DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
Details released by media outlet include the times of US strikes and the types of aircraft being used against the Houthis.
The Atlantic has published what it said were “attack plans” against Yemen’s Houthi rebels that top United States government officials shared in a group chat that inadvertently included the media outlet’s editor-in-chief.
The release on Wednesday came after the administration of US President Donald Trump sought to downplay the significance of the texts shared on the Signal messaging app, according to The Atlantic.
The newly published messages, transmitted on March 15, appear to have been sent by an account seeming to belong to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
They include the times of strikes and the types of aircraft being used, as well as early reports about how effective the attacks against the Houthis were.
The publication of the texts’ transcript comes two days after The Atlantic published an article from editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, in which he detailed how he had been added to a group chat where high-level government officials were discussing military actions against the Houthis.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed The Atlantic for Wednesday’s report.
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” she wrote on X.
‘Massive breach’
But Democrats renewed their calls for Hegseth and other top Trump administration officials to resign over the leaked chat.
“The Signal incident is what happens when you have the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen,” Senator Mark Kelly wrote on social media. “We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives, but for the safety of our military and our country, Secretary Hegseth needs to resign.”
Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost said the latest report from The Atlantic makes “clear that this was a massive breach of our national security”.
“Had this very specific plan gotten in the wrong hands, Americans would be dead right now. [US National Security Advisor Mike] Waltz and Hegseth must be fired immediately,” he wrote on X.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan said the Trump administration will now have to explain how the release of these details does not constitute a violation of US laws on the handling of classified materials.
She explained that Goldberg published the chat messages “because he said the Trump administration is not taking responsibility for what it did”.
On Tuesday, Waltz said he accepted “full responsibility” for mistakenly adding Goldberg to the chat, while Trump sought to wave the scandal aside.
“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” he said at a meeting of US ambassadors. “ We’ve pretty much looked into it. It’s pretty simple, to be honest. It’s just something that can happen.”
More to come …
