Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the White House on April 10, 2025. | Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly shared details about the March 15th Yemen military strikes in another Signal chat with people who weren’t government officials, reports The New York Times. The chat included his wife and “about a dozen” others he knew personally and professionally, the outlet writes, citing conversations with four unnamed sources.
The details he shared “included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen,” writes the Times, which notes the details were “essentially the same” as those shared in the Signal chat between Hegseth and other officials last month that included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added by mistake.
But in this case, according to the Times, the chat was one that Hegseth made in January before he was Defense Secretary:
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 defense secretary, and was named “Defense | 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 outlet’s sources told it that “Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.” According to the Times, a US official confirmed the “informal group chat” but insisted no classified information had ever been discussed on it. The unnamed official wouldn’t comment on whether Hegseth “shared detail targeting information,” the story says.
Other details about the chat mentioned by the Times include that 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,” and some encouraged him to move any work-related matters from the chat to his government phone, but he never did so.
