The Atlantic published the full sequence of texts among President Donald Trump’s top national security officials discussing pending military strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen in mid-March — a chain to which The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added.
The newly-published messages included texts The Atlantic had previously withheld because they included specific operational details Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent to the group about the timing and weapons systems the US military intended to use.
Those texts have sparked horror and alarm among current and former national security officials because they were sent on an unclassified commercial messaging app that officials fear might be vulnerable to foreign hackers.
The Trump administration has sought to discredit The Atlantic and downplay the sensitivity of messages by insisting that there was no classified information shared.
CNN has annotated the key portions of the group conversation with additional reporting and context below.
All images of Signal messages are from The Atlantic.
Here you can see the notification that the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat he described as a “group for coordination.”
Waltz said Tuesday on Fox News that he takes “full responsibility” for creating the group, but he also sought to deflect responsibility for Goldberg’s inclusion by suggesting that Goldberg may have somehow inappropriately inserted himself — something that doesn’t appear to be possible under Signal’s known operating system. “Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out,” Waltz said, adding that “the best technical minds” for Elon Musk would be looking into the matter.
Waltz also suggested in the same interview that he simply had Goldberg in his phone under the wrong contact name: “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name, and then you have — and then you have somebody else’s number there? Right? You’ve got somebody else’s number on someone else’s contact. So, of course, I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else.”
Waltz appears to change the settings so messages will automatically disappear after one week. In theory, this is something that is considered best practice to keep private information secure from prying eyes — but in this case, it raises federal record-keeping concerns. Under the Presidential Records Act, conversations of this nature must be memorialized in accordance with US law. It remains unclear if any official record of this conversation exists. Later in the conversation, Waltz extends the timer to four weeks.
On the National Security Council, the “Principals Committee,” or “PC,” refers to the very top members of Trump’s cabinet and national security team, as convened by the national security adviser. It typically includes the heads of departments or agencies who are relevant to the issue being discussed at a given meeting.
“High side inboxes” are classified government email accounts that US officials have. Waltz’s note suggests that previous operational and policy discussions surrounding the proposed strikes took place in the kind of classified meetings that are normally held in spaces that are hardened against surveillance, like the White House Situation Room.
So begins a fascinating debate between top administration officials about whether striking the Houthis — an Iran-backed group that since the outbreak of the war in Gaza has been launching attacks on international shipping transiting through the vital shipping lanes in the region — is consistent with the politics of Trump’s foreign policy.
Vance in particular is offering his advice based on what he thinks the domestic political reaction will be to the strikes — not what he thinks of them as a foreign policy matter.
Vance’s claim that he thought Trump was not aware that the proposed strikes in Yemen might contradict “his message on Europe right now” raised eyebrows across Washington, and initially, was the focus on the White House’s public messaging on these texts.
“The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement,” a spokesperson for Vance insisted when The Atlantic first published portions of the texts on Monday.
One of the first chat participants to weigh in after Waltz and Vance is Joe Kent, an individual who is currently acting as the de facto chief of staff for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard but does not appear to currently occupy a formal role in the Trump administration. Trump picked Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, but he has not yet been confirmed by the Senate.
Kent’s mention of “BAM shipping” appears to refer to combat operations in the region focused on protecting international shipping lanes and freedom of navigation.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe enters the chat for the first time. The CIA specifically focuses on collecting intelligence, especially through human sources and conducting covert operations.
The Atlantic initially withheld this text, which it said “contained information that might be interpreted as related to actual and current intelligence operations.” It clearly indicates that the CIA is collecting intelligence on Houthi leadership, but doesn’t offer specifics on how — which would be much more sensitive.
Hegseth, too, is providing his assessment of the domestic political considerations of the strike — a highly unusual thing for the defense secretary to weigh in on in this kind of deliberation. The defense secretary has historically sought to keep politics out of military decision-making.
Both administrations have struggled to contain Houthi strikes on international shipping, which the group says are in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and have waxed and waned in tandem with events on the ground there. The Biden administration carried out multiple rounds of strikes against the Houthis, including using stealth B-2 bombers for one such attack in October. Trump has also carried out several rounds of strikes against the Houthis, but the military has not disclosed the precise impact the attacks have had on Houthi leadership and weapons supplies. A second aircraft carrier was also recently deployed to the region.
Trump’s national security adviser reiterates that European countries do not have the naval capabilities to defend key shipping lanes and it will fall to the United States to “reopen” them. Waltz also suggests that the Trump administration planned to make European countries pay for the operations, which is consistent with the president’s broader demand that US allies share more of the burden when it comes to joint defense costs. But it is still remarkable — and indicative of Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy — that top officials are framing this discussion around the idea that the United States should take unilateral military action and then send the bill to other countries.
It’s clear from this portion of the discussion over whether to move ahead with the strikes that participants came away from past deliberations with very different interpretations of what Trump wanted and different ideas of the best way to proceed.
Hegseth reiterates that the president will ultimately give the order to carry out military strikes.
The president’s close adviser, Stephen Miller (“S M”), seems to shut down the debate by saying, effectively, Here is what the president wants. At this point, the foreign policy debate is over.
This is roughly two hours before the attack began and about 30 minutes before the first fighter jets took off. Although senior Trump administration officials have insisted that nothing in these texts was classified, multiple defense officials have told CNN that these details were highly classified at the time that Hegseth sent them to the thread — as such operational details always are, because of the potential risk to American service members if they were to be exposed. Houthi rebels have access to anti-aircraft weaponry.
Signal, the platform that these officials are using, is a commercial, non-government messaging app. It is end-to-end encrypted and government officials are permitted — even encouraged — to use it for unclassified, nonsensitive conversations. But it is not approved by any agency for classified discussions. Top national security officials on Wednesday acknowledged that it does have security vulnerabilities — meaning that beyond Goldberg’s presence on the chat, Hegseth was potentially risking the exposure of that sensitive operational information to foreign government hackers.
If Hegseth had not sent this text, the debate over this group thread would almost certainly have focused on the foreign policy debate it contains and the internal politics it reveals — not whether the Trump administration mishandled classified information and risked the lives of American service members.
“OPSEC” is an acronym for operational security. It is notable that Hegseth is reassuring other officials about operational security while using an unofficial communication platform — which can pose a risk to operational security. This is a somewhat ironic proclamation to make given that, at this point, a reporter is reading the chat.
This is also an extraordinary after-action report that the national security adviser provided in real time. Although the military often ultimately releases elements of its “battle damage assessments” after taking lethal action, it only does so after careful review of what it can reveal without exposing the sources and methods by which it acquired that information. (US military personnel are not on the ground on Yemen.) Yet again, this is sensitive information being shared on a nonsecure, commercial platform.
“Kurilla” refers to the head of US Central Command, the combatant command that has operational responsibility for military activities in the Middle East. It does not appear he was in the chat. “The IC” is the intelligence community.
The VP doesn’t immediately appear to understand what Waltz is saying here.
“MAL” is shorthand for the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump spends a significant amount of time at Mar-a-Lago but it is unusual that some officials who helped coordinate this operation appear to have been doing so from Trump’s private residence, rather than the White House.
“CENTCOM” refers to US Central Command, the combatant command that has operational responsibility for military activities in the Middle East.
TG is Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who was traveling in Asia at the time these messages were sent.
