On Monday The Atlantic published a story that revealed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent secret war plans to a Signal group chat. This morning it published the entire chat, which includes Hegseth detailing the movements of American F-18s, including targets and munitions, in a group chat with 18 other people. Hegseth shared this information before the attack took place and outside of a secure setting. This is information that would typically be classified and highly sensitive.
But on Tuesday, in testimony before Congress, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard swore under oath that it wasn’t. In the initial story, The Atlantic published a small section of the group chat but not the whole thing. In particular, it held back specific information about the movement of the F-18s.
So here are the new things we know now. The new story published screenshots of the entire chat that Goldberg witnessed, along with a screenshot of details about the Signal group that showed all of its 19 members. Just last week the Pentagon issued a memo warning against using Signal because of threats from Russian hackers. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz was the person who added Goldberg to the group chat. It’s clear as day at the top of the first screenshot. Waltz took “full responsibility” for the leak in a Fox News interview on Tuesday.
One of the funniest lines from the group chat was Hegseth saying “We are currently clean on OPSEC [operational security]. Godspeed to our warriors.” We now have the full context of that statement.
Before claiming to have the information ecosystem locked down, the Secretary of Defense shared the plan to attack the Houthis and included a timeline, specific aircraft, and specific munitions.
“TEAM UPDATE: TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/ CENTCOM we are 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 Laucn (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.”
“I will say a prayer for victory,” Vice President JD Vance said in the chat. Two people reacted with prayer emojis. Then Mike Waltz set the disappearing message timer in the chat to 4 weeks, meaning that everything written afterwards would delete itself after a month.
Waltz hit the chat with a follow up. “VP. building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.”
“What?” the Vice President of the United States said.
“Typing too fast,” Waltz said. “The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and now it’s collapsed.”
Under oath before Congress yesterday, Gabbard and Ratcliffe talked out of both sides of their mouth when grilled about the contents of the chat. Congress wanted to see everything but Ratcliffe and Gabbard wouldn’t release it. “The information was not classified,” Gabbard said, while the pair refused to release the information or explain why discussions about a bombing run in Yemen aren’t classified.
Trump also said the information wasn’t classified during an interview on Newsmax Tuesday night. “Now, it wasn’t classified, as I understand, there was no classified information. There was no problem. And the attack was a tremendous success,” Trump said.
The Atlantic has taken the administration’s words at face value. If a discussion among the Vice President, director of National Security, and Secretary of Defense, about a pending military operation is not classified then it’s free to publish it in full. And so it has.
It remains to be seen how the administration will react to another embarrassing revelation, but Press Secretary Karoline Levitt gave us an early indication in a post on X. “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans,’” she said. “This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
