In a stunning security leak, top administration officials accidentally included a journalist in an encrypted chat group discussing America’s March 15 strikes against Houthi terrorists in Yemen. A National Security Council spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the group. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, described his firsthand account of the episode from beginning to end in an article published Monday.

Signal Chat

“On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz,” Goldberg related. “Two days later — Thursday — at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the ‘Houthi PC small group.’”

“A message to the group, from ‘Michael Waltz,’ read as follows: ‘Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours,’” he continued. “The term principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA.”

The Signal group included 18 members in all, including “JD Vance,” “Pete Hegseth,” “various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as ‘S M,’ which I took to stand for Stephen Miller,” said Goldberg. “I appeared on my own screen only as ‘JG.’”

(Based on this screen name, National Review’s Kayla Bartsch has proposed that “Waltz meant to add a different ‘JG’ to the chat — U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer,” an inclusion that makes thematic sense “as they were planning an attack in response to the Houthis’ continued disruption of a major international trade route.”)

At this point, Goldberg was still skeptical about the veracity of the chat group and the true identities of the users behind such notable screen names.

However, he noted the “fascinating policy discussion” that ensued as “the account labeled ‘JD Vance’” suggested that attacking the Houthis was a “mistake” and pressed for “delaying this a month.” The account added, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

“I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what — nobody knows who the Houthis are — which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded,” responded “the ‘Pete Hegseth’ account.” “This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered. But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC [operational security].”

This last line is ironic because, unbeknownst to the participants, the OPSEC of the Signal chat was already compromised.

“If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” responded the “JD Vance” account.

“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC,” Hegseth answered. “But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”

“At this point, the previously silent ‘S M’ joined the conversation,” Golberg narrated. “‘As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. … If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.’”

The inadvertent leak became far more consequential at 11:44 a.m. on Saturday, March 15, when “Pete Hegseth” posted a “team update,” which “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” something Goldberg described as “shocking recklessness.”

“I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts,” he said. “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.”

Verification

This information enabled Golberg to begin verifying that the text chat was authentic. “According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time,” he continued. “At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.”

The next day, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and made points consistent with the communication strategy discussed in the Signal chat, Goldberg added. “These were not kind of pinprick, back-and-forth — what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks,” Waltz said of Biden’s failed attempts at deterrence. “This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out.”

“The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real,” said Goldberg. “Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, ‘Michael Waltz,’ that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left — or, more to the point, who I was.”

On March 24, Golberg emailed the Trump administration officials whose names had appeared in the chat and asked for confirmation that the chat was genuine. Two hours later, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes responded, “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”

Vulnerability

“I have never seen a breach quite like this,” Goldberg reflected. “It should go without saying — but I’ll say it anyway — that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.”

As a result, “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real,” he added, “because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.”

The Signal app provides an encrypted messaging platform that is hard to spy upon, but not impossible, especially for state-sponsored hackers. According to the Google Threat Intelligence Group this year, Russia-based hackers have “developed techniques to compromise encrypted messaging services, including Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram.”

For this reason, “The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose,” said Golberg. “If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF — most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home — or communicate only on approved government equipment,” according to national security lawyers interviewed by The Atlantic.

“As these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public,” said Golberg. “Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.” National Review’s Jim Geraghty noted that Special Envoy Witkoff was in Moscow while the messages were exchanged.

The lawyers told The Atlantic that mishandling sensitive national security information could potentially violate the Espionage Act. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe testified Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee and maintained that no classified information was shared in the Signal chat.

“Another potential problem” that Goldberg raised is the violation of laws covering the retention of government records. Some messages in the Signal chat were set to disappear after one week, and others after four.

Vision

Aside from the security and legal concerns, the incident also provides a unique picture into what Trump administration officials are truly thinking behind the scenes. The most striking perspective is that of Vice President J.D. Vance, who seems to believe that airstrikes against Iran-backed pirate-terrorists are a costly waste of the U.S. military’s resources. Analyzing this view goes beyond the scope of this article, and others have done so already. Suffice it to say that the People’s Republic of China might be very keen to see an American president hold the same foreign policy views.

Two other noteworthy features of the policy discussion stand out. First, several Trump administration officials wear the mantle of global hegemon with reluctance, and they look to extract economic concessions from our European allies for American efforts to defeat a common enemy.

Second, public messaging considerations played a major role in a discussion about the timing of a military operation. Even if they endorsed the operation, multiple senior officials expressed concern that Americans would not understand why the military is fighting Middle Eastern Islamist extremists with “Death to America” in their slogan. I don’t know any Americans who would misunderstand that mission.

Vote of Confidence

In any event, President Trump seems unfazed by the leak. When some in the media suggested that Trump should fire National Security Advisor Waltz for the leak, Trump responded decisively that “he’s not getting fired” for the “mistake.” He described Waltz as a “good guy” and was satisfied that the Houthi “attack was a success.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also supported his former House colleague. The chat showed “top-level officials doing their job, doing it well, and executing on a plan with precision,” he said. “That mission was a success. No one was jeopardized because of it. We’re grateful for that, but they will certainly, I’m sure, make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”

“Waltz is an honorable man with a fierce loyalty to his country, his friends, and his subordinates. I have experienced that goodness and that honor in ways few others have,” wrote John Noonan, a personal friend and fellow veteran. “And it is difficult for me to envision how, in the midst of staffing up a new National Security Council, dealing with a military campaign off the coast of Yemen, and brokering a peaceful conclusion to the largest land war in Europe since World War II, that mistakenly adding the wrong person or oversharing some sensitive-but-not-catastrophic details on an encrypted text chain is on par with the disgraceful fall of Kabul.”

In 2021, the Biden administration allowed the entire nation of Afghanistan to fall into the hands of our nation’s enemies in a matter of weeks, and no one was fired as a result.

Governing is hard, and the learning curve is steep. One drawback of staffing an administration with outsiders who can reform the system is that they lack experience in playing by the system’s rules. They are, therefore, more liable to make errors. On a human level, it’s easy to understand how someone could add the wrong phone number to a group chat. But America’s national security requires the elimination of any such errors, lest they be exploited by our adversaries. As onerous as they may be, the procedures in place to protect America’s national secrets really do serve a purpose.

A Biblical Worldview Reflection

There is a moral to the story. Most readers of this article will have no more say than I on the conduct of America’s national security or on whether senior officials follow proper procedure to protect sensitive information. But we can find a practical application in Jesus’s words from Luke 12:1-3:

“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.”

Just because you think your words are secret doesn’t mean they will remain that way. The senior U.S. officials discussing their Houthi attack strategy via an encrypted messaging app thought that their conversation would never be read by another living soul. Now, it has been screen-shotted and commented upon around the world. If it can happen to them, it can happen to you and me.

Ultimately, our words will be leaked not by an accidental addition to our group text, but by the omniscient Lord of hosts when the books are opened on the Day of Judgment, and we will be judged accordingly (Revelation 20:12). The secrets revealed may have nothing to do with U.S. military operations, but they will reveal the secrets of our hearts, for “out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).

So, what do our words reveal about us? Do we indulge words of “filthiness,” “foolish talk, or “crude joking” (Ephesians 5:4)? Are we “loud-mouthed boasters” (Jude 1:16)? Are we “gossips and busybodies” (1 Timothy 5:13)? Do we utter words of “bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander” (Ephesians 4:31)? The consequences of these sins are far more deadly — and eternal — than the particulars of a U.S. military operation. If the latter is a serious error, the former is grounds for urgent repentance.