Testimony raises questions about Pete Hegseth's handling of secrets and sensitive communications
A contentious Senate hearing raised more questions about Defense Secretary Hegseth’s decision to share details of a planned U.S. military operation in a group chat.
A contentious Senate hearing Tuesday raised questions about how Trump administration officials handle sensitive national security information and communications, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to share a planned U.S. military operation in a group chat.
Of the more than dozen senior U.S. officials on a Signal text chain that was inadvertently leaked to a journalist, Hegseth was the only one who shared details of the planned U.S. airstrikes in Yemen
In the group chat, an account labeled “Pete Hegseth” relayed “operational details” of upcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, “including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, reported.
Goldberg said he received the text messages about the operation at 11:44 a.m. on March 15. Media reports about the bombing of Houthi targets emerged about two hours later. Signal, an encrypted messenger app available to the public, is generally not authorized for government communications.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that Hegseth and the Defense Department had the “classification authority” to decide whether certain military information was classified or not.
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