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The White House downplayed the seriousness of the incident, and President Trump defended his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, after the extraordinary disclosure.
- March 25, 2025Updated 11:37 a.m. ET
The Trump administration is dealing with the fallout of an extraordinary leak of internal national security deliberations, disclosed in an encrypted group chat that mistakenly included a journalist from The Atlantic.
In the group message among cabinet officials and senior White House staff, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed specific operational details two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen, according to The Atlantic. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, to the group chat on Signal, a commercial messaging app.
Here’s the latest.
What has the White House said?
President Trump told NBC News on Tuesday that the leak was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, posted on social media that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed” and “no classified material was sent to the thread.” That contradicts Mr. Goldberg, who wrote that he had not published some of the messages in the thread because he said they contained sensitive information.
Mr. Goldberg’s report also raised concerns about administration officials using Signal, a nonsecure messaging platform, and setting the messages to automatically delete. Ms. Leavitt pushed back against those concerns.
“The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible,” she wrote.
