After Trump administration officials denied sharing classified information in the Signal group chat that inadvertently included a journalist, the reporter released the withheld details from the chat on Wednesday.
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg claimed on Monday that he would withhold parts of the chat about strikes on the Houthis for national security reasons. The chat included national security adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, among others.
In a new report in the Atlantic on Wednesday, Goldberg included messages in the chat from Hegseth, which included the timeline for strikes they planned to conduct on Houthi targets before the strikes were publicly announced.
“TEAM UPDATE: TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch,” the beginning of the lengthy text from Hegseth said.
The defense secretary continued with time stamps on when the F-18s would launch, which forces would be used, and when bombs would drop. Specific locations and names of targets were not shown in the text.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” the message continued. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”
He ended the message by saying, “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline),” and “We are currently clean on OPSEC” — that is, operational security. “Godspeed to our Warriors.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the report Wednesday morning, suggesting it was a “hoax” because Goldberg referred to the message as “attack plans” in this report after previously suggesting they were “war plans.”
“The Atlantic has conceded: These were NOT ‘war plans.’ This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” Leavitt said, repeating a critique Trump allies have used against Goldberg since the story broke.
Goldberg also included screenshots of the list of people in the chat, with some showing full names and others showing initials.
Ratcliffe and Gabbard said in a Senate hearing on Tuesday that classified information was not discussed in the chat, but Gabbard recalled “discussion of targets in general.”
WALTZ SUGGESTS GOLDBERG MAY HAVE ‘DELIBERATELY’ HACKED INTO SIGNAL CHAT
Waltz told Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle that he took full responsibility for accidentally adding Goldberg to the chat and floated the possibility the journalist was added in an unusual way.
“It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened by some other technical means is something we’re trying to figure out,” Waltz said Tuesday evening.
