Signalgate Crisis Deepens With More Messages Revealed
Signalgate Crisis Deepens With More Messages Revealed
The White House continues to downplay the incident even after the Atlantic publishes the full text conversation.
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow speaks in front of text messages by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a House Intelligence Committee hearing in Washington on March 26. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified before the House Intelligence Committee to discuss their participation in a Signal group chat that appears to have accidentally leaked highly sensitive information about an impending U.S. military strike in Yemen. The scandal, dubbed “Signalgate,” continues to roil Washington as the White House tries to explain how top officials in the Trump administration ended up carrying out one of the most serious breaches of U.S. national security in recent memory.
On Monday, the Atlantic revealed that U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally included magazine editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg on a text chain discussing planned military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. More than a dozen other high-ranking officials were also in the group chat, including Gabbard and Ratcliffe as well as Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff.
On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified before the House Intelligence Committee to discuss their participation in a Signal group chat that appears to have accidentally leaked highly sensitive information about an impending U.S. military strike in Yemen. The scandal, dubbed “Signalgate,” continues to roil Washington as the White House tries to explain how top officials in the Trump administration ended up carrying out one of the most serious breaches of U.S. national security in recent memory.
On Monday, the Atlantic revealed that U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally included magazine editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg on a text chain discussing planned military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. More than a dozen other high-ranking officials were also in the group chat, including Gabbard and Ratcliffe as well as Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Out of concern for national security, Goldberg deliberately left out of his initial report part of the conversation, in which Hegseth had shared what Goldberg described as “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.” However, after Gabbard and Ratcliffe testified under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that no classified information had been included in the chat, Goldberg on Wednesday published the full contents of the chat that he was part of.
“TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch,” Hegseth texted in the group on March 15, ahead of the military operation that killed at least 53 people in Yemen.
Read more in today’s World Brief: Signalgate Triggers Calls for Trump Cabinet Resignations.
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.
Alexandra Sharp is the World Brief writer at Foreign Policy. X: @AlexandraSSharp
Rishi Iyengar is a reporter at Foreign Policy. X: @Iyengarish
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