Trump officials on Tuesday described the leak of a high-level discussion about attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen as a “mistake” but said the president’s critics were blowing the incident out of proportion to undercut the success of the airstrikes themselves.
Officials insisted no intelligence secrets were shared in the Signal messaging app chat, though they did acknowledge it was not good for an American journalist to have somehow been added to the chat.
Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg reported on the contents of the messages on Monday, after the attacks had been well underway.
President Trump called the leak a “glitch” but expressed his backing for National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, who is reportedly the one who added the journalist to the chat session. The president said Mr. Waltz has “learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
Mr. Trump wasn’t on the chat, but Vice President J.D. Vance reportedly was, as were Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others.
Ms. Gabbard said Tuesday that no secret intelligence information was included in the chat.
SEE ALSO: Trump has Mike Waltz’s back amid fallout over group chat discussing Houthi strike
“There was no classified material that was shared,” Ms. Gabbard told the Senate intelligence committee, where she was testifying on the 2025 assessment of global threats.
Mr. Hegseth, traveling in Hawaii on Monday, called Mr. Goldberg “deceitful” and a purveyor of hoaxes.
“Nobody was texting war plans,” the Pentagon chief said.
For his part, Mr. Ratcliffe called the inclusion of a journalist an “inadvertent mistake” but he rejected the claim by a Senate Democrat that it was a “huge” mistake.
He did, however, acknowledge that the information being shared in the chat is the sort of thing a foreign intelligence agency would have loved to get its hands on.
The leak has enraged Trump administration critics.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” said Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee. “I’ve not heard either one of you say ’Gosh, we screwed up.’”
The Virginia senator called the leak “sloppy, careless, incompetent” behavior and said it risks alienating the country’s allies.
Mr. Warner said the leaked chat included information about timing and objectives of strikes against Houthi targets, as well as the name of a CIA operative. He also suggested Signal was vulnerable to exploitation by adversary intelligence services.
“The Signal fiasco is not a one-off,” he said. “It is unfortunately a pattern we’re seeing too often repeated.”
Mr. Warner said if a career intelligence official had done this, that person would have been fired.
Hours after the hearing, Mr. Warner sent out a fundraising appeal headlining the leak.
“When the stakes are this high, incompetence is not an option. Pete Hegseth should resign. Mike Waltz should resign,” Mr. Warner wrote in his fundraising plea.
Republicans on the committee Tuesday lacked the fury of Democrats, but several indicated they were worried.
“It appears to me there are some unanswered questions,” said Sen. Todd Young, Indiana Republican.
FBI Director Kash Patel, who was on the panel testifying on Tuesday, said he doesn’t know if the FBI will pursue an investigation. Ms. Gabbard said the National Security Council is conducting a probe and she declined to share many details of what she knows.
Mr. Ratcliffe was more forthcoming, saying that the CIA officer whose identity was included is not working undercover, and was being shared in the chat for coordination purposes.
Mr. Ratcliffe also said there was nothing untoward about using Signal.
He said the CIA has approved it for unclassified communications and indeed it is standard procedure to load it on devices of agency employees. He said it was loaded on his computer after he was sworn in as director earlier this year.
Mr. Ratcliffe said there are some restrictions, such as memorializing any decisions in a more formal way for records retention purposes.
He said the chat was set up by Mr. Waltz and the conversation made clear that classified information be shared over “high side” channels that can handle such data.
Mr. Ratcliffe said he’s not sure how the Atlantic journalist was added to the chat.
He and Ms. Gabbard said they would be willing to subject their devices to an audit to verify their claims about classified information not being shared.
Mr. Warner was not mollified, saying if the chat wasn’t classified, then they should be able to share all the messages publicly right now.
“You can’t have it both ways,” he said.
The White House countered with a statement declaring the airstrikes on Houthi rebel targets a total success.
“Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J. Trump and his National Security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted U.S. troops and disrupted the most consequential shipping routes in the world,” the White House said.
The White House also noted that President Biden removed the Houthis from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and that Mr. Trump re-designated them.
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