revelation on Monday when he found himself added to a conversation on Signal, an encrypted messaging app
‘This is a guy who peddles in garbage. This is what he does,’ Hegseth added.
He praised American troops fighting the Houthis in Yemen and criticized the Biden administration for their own performance.
A reporter asked Hegseth: ‘Why were those details shared on signal?’
Hegseth replied: ‘I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that.’
When reached for comment, a spokesman for the Pentagon told DailyMail.com: ‘We do not have anything to offer beyond the Secretary’s remarks.’
Goldberg added that there was more he didn’t publish ‘because it was too consequential, too technical and I worry that sharing that information in public could be harmful to American military personnel.’
He set the scene that he was sitting in a supermarket parking lot watching the chat unfold.
‘They were running a war plan on a messaging app and didn’t even know who was in the conversation, it’s an obvious, ridiculous, security breach and if you notice, he didn’t actually answer the question.’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (pictured) adamantly denied the story – despite the National Security Council appearing to confirm its validity – and called Goldberg a serial liar
He added: ‘They’re supposed to keep all those conversations on the high side, the classified side, that’s why they have that.’
The editor adds that he had no idea who could have invited him into the chat nor does he know who they meant to invite.
‘How could you possibly invite the editor of The Atlantic into your chat? What are the chances of that?
Goldberg added that he felt ‘real anxiety and anger’ about the ‘sloppiness’ of those involved.
‘Remember, American service people were involved directly in this attack. It wasn’t just standoff weapons fired from a thousand miles away. You know, you can’t just put out this kind of information and hope for the best.’
Goldberg joked that those involved are ‘lucky they didn’t send this to a Houthi by mistake or a foreign diplomat or somebody who could be in their phones, I guess they could count that as a kind of luck.’
He added that the entire team never seemed to question his place in the group chat, nor contacted him when he left it.
‘It’s a level of incuriosity, I guess that’s the nice way of saying it, a level of recklessness that I have not seen in many years of national security reporting,’ he said.
When reached for comment, a spokesman for the Pentagon told DailyMail.com: ‘We do not have anything to offer beyond the Secretary’s remarks.’
Goldberg was also stunned to see JD Vance disagreeing the president, breaking with Trump and also questioning his knowledge on the subject.
Goldberg (pictured left) shot back in the CNN interview with Kaitlan Collins (pictured right), saying that Hegseth was not telling the truth
Speaking out for the first time since the story took over the news cycle Monday, Goldberg said he was fascinated by Vance’s thoughts, breaking with Trump and also questioning his knowledge on the subject
‘I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices,’ Vance wrote.
‘There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message,’ the Vance user continued.
‘He’s basically just told the entire cabinet that he disagrees with the president’s decision and not only that, that he doesn’t think the president understands,’ Goldberg told CNN.
‘That’s pretty heavy, he doesn’t think the president understands the consequences and ramifications. That was very revealing and interesting,’ he added.
Vance added: ‘I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.’
Goldberg set the scene for the shocking tell-all by confirming he’d had no prior invite to the American security state’s secrets
‘It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app,’ he wrote in The Atlantic.
The shocking story shows operational details were unwittingly revealed. Defense Secretary Hegseth, a former Fox News host, is now under the microscope over the egregious failing.
Goldberg was also stunned to see JD Vance (pictured center) disagreeing the president, breaking with Trump and also questioning his knowledge on the subject
Goldberg noted that ‘Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m.’ The bombs started dropping in Yemen around 2 p.m.
Trump told reporters at the White House he hadn’t seen The Atlantic story: ‘I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic. It’s to me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business.’
When pressed about the Signal chat, Trump said: ‘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.’
Goldberg outlined the bizarre tale, where he first expressed disbelief about the text chain, questioned whether or not it was real and then realized it was genuine when ‘the bombs started falling.’
He admits he ‘could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.’
The reporter appeared as ‘JG’ in the chat. It’s unclear who Waltz meant to add but Jamieson Greer, the US Trade Representative, has the same initials, sparking speculation it was meant to be him.
Goldberg didn’t disclose all the information on the chat, citing national security concerns.
The White House expressed confidence in Waltz.
When pressed about the Signal chat, Donald Trump (pictured center) said: ‘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’
‘As President Trump said, the attacks on the Houthis have been highly successful and effective. President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz,’ press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
The National Security Council confirmed the chat was authentic.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters at her daily briefing: ‘We will not comment, and you should contact the White House.’
If true, it is an astonishing security breach.
Trump ordered the strikes against the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen as a warning to Tehran. The Houthi rebels were targeting ships on the Red Sea from countries with ties to Israel, including the U.S. and UK.
Waltz started the principles group on Signal to coordinate on it, naming it ‘Houthi PC small group.’
Goldberg had his doubts when he found himself added, admitting he was worried that the text chain was a ‘disinformation operation.’
But he also found, as he watched the texts flow, that the statements in it sounded genuine and some of the details matched up.
The chat was started by Trump National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (pictured right)
Smoke plumes rise above buildings following bombardment on Yemen’s Huthi-controlled capital Sanaa after the U.S. strikes
For example, the account labeled Vance texted he would miss a meeting because he would be in Michigan for an economic event. And, indeed, the vice president was in Michigan on the day in question.
That’s where Vance also expressed his doubts about the operation.
Vance’s account expressed concerns about the timing of the proposed operation, warning of oil prices spiking as a result.
Hegseth responded he understood: ‘VP: I understand your concerns – and fully support you raising w/ POTUS. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (economy, Ukraine peace, Gaza, etc). I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what.’
After some discussion, Vance concedes: ‘If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.’
Goldberg, watching the exchange play out on his Signal app, admitted he was ‘mystified that no one in the group seemed to have noticed my presence.’
He also writes he voluntarily held back information that was in a lengthy text written by Hegseth because if it ‘had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.’
‘What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,’ Goldberg added.
The principles on the chat responded to Hegseth, however.
‘I will say a prayer for victory,’ Vance wrote.
‘Two other users subsequently added prayer emoji,’ Goldberg notes.
Realizing if the chat was real, bombs would begin to hit targets in Yemen at 1:45 pm ET, Goldberg ‘waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot.’
‘If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.’
Goldberg returned to the group chat were he found a flurry of emojis and congratulations flying throughout the text chain.
Waltz responded with three emoji, he noted: a fist, an American flag, and fire.
Susie Wiles wrote: ‘Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really great. God bless.’
Steve Witkoff added five emoji: two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two American flags.
Goldberg wrote he voluntarily left the group chat and promptly contacted the figures in it to ask about it.
Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded to him, confirming the chat was real.
‘This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,’ Hughes wrote. ‘The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.’
