Trump’s defense secretary accidentally sent war plans with a group chat that included a journalist, a few days after threatening a polygraph for leaks
The best officials of national security for President Donald Trump, including their defense minister, have sent war plans for the upcoming military strikes in Yemen on a group chat in a safe message exchange application that included the Atlantic editor -in -chief, reported a magazine in a story published on Monday on Monday. The National Security Council has said that the text chain “seems to be authentic.”
Material in the text chain “contained operational details of the upcoming blows to Iran supportedHouthin-Rebels in Yemen,Including information about goals, the weapons that the US would set and attack sequences, “said editor -in -chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
It was not immediately clear whether the specifics of military operations were classified, but they are often the least preserved to protect the members of the service and operational security. The United States has spent air attacks against Houthis since the militant group began to target commercial and military vessels in red Sea In November 2023.
Just two hours after Goldberg received detailsAttack on March 15The US began to launch a series of air attacks against Houtho goals in Yemen.
The National Security Council in the statement said the journalist had been added to the chain in the signal group chat.
Trump told reporters that he was not aware of the obvious violation of the protocol.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said, adding that the Atlantic “is not much magazine.” He continued, “I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.”
Government officials used a signal for organizational correspondence but not classified and can be hacked.
Sharing sensitive information comes since the Minister of Defense Peta Hegsetth just announced aBreak up leakagesensitive information, including the potential use of polygraphs on the defensive staff to determine that journalists have received information.
Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegsetth, did not immediately respond to the comment on the comment on why the Minister of Defense published war operational plans on an unclassified application.
Handling information on national defense is strictly operated by law under the centuries -old spy Act, including the provisions that make up the crime to remove such data from their “appropriate custody place”, even through the act of rough carelessness.
The Ministry of Justice in 2015 and 2016 investigated whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated the law by communicating on classified information with her assistants on the private server E -Kašta, although he eventually recommended the FBI against charges and none was adopted.
In the Administration of Biden, some officials received a license to download signals on their white house phones, but received instructions to use the application saving, a former national security official, who served in a democratic administration.
The clerk, who asked for anonymity to talk about methods used to share sensitive data, said the signal was most commonly used to communicate what they were internally called “Tippers” to inform someone when they were far from the office or traveled abroad that they should check their “high side” for a classified message.
The application was sometimes used by officers during the Biden administration to communicate on the schedule of sensitive meetings or classified phone calls when they were out of office, the official said.
This story is originally shown on Fortune.com
