In a serious security lapse, top Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to an encrypted chat discussing classified military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
March 25, 2025: Washington, DC: In what is being described as a stunning national security blunder, top officials in the Trump administration accidentally included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in an encrypted Signal group chat discussing classified US military strikes on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed that he was added to a group named “Houthi PC small group” on March 13. Among the chat members were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
According to Goldberg’s report, Waltz had instructed his deputy, Alex Wong, to create a “tiger team” for coordinating the airstrikes. Shockingly, at 11:44 a.m. on March 15, Hegseth inadvertently sent Goldberg a detailed war plan containing sensitive data including weapons packages, target coordinates, and timing — two hours before the strikes began.
“It was a shocking, reckless error,” Goldberg commented in his article.
Who is Jeffrey Goldberg?
Jeffrey Goldberg, a prominent American journalist, was born in Brooklyn and raised in Long Island. A former IDF soldier, Goldberg has reported extensively from conflict zones like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, and has interviewed key figures from Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban.
He began his journalism career at The Jerusalem Post, before writing for The Washington Post, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker. He joined The Atlantic in 2007 and became its editor-in-chief in 2016. In 2023, he also became the moderator of PBS’s Washington Week, rebranded as Washington Week with The Atlantic.
Goldberg has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the Overseas Press Club Award for human rights journalism.
In this bizarre incident, Goldberg said he exited the Signal group as soon as he realized the nature of the discussion, but by then, the damage was already done.
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Jeffrey Goldberg, Trump administration, US war plans leak, Signal chat mistake, Houthi airstrikes, US defense blunder, Yemen strikes, The Atlantic editor, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, US military leak, national security breach