US defence chief Pete Hegseth shared war plans in second Signal chat

WASHINGTON - US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said the information he shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen – essentially the same attack plans

he shared in a separate Signal chat on the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defence Department employee, but she has travelled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr Hegseth’s brother Phil and Mr Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as the Defence Secretary’s personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.

Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defence secretary, and was named “Defence | Team Huddle”, the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.

The continued inclusion following Mr Hegseth’s confirmation of his wife, brother and personal lawyer – none of whom had any apparent reason to be briefed on operational details of a military operation as it was getting under way – is sure to raise further questions about his adherence to security protocols.

The chat revealed by The Atlantic in March was created by President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz so that the most senior national security officials across the executive branch, such as the Vice-President, the director of national intelligence and Mr Hegseth, could coordinate among themselves and their deputies before the US attacks.

Mr Waltz took responsibility for inadvertently adding Mr Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, to the chat. He called it “Houthi PC small group” to reflect the presence of members of the administration’s “principals committee”, who come together to discuss the most sensitive and important national security issues.

Mr Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said he typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other Cabinet-level officials.

Mr Hegseth shared information about the Yemen strikes in the “Defence | Team Huddle” chat at roughly the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior US officials and The Atlantic, the people familiar with Mr Hegseth’s chat group said.

The Yemen strikes, designed to punish Houthi fighters for attacking international cargo ships passing through the Red Sea, were among

the first big military strikes of Mr Hegseth’s tenure.

After The Atlantic disclosed that Mr Hegseth had used Mr Waltz’s Signal group to communicate details of the strikes as they were being launched, the Trump administration said he had not shared “war plans” or any classified information, an assertion that was viewed with tremendous scepticism by national security experts.

In the case of Mr Hegseth’s Signal group, a US official declined to comment on whether Mr Hegseth shared detailed targeting information but maintained that there was no national security breach.

“The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before confirmation of his closest advisers,” the official said. “Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell did not respond to requests for comment.

Democratic lawmakers, in a Reuters report, said Mr Hegseth could no longer stay in his job.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a post on social media platform X: “We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him. Pete Hegseth must be fired.”

Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who was gravely injured in combat in 2004, said Mr Hegseth “must resign in disgrace”.

The “Defence | Team Huddle” Signal chat until recently included about a dozen of Mr Hegseth’s top aides, including Mr Hegseth’s chief of staff Joe Kasper and Mr Parnell.

The chat also included two senior advisers to Mr Hegseth – Mr Dan Caldwell and Mr Darin Selnick – who were

accused of leaking unauthorised information last week and were fired. They

were among three former top Pentagon officials who proclaimed their innocence in a public statement on April 19 in response to the leak inquiry that led to their dismissals.

On April 20, another former Defence Department official, Mr John Ullyot, who left the department last week, said in an opinion essay for Politico that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and suggested that Mr Trump should remove him.

When Mr Goldberg released details of what Mr Hegseth put into the Signal chat created by Mr Waltz regarding the upcoming strikes in Yemen, Mr Trump defended him and said he had done nothing wrong.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did the same after the latest revelation. “No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared,” she said.

While the Signal chat created by Mr Waltz for senior officials was criticised for sharing details of a military operation on an encrypted but unclassified app, the participants – other than Mr Goldberg, who appears to have been added accidentally – were senior government officials with reason to track the progress of the attack.

But some of the participants in the group chat created by Mr Hegseth were not officials with any apparent need to be given real-time information on details of the operation.

Mrs Hegseth has drawn attention for the access her husband has given her. The Defence Secretary took her to two meetings with foreign military counterparts in February and early March where sensitive information was discussed, a development first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr Parlatore, who has been Mr Hegseth’s personal lawyer for the last eight years, was commissioned as a navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps about a week before the Yemen strikes were initiated.

In an interview before rejoining the military, Mr Parlatore told The New York Times that he would work with Mr Hegseth’s office to improve training for the military’s uniformed lawyers.

Mr Hegseth’s brother Phil works inside the Pentagon as a liaison to the Department of Homeland Security and as a senior adviser to the Defence Secretary.

One person familiar with the chat said Mr Pete Hegseth’s aides had warned him a day or two before the Yemen strikes not to discuss such sensitive operational details in his Signal group chat, which, while encrypted, is not considered as secure as government channels typically used for discussing highly sensitive war planning and combat operations.

It was unclear how Mr Hegseth, a military veteran and former Fox News host who before his confirmation in January had never previously served in a high-level government position, responded to those warnings.

Many of those in his inner circle during his first months in the Pentagon were combat veterans with deep experience in the military but little first-hand knowledge of how the government operates at the highest levels.

Several of these staff encouraged Mr Hegseth to move the work-related matters in the “Defence | Team Huddle” chat to his government phone. But he never made the transition, according to some of the people familiar with the chat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Pentagon’s Acting Inspector General announced earlier in April that he would review Mr Hegseth’s Yemen strike disclosures on the Signal chat that included top Trump aides.

Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins said in a notification letter to Mr Hegseth: “The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defence and other DoD (Department of Defence) personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business.”

It is not clear whether Mr Stebbins’ review has uncovered the Signal chat that included Mr Hegseth’s wife and other advisers.

Mr Stebbins started the review in response to a joint bipartisan request from Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee, and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Beyond the controversy of the Signal chat, Mr Hegseth’s office has been shaken by the sudden firings of Mr Caldwell, Mr Selnick and Mr Colin Carroll, all top advisers to the Defence Secretary. They were escorted from the Pentagon last week after being accused of leaking sensitive information.

The dismissals and turmoil around the Inspector General’s investigation have raised tensions and prompted talk of more resignations, according to current and former defence officials.

Among those considering leaving are Mr Kasper, Mr Hegseth’s chief of staff, who helped lead the leak investigation that resulted in his colleagues’ dismissal but has not been implicated in wrongdoing, according to senior defence officials.

In the wake of the report in The Atlantic disclosing the first Signal chat, Mr Hegseth and other senior administration officials 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,” Mr Hegseth told reporters.

At a Senate hearing, Ms Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, echoed Mr Hegseth’s assertion that no classified information was shared.

But other former senior defence officials said texts describing launch times and the type of aircraft being employed before a strike would be classified information that, if leaked to the enemy, could have jeopardised pilots’ lives. NYTIMES, REUTERS