The Atlantic on Wednesday published a transcript of the full text messages showing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provided detailed U.S. military plans in a Signal group chat that inadvertently included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg quoted from the texts in an article titled “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal”. In the texts, Hegseth described specified types of U.S. military aircraft and the timing of airstrikes against Houthi militias in Yemen.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” one of the texts says, referring to a type of military aircraft. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) — also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”
The new revelation comes just 24 hours after several Trump administration officials spent the day attempting to downplay the security debacle.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said Tuesday.
In his article on Wednesday, Goldberg slammed Hegseth’s comments, saying he was “trying to deflect from the fact that he participated in a conversation on an unclassified, commercial messaging app that you probably shouldn’t participate in.”
President Donald Trump was asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday about the latest developments but he refused to say if he knew about the matter.
“That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know. I’m not sure. You have to ask the various people involved. I really don’t know,” he said.
Goldberg wrote in the article that “statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump — combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts — have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions.”
Information about an upcoming U.S. military attack on an adversary is typically considered to be classified.
