WASHINGTON — The Trump administration sought on Tuesday to contain the fallout after a magazine journalist disclosed he had been inadvertently included in a secret group discussion of highly sensitive war plans, while Democrats called on top officials to resign over the security incident.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe — both of whom were in the chat — testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that no classified material was shared in the group chat on Signal, an encrypted commercial messaging app.
But Democratic senators voiced skepticism about that claim, noting that the journalist, The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted operational details about pending strikes against Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, “including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified,” Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said at the hearing, a previously scheduled event to discuss global threats.
The extraordinary revelation on Monday triggered outrage and disbelief among national security experts and prompted Democrats — and some of Trump’s fellow Republicans — to call for an investigation of what appeared to be a major security breach.
“I am of the view that there ought to be resignations, starting with the national security adviser and the secretary of defense,” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said at the hearing.
Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet pressed Ratcliffe on how Goldberg’s presence had escaped notice.
“You’re the CIA director! Why did you not call out that he was present on the Signal chat?” Bennet shouted and said that Ratcliffe needed “to do better.”
Earlier on Tuesday, President Donald Trump expressed support for his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who had mistakenly added Goldberg to the Signal discussion.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview.
National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said on Monday that the chat group appeared to be authentic. The White House said it was looking into how Goldberg’s number was added to the thread.
Classified and sensitive information is not supposed to be shared on commercial mobile phone apps, and unknown numbers — such as Goldberg’s — should not be included.
Accounts that appeared to represent Vice President JD Vance, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ratcliffe, 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 on Monday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Goldberg of sensationalizing the story in a post on the social platform X and asserted that no war plans were discussed and no classified material was sent to the thread.
Goldberg did not include the planning details that he said Hegseth had posted in the chat, but he termed it “shockingly reckless.”
Hegseth told reporters on Monday that no one had texted war plans. Goldberg, appearing on CNN on Monday, called those comments “a lie.”
It remained unclear why the officials chose to chat via Signal rather than the secure government channels typically used for sensitive discussions.
Signal has a “stellar reputation and is widely used and trusted in the security community,” said Rocky Cole, whose cybersecurity firm iVerify helps protect smartphone users from hackers.
“The risk of discussing highly sensitive national security information on Signal isn’t so much that Signal itself is insecure,” Cole added. “It’s the fact that nation states threat actors have a demonstrated ability to remotely compromise the entire mobile phone itself. If the phone itself isn’t secure, all the Signal messages on that device can be read.”
Contributing: Doina Chiacu
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