US Journalist accidentally added to chat on strikes against Houthis

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior national security officials admitted in an unsecured group chat used to coordinate airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen last month to include Jeffrey Goldberg, the top editor of The Atlantic, in their group chat without his knowledge. It appears to have violated a number of federal rules and standards. US President Donald Trump announced the strikes on March 15, but in a shocking security breach, Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg of "The Atlantic" magazine had hours of advance notice via the officials' group chat on Signal. "The message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain," National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said."According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45pm eastern time," Goldberg wrote – a timeline that was borne out on the ground in Yemen.
It was not immediately clear if the specifics of the military operation were classified, but they often are and are at least kept secure to protect service members and operational security. Trump, meanwhile, told journalists that "I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time," also saying that "the attack was very effective" in any case. The leak could have been highly damaging if Goldberg had publicised details of the plan in advance, but he did not do so – even after the fact.Editor-in-Chief Goldberg wrote in an article for The Atlantic magazine that “U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.” Goldberg was included to the group on Signal, which is an open-source messaging app with a privacy focus. He was added by someone posing as Michael Waltz, President Donald Trump's national security adviser, according to an Atlantic story published Monday titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
The US began targeting the Houthis in response under the previous administration of president Joe Biden and has launched repeated rounds of strikes on Houthi targets, some with British support.Trump has vowed to "use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective", citing the Houthis' threats against Red Sea shipping, and US strikes have continued over the past 10 days.