A previously scheduled U.S. Senate intelligence committee hearing on global threats was upstaged Tuesday by the revelation that top Trump administration officials mistakenly disclosed war plans in a messaging group that included a journalist shortly before the U.S. attacked Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said in a report on Monday that he was unexpectedly invited on March 13 to an encrypted chat group on the Signal messaging app called the “Houthi PC small group.” In the group, national security adviser Mike Waltz tasked his deputy Alex Wong with setting up a “tiger team” to co-ordinate U.S. action against the Houthis.
“Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system, it’s also just mind-boggling” that no one thought to check the participants on the group chat, said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat.
U.S. President Donald Trump launched an ongoing campaign of large-scale military strikes against Yemen’s Houthis on March 15 over the group’s attacks against Red Sea shipping, and he warned Iran, the Houthis’ main backer, that it needed to immediately halt support for the group.
Hours before those attacks started, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth posted operational details about the plan in the messaging group, “including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg said. His report omitted the details but Goldberg termed it a “shockingly reckless” use of a Signal chat.
Top official ‘has learned a lesson’: Trump
Warner called on both Hegseth and Waltz to resign, but Trump expressed support for his national security adviser in a phone interview with NBC News.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” said Trump.
Accounts that appeared to represent Vice-President JD Vance, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and senior National Security Council officials were assembled in the chat group, Goldberg wrote.
Joe Kent, Trump’s nominee for National Counterterrorism Center director, was apparently on the Signal chain despite not yet being Senate-confirmed.
Ratcliffe denied that any classified material was discussed in the group chat, to the bafflement of several Democratic senators, while saying that the use of Signal was permissible under the circumstances.
“It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
The chat, Ratcliffe said, was a “mechanism for co-ordinating with senior officials, but not a substitute for using high-side, or classified, communications for anything that would be classified.”
Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet expressed astonishment that Ratcliffe, as CIA director, was unaware Goldberg was on the chat list.
“It’s an embarrassment. You need to do better,” said Bennet.
‘How can our allies ever trust us?’
Created by the entrepreneur Moxie Marlinspike, Signal has gone from an exotic messaging app used by privacy-conscious dissidents to the unofficial whisper network of Washington officialdom. Signal does not use U.S. government encryption and is not hosted on government servers.
Under U.S. law, it can be a crime to mishandle, misuse or abuse classified information.
Democrat Mark Warner spars with Trump administration officials, after it was revealed that a journalist was added to a sensitive group chat discussing plans to strike the Houthi militant group.
According to screenshots of the chat reported by The Atlantic, officials in the group debated whether the U.S. should carry out the strikes, and at one point Vance appeared to question whether U.S. allies in Europe, more exposed to shipping disruption in the region, deserved U.S. help.
Republicans on the panel stuck mostly to the previously scheduled agenda, asking the invited administration officials about threats from China and international drug cartels.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney was asked on the federal election campaign trail whether he had any concerns about Canada sharing confidential information with the U.S. in light of The Atlantic’s story.
Carney said it was a “serious issue,” from which lessons must be taken. He added that Canada has “a very strong intelligence partnership with the U.S. through Five Eyes,” an intelligence alliance between several countries.
Asked about the mistaken disclosure in London, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government was confident any communication of British intelligence with the U.S. would not be leaked.
But back in D.C., Warner said the “Signal fiasco” was the latest disorienting act from the U.S., which has included “treating our allies like adversaries,” mentioning reports that White House adviser Peter Navarro’s suggestion that Canada should be dropped from the Five Eyes intelligence-gathering alliance.
“How can our allies ever trust us as the kind of partner we used to be?”
The Current23:05Could the U.S. push Canada out of the Five Eyes spy network?
The White House has denied reports that the U.S. is trying to eject Canada from the Five Eyes, the spy network both countries share with the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. We look at the critical role the U.S. plays in global intelligence, and whether it’s still a reliable partner.
Trump downplays incident
In the aforementioned NBC interview, Trump described the group chat revelation as “the only glitch in two months” of his new administration, adding, “it turned out not to be a serious one.”
But last week it was learned that social security numbers were inadvertently released in a document dump related to investigations into high-profile American political assassinations of the 1960s.
As well, Democrats have accused the administration of improperly allowing billionaire adviser Elon Musk and a team under his auspices access to sensitive government information, as well as some information belonging to American citizens. Musk and members of that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team were not confirmed to their roles by the Senate.
Between his presidential terms, Trump was indicted after classified documents were alleged to have been found at two of his properties, in Florida and New Jersey. Trump faced charges under the Espionage Act, until a judge controversially dismissed the case. Trump’s election win in November essentially killed any chances for federal prosecutors to appeal that decision.
Trump in his first term was accused of tweeting U.S. surveillance secrets related to Iran in 2019, and revealing Israeli intelligence to Russian counterparts two years prior to that.
Trump first won election in 2016, when he seized on the careless handling of information by his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state. The FBI probed Clinton’s handling of classified material and use of a private server, but declined to pursue criminal charges.
