Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denies texting war plans
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth denies texting war plans to a journalist from The Atlantic.
Top Trump administration officials are under fire after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth inadvertently leaked secret plans for a U.S. strike on Iran-backed militants in Yemen to a magazine editor.
The Atlantic’s top editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a group chat on the encrypted Signal app, where users whose names matched Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard discussed operations for the strikes, including their targets and the weapons used, in the run-up to the series of airstrikes on Houthi rebels March 15.
Here’s what you need to know about Goldberg, the journalist and author added to the Signal group chat.
Who is Jeffrey Goldberg?
Goldberg is the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. The magazine and online news organization has reported on politics, foreign affairs, business, culture, technology and more since it was founded in 1857.
Goldberg attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an editor at the college paper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. Goldberg started his journalism career as a police reporter for The Washington Post, eventually writing over 15 cover stories for The New York Times Magazine and then serving as a Middle East correspondent and then a Washington correspondent for The New Yorker.
He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and became editor-in-chief in 2016. He also moderates its “Washington Week With The Atlantic,” a primetime TV program on major news events.
“The miracle of The Atlantic,” he told The New York Times after being named editor, “is this is literally a 19th-century brand that is firing on all pistons in a really ruthless 21st-century media environment.”
Goldberg’s reporting has won numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award, the Daniel Pearl Award, the Overseas Press Club Award and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize.
Goldberg is also an author. His book “Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror,” also published as “Prisoners: A Muslim and Jew Across the Middle East Divide,” came out in 2006 and in paperback in 2008.
Jeffrey Goldberg included in group chat with top Trump officials
In a Monday article, titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans,” Goldberg outlined the message exchange with timestamps and screenshots, excluding sensitive information that “could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.”
Goldberg was invited to the chat by a user with the same name as Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser. Goldberg told a podcast at The Atlantic that he’d been in regular contact with Waltz for “all the obvious journalistic reasons.”
“I didn’t think it could be real,” The Atlantic article’s headline said. “Then the bombs started falling.”
Appearing on CNN Monday, Goldberg shared his reaction to being accidentally added to the group chat.
“There were things texted that you viewed as so sensitive you did not even publish them in your report today?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Goldberg, who responded that what was in the public interest, instead, was knowing that top officials were “running a war plan on a messaging app.”
The chat “appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the White House national security council.
“I have never seen a breach quite like this,” Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic. “It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters — not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.”
Who is Pete Hegseth?
Hegseth is the current Secretary of Defense. Before that, he was a co-host of “Fox & Friends,” working with the network for 10 years. His appointment broke the tradition of filling the position with longtime government employees and Pentagon chiefs. In his role as defense secretary, Hegseth has followed Trump’s agenda of targeting diversity, equity and inclusion in the military.
Throughout his nomination, Hegseth faced prior allegations of sexual assault, public drinking and abusive treatment towards women.
Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman, Josh Meyer, Tom Vanden Brook, Kinsey Crowley
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