The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, of the Progressive Magazine The AtlanticHe assumed that he had received a trap message when a telephone number that was identified as Michael Waltz added to a group of the social network encrypted Signal with the name “small contact group about the hutis.” Goldberg is a reporter specialized in national security who has lived multiple encounters with the administration of Donald Trump, and who the president frequently criticizes. Waltz is the National Security Minister, the head of foreign policy in the White House, who unintentionally added to the journalist a chat of high positions that handled highly classified information about the plans for.
Among the members of the group that approached the plans to bomb these Islamist militias in the social network are, according to what Goldberg, Vice President JD Vance,; the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh; the National Security Director, Tutsi Gabbard; The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the head of the White House Deputy Cabinet, Stephen Miller, and the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe. In total, 18 people.
The exchange of messages accidentally sheds light on how the national security team of the Trump administration thinks. But it also makes clear the huge risks of treating in a mere internet chat, even if encrypted.
The first message left Goldber Atonito. The person who identified himself as Waltz explained: “Team, I am establishing a group of main (those responsible at the head of the different government entities) to coordinate on the hutis, especially for the next 72 hours. My second Alex Wong is riding a fast team … After the meeting in the crisis room this morning for activities, I will send it this afternoon.” And he continued to ask for the names of people who should be in that group. “To coordinate in the next couple of days and the weekend. Thank you,” he said. It was Thursday 13.
The journalist did not leave his astonishment, according to an article in his magazine. After Waltz’s message others came from Vance, from Gabbard, from Hegseth … “He goes without saying that they had never invited me to a session of a Main Committee of the White House, and that in my many years of reporter specialized in National Security I had either heard ever to call any social networks.”
It wasn’t a joke. Nor an attempt of computer scam or dissemination of false news. The next day, Goldberg explains, things became even rarely. Waltz started the conversation suggesting writing allies to inform. J. D Vance considered that the attack was a mistake and that public opinion would not understand the bombing, before asking for a month to be delayed. “I am not sure that the president knows how inconsistent this is with his message about Europe right now. There is an added risk that we see a moderate to high rise in oil prices.”
Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, advocated launching the message: “1) Biden failed 2) Iran paid.” And about attacking the Hutis, he suggested: “I see two things, 1) Restore the right of navigation, a fundamental national interest, and 2) restore the power of deterrence, which drill destroyed. But we can slow it easily, and if we do, I will do what we can guarantee the security of the operation.”
The United States launched on March 15, a day later, an attack against the Yemeni group to defend the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, in response to those who cross that channel in retaliation for the war in Gaza. Hours before, Hegesth sent some operational details to the group, “including information on objectives, weapons that the United States was going to deploy and attack sequences,” recalls the reporter.
The National Security Council has indicated The Atlantic that the “seems authentic” message chain and studies how it was possible to add a journalist to the group. But he argues that the conversation “demonstrates the deep and soupted coordination between high positions.”
