Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday addressed a report by The Atlantic that claimed he had shared sensitive details about U.S. military strikes in Yemen on an encrypted messaging app to a group chat with other cabinet members where a reporter was accidentally added.
“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said to a journalist after his plane touched down in Hawaii on an official trip.
. @SecDef response to the @TheAtlantic article….
“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited “so-called journalist” pic.twitter.com/pLtcUF4ZtN
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) March 24, 2025
The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported Monday that he was added to the group chat on March 13, two days after National Security Adviser Mike Waltz requested to add him as a contact on the Signal app.
The group chat was for the purpose of coordinating between the heads of different government agencies in regards to President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Houthi rebels in Yemen who had been targeting U.S. ships in the Red Sea since October 7, 2023.
Goldberg claimed that the morning of the strikes, on March 15, Hegseth had “texted [him] the war