The NPR Politics Podcast - Defense Officials Used Group Text To Plan Missile Strikes

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Before the U.S. carried out missile strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, senior Trump administration officials discussed the plan of action. Also part of the discussion: Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, who had inadvertently been added to a group message on Signal about the missile strike. How did this happen, and what are the implications for national security? Note: NPR CEO Katherine Maher is chair of the board of the Signal Foundation, whose subsidiary makes Signal. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, and national security correspondent Greg Myre.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Oh, hey there. I'm Brittany Luce. And I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pockets to say, but I think you should listen to my podcast. It's called It's Been A Minute, and I love it. And I think you will too. Over the past couple of months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR today. Hi, this is Courtney Farrell in New York City, and I have just finished going through all of the voter registration forms that we've collected for my school's civics week in my New York City public school. This podcast was recorded at 12.36 PM Eastern time on Tuesday,

March 25th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you've heard this, but I will never stop being inspired by my wonderful students. ["The New York Times"] Yay for civics education. That's pretty cool. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics.

I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And today on the show, we're looking at a major national security story this week, how Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, was added to a group text on the messaging app Signal. That chat detailed how and when the United States would launch airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

And we should note, NPR's CEO, Catherine Maher, chairs the board of directors for the Signal Foundation, whose subsidiary makes Signal. Now that chain included multiple key Trump administration officials, the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President, National Security Adviser and other senior government leaders. Now, Greg, it goes without saying that Goldberg, the journalist at the Atlantic, was not supposed to be on this text chain. So how did this happen? Well, as he explained it in his article in the Atlantic and talking to NPR, he said that

he got this invitation on March 11th and it was from the account of Michael Waltz, the national security advisor. Now, his first instinct was, this is a hoax. Somebody's trying to entrap me. Maybe a foreign intelligence service, maybe somebody who just wants to prank journalists. So he was very suspicious, but he accepted the invitation on March 11th, and then over the course of the next few days, this chat group started to get more active, and all of the top national security officials were on there. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence

Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. So this is looking more and more real. And then along comes March 15th, four days later, and here's how Goldberg described it yesterday on All Things Considered. I'm sitting in my car in a parking lot in a supermarket at 1144 a.m. Eastern, and I get this war plan from Pete Hegseth. And it basically says, in two hours time, you'll begin to see the effects of the bombing. And so I think to myself, well, I'm going to find out if this is real or not in two hours.

I hold my phone very tightly because I don't want anybody getting my phone, obviously. And sure enough, around 1.50 p.m. Eastern, there starts to filter reports on social media of strikes in Yemen. So yes, it was clear that this was all factual. Goldberg said he was quite shocked that he discovered this huge breach in national security. So those US attacks against the Houthis in Yemen have now been going on for about 10 days and are still ongoing and expected to last for quite some time. Okay, so Deepa, what is the White House saying about this incident?

What are they confirming? Yeah, so, so far the NSC, which is the National Security Council, pretty much in the aftermath, this all happened Monday yesterday, the NSC verified the authenticity of these signal messages and they said that they're investigating how Goldberg got added to the group chat in the first place. Obviously, he wasn't meant to be there. So they're basically acknowledging that this is real. They're saying that, yes, this did happen.

But at the same time, there are members of the administration who are in that group chat who are trying to discredit Goldberg and downplay the fact that this is a big deal. This is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was asked about this by reporters, and this is what he said. You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes

time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides' hoax or suckers and losers' hoax. So this is the guy that peddles in garbage. This is what he does. It's like pretty incredible, Sarah, to see like almost the comms machine at work here. And that, you know, is pretty standard in the Trump administration when they're trying to spin the message the way that they want just in the last 24 hours to see. You go from the NSC saying these messages are real to this morning, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt tweeting out a number of bullet

points, one of them saying, you know, Jeffrey Goldberg is well known for his sensationalist spin. She said that there were, quote, no war plans that were discussed. There was no classified material that was sent to the thread. And you also had Trump himself. He phoned into NBC News and he's defending Mike Waltz, his national security advisor. He made multiple points and one of them was, of course, to discredit the Atlantic and dismissing the publication. But he also said that Mike Waltz had learned his lesson. He's a good man. And he said, you know, this whole incident is a glitch. And he turned out and it turned out not to be serious effectively because it was a successful

attack, I think is what he's trying to say. And so he said that it had no impact at all on the military operation. And he said he's, you know, pretty confident in Mike Waltz. I just want to take a step back. Greg, you cover national security. Deepa, you cover the White House. I mean, is content like this ever supposed to be discussed over an app like Signal? Simple answer, absolutely not.

There are very clear guidelines and protocols about how to handle classified information and then there's secret and top secret. And this would certainly seem to fall into the category of top secret in terms of war plans hours before they're about to go into action. So this is not something you would discuss on an app that's available to everybody, but some government agencies allow its use in limited circumstances. And for example, we've heard where one official may want to have a secure conversation with somebody else and

they'll say, hey, can we talk about that thing we've been discussing? They'll use that message over signal and then they'll go to the more secure government communication. So to use it as a heads-up but not to discuss actual classified information, as seems to be the case in this instance. And just as a side note, there's no indication that this is directly related, but just last week the Pentagon warned the entire military Department of Defense apparatus that Signal has some vulnerabilities. Signal does have a very good reputation for being secure, but it's on phones and computers

which are vulnerable to hacking. There are staffers, there are people who work at the State Department, the Defense Department who have to take this information extremely seriously, are held to a very high standard of not even being able to bring their personal devices into work. There's all these rules that hundreds of people who work for the government have to follow. So the fact that the leaders of these departments and institutions are breaking those rules is pretty significant. Okay, it's time for a quick break. More in just a moment. Man, I mean, that might have been the only time I've really faced myself.

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Spend some quality time with people like Billie Eilish, Questlove, Ariana Grande, Stephen Colbert, and so many more. We ask questions you won't hear asked anywhere else. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. And welcome back. So Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic said that he believed either national security advisor Mike Waltz or a staffer working for Waltz had added him to this chat. Deepa, what is the White House saying about that and about Waltz's job security in light of this incident? Yeah. So President Trump in that interview in NBC News, he said it was one of Michael's

people on the phone. And so he's essentially saying that it was a staffer maybe who was using Mike Waltz's contact information in the group chat, something like that. But at the same time, he's expressed confidence in Waltz. It doesn't seem like there's going to be any further fallout there. He said that Mike Waltz has learned his lesson in this situation.

And I will say like the second beat of that, right, is to continue to discredit the Atlantic. So there's kind of this machinery of, you know, making sure that this story isn't serious and they're trying to discredit it. SONIA DARA-MARGOLIS So Greg, meanwhile, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, are testifying before Congress as we tape this pod. This was a previously scheduled hearing, it's important to say, but this incident, no surprise, has come up during that hearing. What are they saying about it? Yeah, this is the Senate Intelligence Committee that's meeting and it's an

annual event they have. It's the worldwide threat assessment and they call up several of the top national intelligence and security officials. So you would expect them to talk about China, Russia, Iran, those kinds of big picture items. Instead, it's been very much focused on this group chat on Signal. And what was interesting is both Ratcliffe and Gabbard said they did not disclose any classified information on this chat or in any other form outside of standard procedures. And so as these Democratic senators questioned the intelligence officials, we really heard

them pushing back. Democratic Senator John Ossoff from Georgia really had some strong comments. Let's listen to what he had to say. Director Recliff, a discussion by senior US officials on the timing and risks of a proposed military campaign and disagreements between the president and the vice president about US plans and intentions would be of obvious interest to foreign intelligence services, would it not? Yes. And they were discussing the timing of sending US air crews into enemy air

space where they faced an air defense threat, correct? I'm going to, Senator, defer to the other principles that you're referring to about what the meaning and the context of what they were on. They're talking about the timing of U.S. airstrikes, correct? Yes. Yes, and therefore the timing of sending U.S. air crews into hostile airspace, correct? Yes. And therefore the time period during which enemy air defenses could target U.S. air crews flying in enemy airspace, correct? I don't know that. You do know that. Now, as best we

could tell, Ratcliffe and Gabbard, they were commenting about their own remarks on this group chat. They didn't refer directly to what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put out there, and Jeffrey Goldberg in his article said it was Hegseth who was putting out the most sensitive information about the bombing campaign. So they may be a little technically correct here, but they really haven't clarified in terms of what was classified, what was not classified, what could have been discussed, or what wasn't discussed. So in essence, as of this taping at least, they're essentially saying, we didn't share

anything classified, but maybe not commenting on whether or not anyone else had. Yeah, they were not very chatty about this. They answered questions, but didn't get into details. In fact, Gabbard wouldn't even say that she was on this specific chat group on Signal. Ratcliffe acknowledged that he was, but again said he didn't put out any information that was classified. So we have said this kind of information is not normally shared on an app-like signal. Sensitive national security information does though from time to time get out beyond its intended audience. This isn't the first time that's happened. So generally speaking, what's the accountability in a situation like this? What kinds of investigations take place

when something like this happens? And what could happen next? Well, we've certainly seen this in the past and there have been investigations. In fact, there's almost always a couple ongoing investigations and quite often lower level people do get prosecuted for maybe intentionally leaking classified information. We've seen several cases like that in recent years and even at the high level we've certainly seen investigations. I mean perhaps the one that received the most attention was Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State and then in the years afterward she was investigated to see whether using a private email server at her house was a

violation, a gross negligence in the handling of national security information. So these kinds of investigations do happen. Often the opposition party calls for them and that's what we're seeing right now with Democrats calling for them. However, Trump and others in the administration are downplaying this and doesn't seem like they're interested in investigating much further. And famously, this is a president who is well known for firing people who he feels should be fired, people who have been disloyal, people who he feels like have made mistakes or errors, and has been quick to do that in the past. So, you know, there's very much an option,

investigation or no investigation for the president to past. So, you know, there's very much an option, investigation or no investigation for the president, to let go of, you know, the people who work for him. Although at this point, it doesn't really seem like that is happening either. Before I let you both go, what else will you be watching for as this continues to play out? I actually just got an email in my inbox

a couple of minutes ago that kind of speaks to the spin that the White House is continuing to put on this whole story. And they sent out something from their communications office that says Trump administration's actions made Houthi terrorists pay. And the first line in the memo that they sent out is Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J. Trump and his national security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted U.S. troops. So they're really trying to spin this as a, why is this a big deal?

We successfully targeted the people we were trying to target and have made America safer. I will say one more thing that's pretty common in this Trump White House is when things aren't typically going their way in the messaging world, they pull back to issues that work well for them. Immigration is typically one of them. Securing the U.S.-Mexico border is often a topic that they sort of pull back to. That was indicative this morning when Tom Homan, who's the president's border czar, was on Fox News.

So you can kind of almost see maybe some of that that's coming of the White House trying to pivot and pivot and pivot so they can make this story go away, although I'm doubtful that that will happen. And I'll just add that the Democratic senators were talking about at the hearing today, they said they'll be looking to see if top national security officials use the Signal app at other times to discuss other sensitive matters. So they were suggesting or want to know if this was a one-off occurrence or if this has sort of been a standard way of doing business among top national security

officials. All right well we'll leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover politics. I'm Deepa Shivaram, I cover the White House. I'm Greg Myrie, I cover national security. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.