Journalist Reveals He Was Mistakenly Included in Chat Discussing War Plans

The Atlantic magazine revealed that on 15 March 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth texted war plans to its editor in chief for a military strike planned for 2 hours later in Yemen.

On 11 March, Goldberg received a connection request in Signal, a commercial encrypted messaging app, from Michael Waltz. Goldberg did not assume the request to be from the person of that name who is Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, but accepted the request even though it might be an imposter.

On 13 March, signal notified Goldberg that he had been added to “Houthi PC small group.” A message to the group from Waltz said, “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

A principals committee is a group of topmost national-security officials. Goldberg reported deputizations specified by some of the 17 officials in the chat, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Middle East and Ukraine Negotiator Steve Witkoff, White House chief of staff Suzy Wiles, nominee for head of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, someone abbreviated “S M” who may have been Stephen Miller, and various National Security Council officials. Goldberg did not report the name of Ratcliffe’s deputy because that is an active CIA officer.

Goldberg discussed the group with colleagues, trying to decide whether it was a disinformation ploy or a move by a group trying to put journalists in the embarrassing position of publishing something that was fabricated. They could not believe the group was what it purported to be.

On 14 March at 08:05, “Waltz” texted, “Team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings per the Presidents guidance this morning in your high side [classified] inboxes. State and DOD, we developed suggested notification lists for regional Allies and partners. Joint Staff is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days and we will work w DOD to ensure COS, OVP and POTUS are briefed.”

Policy discussion followed in the group, which Goldberg detailed in his article with sensitive information related to national intelligence redacted. The discussion was closed by “S M” who may have been Trump operative Stephen Miller.

On 15 March at 11:44 Pete Hegseth texted to the group detailed war plans including weapons to be used, timing and targeting even to the detail of names of some of the individuals the attack on Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen. If intercepted, the information could have been used by an adversary to counteract the USA’s attack and endanger military personnel. Witkoff was physically in Moscow and Russia is widely believed to be able to penetrate Signal. Gabbard was overseas too.

The attack was schedule for 13:45 p.m. Eastern USA time. Around 13:55, Goldberg checked online and found explosions were occurring across the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

At 13:48, “Waltz” updated the group. For the next few minutes, participants in the group celebrated. Then they assessed results.

Having realized the group appeared to be real, Goldberg left it. In his follow-up, he later received confirmation from a National Security Council official of the group’s authenticity.

Signal is widely used to coordinate meeting schedules and other logistics, but highly sensitive matters and coordination of military attacks or national security operations are to be discussed only in secure channels or in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Signal is not approved for use with classified or national security information. The unsecured devices normally used to run Signal are far more vulnerable to being monitored by adversaries than secure communication devices and channels.

When Goldberg checked the legality of what the Signal group did, lawyers said Waltz and the other officials in the group apparently violated the Espionage Act in multiple ways.

Waltz also set messages in the Signal chat to disappear after a period of time. That violates laws which require preservation of all records about official government actions.

Casual acceptance of using Signal in this instance strongly suggests Donald Trump’s regime is using it routinely for such purposes, and discarding the messages rather than archiving them as required by law.

Click here to read the article in The Atlantic.