Senior members of Donald Trump’s cabinet have been involved in a serious security breach while discussing secret military plans for recent US attacks on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
In an extraordinary blunder, key figures in the Trump administration – including the vice-president, JD Vance, the defense secretary Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app Signal to convene and discuss plans – while also including a prominent journalist in the group.
The news was met with outrage and calls for an investigation in the US, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer calling it “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time”
Signal is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.
Others in the chat included the Trump adviser Stephen Miller; Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and the key Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.
The breach was revealed in an article published on Monday by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, who discovered that he had been included in a Signal chat called “Houthi PC Small Group” and realizing that 18 other members of the group included Trump cabinet members.
In his account, Goldberg said that he removed sensitive material from his account, including the identity of a senior CIA officer and current operational details.
The report was confirmed by Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the national security council, who told the magazine: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
U.S Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his first comments on the matter, attacked Goldberg but did not shed light on why Signal was being used to discuss the sensitive operation or how Goldberg ended up on the message chain.
“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said in an exchange with reporters after landing in Hawaii on Monday as he began his first trip to the Indo-Pacific as defense secretary.
Goldberg responded to Hegseth’s denial in an interview on CNN late on Monday by saying, “No, that’s a lie. He was texting war plans.”
Hegseth accuses journalist of 'peddling hoaxes' after secret Houthi rebels attack war plans shared on app – video
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later released a statement saying: “President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including national security advisor Mike Waltz.”
Security and intelligence commentators in the US described the breach of operational security as unprecedented – both for the use of a commercial chat service and for the inclusion of Goldberg.