The Signal chat decoded: What Hegseth and Waltz revealed in airstrike text messages

Details of a planned US airstrike in Yemen mistakenly shared with a journalist on the messaging app Signal were almost certainly classified information, military experts say, despite the White House declaring otherwise.

The Atlantic magazine published the messages this week after the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to a group chat involving a host of Trump administration officials in the days before the planned strike on March 15.

Smoke rises from a location reportedly struck by US airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 15.Credit: AP

The revelation that highly sensitive attack plans had been shared on a commercial messaging app, possibly on personal mobile phones, has triggered outrage in Washington and calls from Democrats for members of President Donald Trump’s national security team be fired over the leaks.

Vice President JD Vance, CIA director John Ratcliffe and national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard were also part of the Signal chat that included Goldberg.

‘We are GO for mission launch’

Timing and targeting details of an airstrike is some of the most closely held material ahead of a US military campaign, military experts say, and Pentagon officials aware of the planning for the airstrike told Reuters they believed the information shared in the messages was classified at the time it was sent. An unnamed defence official quoted by CNN also said the information the officials shared in the chat was classified. “It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court-martialed for this,” the official said.

Military experts agree. Philip Ingram, a former military intelligence officer with the British Army, told the BBC the information shared by Hegseth in the above message would be deemed top secret. “You can practically plot where the aircraft are going to come from,” he said.

Darrell Blocker, a former CIA operative, told US broadcaster ABC News that the information Hegseth shared “was 100 per cent classified”.

‘Amazing job’

Military experts say Waltz may have compromised intelligence sources when he shared the results of the airstrike on the group chat.

Referring to the “girlfriend’s building” suggested the US was using either a person on the ground to track the target’s movements, or an overhead surveillance drone or some other type of technology, former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman told US broadcaster ABC News. “For us to know where this gentleman was at that exact moment means you’ve got real-time intelligence,” he said.

Hegseth has declined to answer questions about whether he declassified the information on the Signal chat, perhaps retroactively. In Hawaii on Wednesday, he played down the controversy, telling reporters the texts contained “no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods”.

In Jamaica, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was part of the chat group, acknowledged to reporters that someone “made a big mistake” by adding a journalist to the chat. But he also dismissed concerns about any impact on the operations.

Reuters, with staff reporters

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