Top intelligence officials from the Trump administration strongly pushed back Tuesday on claims that classified material was shared in a Signal chat group about America’s attack plans on Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
The comments were made during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing less than 24 hours after The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story about the Signal chat group after he was accidentally included in the group and was able to monitor communications between officials.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the encrypted app was loaded onto his computer by technicians at the agency after he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
“One of the things that I was briefed on very early was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use — it is,” Ratcliffe told Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). “That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration.”
He said that his communications in the group were “entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard subsequently told Warner that “there was no classified material that was shared in that Signal chat.”
The questions came after other top Trump officials — including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and others — were discussing timing and messaging for U.S. military strikes in Yemen against the terrorist group. The White House confirmed the authenticity of the group chat, saying in a statement that it is “reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
While the Trump administration confirmed that the group chat highlighted in The Atlantic’s story was genuine, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed Goldberg’s “sensationalist spin.” She wrote on X that “No ‘war plans’ were discussed” on the Signal group chat and “No classified material was sent to the thread.”
“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,” Leavitt added. “As the National Security Council stated, the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread. Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective. Terrorists were killed and that’s what matters most to President Trump.”
