‘This Is Going to Require Some Explaining’ – Trump Team Mistakenly Sends War Plans to Journalist

The editor-in-chief of US magazine ‘The Atlantic’ said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he received a group text from President Donald Trump’s national security team, outlining the strategy for bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen hours before it happened.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had created the group on the Signal app and inadvertently included the editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, along with the intended “Principals Committee” members, which included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, Vice President JD Vance, and more than a dozen other high-level officials with top secret and specialized access security clearances.

“The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen,” Goldberg wrote in his report of the incident.

“I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

“This is going to require some explaining.”

Waltz created the group, but Hegseth shared top-secret details, including “targets, weapons the US would be [employing], and attack sequencing,” to the group chat. Others, including Vance, added revealing perspectives about the team’s decision-making process.

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The convictions targeted members and former members of Ukraine’s Azov brigade, a unit Russia declared a “terrorist and extremist” organization in August 2022.

The group was using the same encrypted messaging app that Ukrainian defense officials and soldiers commonly use, and that Russian hackers have continually tried to infiltrate.

According to a speech by Serhii Demediuk, deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, at the Kyiv International Cyber Resilience Forum earlier this month, Signal remains “one of the most exploited” messaging apps for Russian espionage operations targeting Ukrainian military personnel and government officials.

Ukrainian officials have claimed that the company has now stopped responding to their requests regarding Russian cyber threats.

“With its inaction, Signal is helping Russians gather information, target our soldiers and compromise government officials,” Demediuk said at the conference.

However, hacking is unnecessary, when the nation’s top security adviser shares closely guarded, strategic level communications with the press.

Goldberg was careful not to reveal any details that would compromise national security or land him in jail, but did include some salacious conversations within the group, including Vance’s take on how this would play with Europe, who have been left to provide for much of Ukraine’s future security absent United States aid.

“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. 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.” Vance wrote.

Former top security officials were appalled at the careless breach, some of them predicting that there will be firings or resignations.

“They broke every procedure known to man about protecting operational material before a military strike,” a former senior intelligence official told CNN. “You have a total breakdown in security about a military operation.”

“Somebody needs to get fired,” former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta told the network. “How the name of a journalist was added to that list – this is just a serious blunder,” he said, noting that if it had been someone other than Goldberg, they “could reveal this information immediately to the Houthis in Yemen that they were about to be attacked and they, in turn, could have... attacked US facilities in the Red Sea, causing casualties of our troops.”

Democrats and even some Republicans on Capitol Hill were left demanding answers.

“I am horrified by reports that our most senior national security officials, including the heads of multiple agencies, shared sensitive and almost certainly classified information via a commercial messaging application, including imminent war plans,” said Rep. Jim Himes, Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The White House responded in a statement about the breach on Monday, and the president apparently sees no cause for alarm with his team’s behavior.

“President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.