Revelations that a journalist was inadvertently sent plans for Yemen strikes over Signal have shaken Washington, but could have serious implications for Britain too
WASHINGTON DC — As Washington reels from the stunning revelation that key members of Donald Trump’s cabinet used the messaging app Signal to discuss detailed war plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this month, the reverberations from the scandal could ensnare Downing St.
The UK is a pillar of “Five Eyes”, the intelligence-sharing group that also brings the United States together with the governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Now, four of those nations would be entirely justified to wonder just how secure their intelligence can be in the hands of US officials who used Signal not only to share top secret military plans among themselves, but inadvertently with one of America’s leading journalists.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, has never earned a scoop as easily as the moment the war plans dropped onto the screen of his mobile phone.
In a breath-taking article published on Monday morning, he revealed that on 11 March he received a connection request on signal from someone identifying himself as Mike Waltz, President Trump’s National Security Adviser.
Goldberg accepted the request, little imagining that within hours he would be added to a group chat on the messaging app that included Vice President J.D. Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and more than a dozen other top officials.
Goldberg, who showed up in the chat only by his initials “JG”, was never directly addressed by any of the other participants, and it seems they had no idea that he was lurking – at Waltz’s apparently erroneous invitation – and watching them exchange detailed, highly classified plans to attack the Iran-backed Houthis in an effort to restore peace to Red Sea shipping lanes that the group has attacked since October 2023.
Not only was Goldberg privy to national security details so sensitive that in his piece he redacts several of them in order to protect intelligence officials and their sources, but he also gathered evidence that Vance disagreed with Trump’s decision to approve the military strikes.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now”, Vance told his colleagues.
He argued that the American public would not understand why US armed forces were attacking a far-off enemy in order to secure merchant shipping that mostly conveys goods to Europe, not the USA.
“If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said, to which Hegseth replied: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
Hegseth argued in favour of launching the attacks, telling Vance – without a hint of irony – that he was nervous about the possibility of the war plan leaking.
As Goldberg watched, Hegseth promised his colleagues “I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC”, the acronyn for “operational security”.
Democrats are rounding on the White House, accusing it of one of the greatest national security breaches in modern American history.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, assailed by Trump during the 2016 presidential election for using a private e-mail server for communications that included some classified information, shared her reaction to the Signal scandal on social media. “You’ve got to be kidding me”, she wrote on Elon Musk’s X.
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats leader in the House of Representatives, told reporters “this is reckless, irresponsible and dangerous”. He called for an immediate Congressional investigation, arguing Trump’s inner circle “is filled with lackeys and incompetent cronies”.
The appointment of some of those Cabinet members had already sounded the alarm among former officials in Washington who, earlier this year, were warning that Five Eyes governments should limit intelligence-sharing with the Trump team. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, has long faced questions about the nature of her relationship with the Russian government, and was a member of the Signal group chat.
On Monday night, when asked how Five Eyes members could continue trusting their secrets with the US in the aftermath of Goldberg’s revelations, one former top Republican official told The i Paper flatly that “they shouldn’t”.
For Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, concern may go deeper than the Signal conversation over the Houthi war plan.
It is unknown how many similar conversations about classified operations may have already taken place via insecure technology that is not government approved, and how many of the West’s enemies may have found ways of snooping on them.
On Wednesday, Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe are due to testify before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee at a previously scheduled session on “worldwide threats to the national security of the United States”.
Given that some of those threats now appear to come from the participation of Gabbard, Ratcliffe and 16 other top Trump officials in the Signal group chat, Republicans may choose to postpone the hearing rather than allow Democrats on the Committee to focus on the “Keystone Kops” antics of the President’s national security team.