The Atlantic Publishes Trump Officials’ Chat Message On Yemen Strikes

The lapse was not a serious one said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, reacting to a journalist being inadvertently included in a group chat on Signal app, discussing highly sensitive plans for an attack on Yemen’s Houthis.

The Atlantic, whose editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the Signal group, has released screenshots of the chats, discussing in detail how the US was planning the attacks in Yemen. The group, named ‘Houthis PC small group’, had 19 members, with National Security Advisor Michael Waltz as its admin. Waltz was the one who took full responsibility for the chat leak, and called the incident “embarrassing” in a conversation with Fox News recently.

The chats began at 9.14 pm IST on March 15, and the discussions ranged from the rationale behind the attack to real-time updates related to the strikes. One of the most active group members, sharing back-to-back updates on the Yemen attacks, was US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, who was indirectly blamed by top Trump officials for the leak.

Ironically, in the chats, he seemed to promise the others he would enforce 100 per cent OPSEC (aimed at preventing information from leaking) if everyone decides to not go through with the Yemen operation. Hegseth, who has repeatedly denied texting war plans, was the one who texted the timeline of the airstrikes on the Signal chat.

Large-scale military strikes were launched on Yemen’s Houthis by the US on March 15, which according to the Houthi-run health ministry, killed at least 53 people and injured over a dozen. However, President Donald Trump downplayed the security breach, calling it “the only glitch in two months” of his administration.