By Alex Horton, Missy Ryan · The Washington Post (c) 2025
The Atlantic on Wednesday published a transcript of top Trump administration officials’ group chat discussing an imminent U.S. attack on Houthi militants in Yemen, revealing a fuller accounting of the sensitive information they exchanged with the magazine’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was mistakenly added to the conversation that occurred this month over an unclassified, commercially available messaging platform.
The newly disclosed material adds to a mounting controversy about the decision by several officials – including President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, his secretaries of defense and state, the director of national intelligence, the CIA director and Vice President JD Vance – to discuss sensitive military planning over the messaging app Signal, which is encrypted but not permitted by government rules for discussions of classified information, and to do so in a group including a journalist.
The episode has infuriated Democrats, who have demanded the resignations of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Michael Waltz, and put the White House in the uncomfortable position of having to justify what many former government officials and experts have denounced as an inexcusable lapse in judgment by nearly all of Trump’s most senior national security figures.
The administration was on the defensive again Wednesday as multiple senior officials sought to discredit the Atlantic’s new report, denying in a fusillade of social media posts that any classified material had been shared in the Signal chat that included Goldberg, and attempting to draw a distinction between the “war plans” that Goldberg’s initial article cited and the operational details that Hegseth disclosed to the group hours before the first bombs fell.
The newly released material includes a message sent by Hegseth at 11:44 a.m. Eastern on March 15, the day of the Yemen operation, confirming the timeline of the planned strikes scheduled to commence roughly two hours later. It also included the type of aircraft involved – manned F-18 jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones – along with sea-based Tomahawk missiles, and the fact that one high-profile target was “at his known location.”
The president’s defenders have acknowledged that Goldberg was inadvertently included in the chat while seeking to downplay assertions that the material shared over the messaging app, had it been compromised by an adversary, would have jeopardized the lives of American service members involved in the operation.
Hegseth, in a post from his personal account on social media platform X, denied that the transcripts contained classified or sensitive information.
“As I type this, my team and I are traveling the INDOPACOM region, meeting w/ Commanders (the guys who make REAL ‘war plans’) and talking to troops,” he said. “We will continue to do our job, while the media does what it does best: peddle hoaxes.” INDOPACOM is military jargon for the vast Asia-Pacific region.
Pentagon press secretary Sean Parnell accused the Atlantic of attempting to distract from Trump’s national security objectives. In a statement, Parnell said that Hegseth “was merely updating the group on a plan that was underway” when he shared the operational details of an impending strike.
But veteran national security professionals said such information would almost certainly be classified, describing a projected schedule of attacks like the one Hegseth shared with the chat group as a closely guarded secret that should be discussed only in a secure environment.
“This information was clearly taken from the real-time order of battle sequence of an ongoing operation. It is highly classified and protected,” said Mick Mulroy, a former CIA paramilitary officer and Marine Corps veteran who served as a senior Pentagon official during Trump’s first term in office. “Next to nuclear and covert operations, this information is the most protected.”
The transcript published by the Atlantic on Wednesday includes the message sent byHegseth confirming the precise timeline of the planned strikes. Hegseth wrote:
– – –
TEAM UPDATE:
TIME NOW (1144ET): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w Centcom we are a GO for mission launch.
1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)
1345: “Trigger Based” F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)
1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)
1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier “Trigger Based” targets)
1536: F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.
MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)
We are currently clean on OPSEC .
Godspeed to our warriors.
– – –
Waltz later provided the chat group with information on the strikes’ impact, saying a building had collapsed and that multiple targets were believed killed – including a “top missile guy” who was allegedly struck while “walking into his girlfriend’s building.”
“Pete, Kurilla, IC, amazing job,” Waltz wrote, referring to Hegseth, U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla and the intelligence community.
The Trump administration has vowed to take a harder line against the Houthis – who have carried out attacks on commercial ships, American naval vessels and planes and U.S. ally Israel – and against Iran, which has long provided the Houthis with financial and military support.
Other participants in the group chat included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and several other senior Trump aides.
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Gabbard and Ratcliffe asserted to lawmakers that nothing in those messages was considered classified.