Trump’s Defense Secretary Accidentally Texted War Plans to The Atlantic: ‘I Didn’t Think It Could Be Real,’ Editor Says

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s secretary of defense, inadvertently included the top editor of The Atlantic in a Signal text chat group revealing the U.S.’s attack plans on Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this month, according to the magazine.

The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported in a nearly 3,500-word story published Monday that the U.S.’s most senior national-security leaders included him in a group chat on Signal about upcoming military strikes in Yemen against the Houthis, an Iran-backed terrorist group. “I didn’t think it could be real,” he wrote. “Then the bombs started falling.” According to Goldberg’s report, he received a connection request on Signal, an open-source encrypted messaging app, from a user identified as Michael Waltz. “I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz,” Goldberg wrote. In the story, Goldberg detailed how the same user later added him to a group chat called “Houthi PC small group” (or “principals committee”), with contacts who appeared to be most of the Trump administration’s national-security leaders, including Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

On March 15, about two hours before America’s bombing in Yemen became publicly known, Hegseth — a former host on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends Weekend” — texted the Signal group the war plan, which included “precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing,” Goldberg wrote.