Diyar Guldogan
21 April 2025•Update: 21 April 2025
WASHINGTON
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat, the New York Times reported Sunday.
Citing four people with knowledge of the chat, the Times said it included his wife Jennifer, brother Phil and personal lawyer Tim Parlatore.
Hegseth shared the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthi group -- essentially the same attack plans that he shared in a separate Signal chat the same day, according to the report.
Last month, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, said he had been inadvertently included in a messaging group where Vice President JD Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Hegseth and other senior officials discussed plans for an attack on Houthi targets in Yemen hours before it took place on March 15.
Hegseth used his personal phone to create the newly revealed Signal chat as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, said two of the people familiar with the chat.
He shared information about the Yemen strikes in the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat -- that included about a dozen of Hegseth's top aides -- at approximately the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior US officials and Goldberg, the people familiar the chat group said.
A US official declined to comment on whether Hegseth shared detailed targeting information but maintained that there was no national security breach, the report said.
One person familiar with the chat said Hegseth’s aides had warned him ahead of the Yemen strikes not to discuss such sensitive operational details in his Signal group chat which, while encrypted, is not considered as secure.
- No classified information in any Signal chat: Pentagon
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell rejected the New York Times report, calling it "garbage."
Parnell said the New York Times and "all other Fake News" were "enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article."
He said they "relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage" Hegseth and President Donald Trump's agenda.
"There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story," Parnell added.
After Goldberg disclosed the first Signal chat in March, senior Trump administration officials including Hegseth repeatedly denied that any classified information was shared among the participants.
"Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that," Hegseth told reporters.
The “Signalgate” incident raised questions about the administration's handling of classified military information after sensitive details about weapons packages, targets and timing were reportedly shared on the unsecured platform.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon's acting inspector general, Steve Stebbins, announced that a formal investigation into Hegseth's use of the Signal app to discuss military operations in Yemen against Houthi targets would be launched.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the secretary of defense and other DoD (Department of Defense) personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Stebbins said in a notification letter to Hegseth.
