In an embarrassing moment for the Trump administration, the editor-in-chief of US news magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a private chat group with senior security officials discussing airstrikes plans.
“I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans,” wrote Goldberg in his groundbreaking article exposing the incompetency of Trump’s senior security officials.
The journalist wrote that he received a connection request on March 11 from Michael Waltz, the national security advisor of United States, on Signal. According to Goldberg: “Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering.”
The Atlantic editor-in-chief stated that he did not think that it was the actual security advisor but might be “someone masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me.”
The group included discussion between senior officials including the Vice President J.D Vance on airstrikes targeting the Houthi rebels in Yemen, exposing highly sensitive military plans.
Goldberg was later added into a discussion chain called the “Houthi PC small group” two days later.
Waltz remained unaware of his huge blunder by adding a civilian, particularly the editor-in-chief of a major news organisation, in a group chat discussing the most sensitive war plans.
The discussion included the precise timings of strike, the weapons, and an in-depth discussion on the impacts of the strikes.
The United States launched a series of air and naval strikes against the Houthis on March 15. The incident has raised several concerns about the kind of security protocols the Trump administration is following.
Social media users did not spare the Trump administration officials with many wondering how the senior security officials could coordinate about war plans on a messaging app.
Senior Democrat party member, Tim Waltz, took to X (formerly Twitter) to write: “Pete Hegseth texting out war plans like invites to a frat party.”
Another user wrote: “These are the clowns running Trump’s National Security.” A Reddit user commented: “Yeah, precisely. How in the world this was being texted at all just shows the extreme incompetence in this administration. It is quite literally a prosecutable leak. Anyone of us that did this would immediately be fired. Not even just transferred. Like fired, gone, goodbye.”
Another user argued: “They are using non-government phones as government officials to text government policy on signal because they care more about masking their communications from congress and FOIA requests than national security and laws. In their minds, journalists making FOIA requests are a bigger threat than any foreign intelligence agency, because they are both stupid and evil.”
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