Atlantic journalist says top Trump officials inadvertently included him in Signal group chat discussing war plans. The messaging app, explained.

The top editor of the Atlantic magazine revealed on Monday that he knew about U.S. airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen hours before they happened, because he was added to a Signal messaging app group chat where members of the Trump administration appeared to be discussing such war plans.

Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said he received a Signal connection request on March 11 from someone whom he believed to be national security adviser Michael Waltz. Two days later, he said he was added to a conversation called “Houthi PC small group” with what appeared to be 18 members of the administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, where they talked about plans to bomb Yemen.

U.S. air and naval assets hit multiple Houthi targets in Yemen on March 15. The Houthi rebels are an Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Yemen that has said their attacks are intended to help end the war in Gaza, according to the Associated Press.

Goldberg broke down details of the conversation between people involved in the Signal group, including accounts identified as “JD Vance,” “MAR” (the initials of secretary of state Marco Antonio Rubio) and “TG” (which Goldberg said could be Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence).

Goldberg, a veteran foreign affairs reporter, said he struggled to believe that this Signal group chat was real. “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans,” he wrote.

“I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal,” Goldberg wrote. “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.”

President Trump told reporters on Monday that he “doesn’t know anything about it” when asked about the report in the Atlantic. White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement that the message thread described in the article “appears to be authentic.”

“We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” the statement continued. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”

What is Signal?

Signal is a private, secure messaging app launched in 2018. It skyrocketed to more than 40 million users globally in 2021, after it became popular for its end-to-end encryption of messages sent and received over the app, similar to other popular encrypted messaging apps, WhatsApp and Telegram. WhatsApp is owned by Meta, while Signal is owned and operated by the Signal Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by the app’s creators.

End-to-end encrypted messaging apps allow only the sender and the chosen recipient to read the messages exchanged over the platform. Signal also offers end-to-end encrypted video and voice calls.

Nothing is stored on Signal’s servers — not even employees at Signal can read any of the messages being shared over the platform they run. And, just as with virtual private networks, or VPNs, Signal does not have access to anything users are exchanging over its platform.

The app also offers an option to enable disappearing messages, where users set a timer for specific messages to delete automatically, in order to protect and maintain all conversation histories.

Government aides are not allowed to share classified info on such apps

“Under the records laws applicable to the White House and federal agencies, all government employees are prohibited from using electronic-messaging applications such as Signal for official business, unless those messages are promptly forwarded or copied to an official government account,” Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told Atlantic reporter Shane Harris.

Several former U.S. officials told Goldberg and Harris that they had used Signal in the past specifically to share “unclassified information and to discuss routine matters, particularly when traveling overseas without access to U.S. government systems.”

Some members will therefore occasionally use Signal while traveling abroad, because the government has its own communication system specifically to share classified information either over government-approved equipment or in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, which most Cabinet-level officials have installed in their homes, according to the Atlantic.

“They knew never to share classified or sensitive information on the app,” Goldberg said of the former officials and Signal. “Waltz and the other Cabinet-level officials were already potentially violating government policy and the law simply by texting one another about the operation.”

In addition to improperly discussing classified information, adding a journalist to the group chat, even by accident, creates new security and legal issues: providing classified information to someone who was not authorized to receive it.

“That is the classic definition of a leak, even if it was unintentional, and even if the recipient of the leak did not actually believe it was a leak until Yemen came under American attack,” Goldberg pointed out.

Congress reacts: ‘Heads should roll’

Shortly after the Atlantic’s report was published, congressional Democrats called for an investigation into the national security officials who were involved in the Signal conversation.

“This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll,” Pennsylvania Rep. Chris Deluzio, a member of the Armed Services Committee, told Axios. “We need a full investigation and hearing into this.”

“We can’t chalk this up to a simple mistake,” another Democrat, California Rep. Sara Jacobs, told the outlet. “People should be fired for this.”

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on X, “This administration is playing fast and loose with our nation’s most classified info, and it makes all Americans less safe.”

New York Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat who also sits on the Armed Services Committee, posted on X, “If House Republicans won’t hold a hearing on how this happened IMMEDIATELY, I’ll do it my damn self.”

Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee, told Axios that while he has “accidentally sent the wrong person a text,” the “unconscionable action was sending this info over non-secure networks.”

“None of this should have been sent on non-secure systems,” Bacon said.