The Pentagonʼs Office of Inspector General will investigate whether the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the unclassified Signal app to discuss classified information about strikes on Yemenʼs Houthis.
This is stated in a memo by acting Pentagon Inspector General Steve Stebbins.
The investigation began after a bipartisan inquiry by the Senate Armed Services Committee, as allegations emerged that the Signal group chat contained highly accurate and classified intelligence about US airstrikes in Yemen.
In addition to reviewing whether Hegset followed rules regarding classified information, the inspector general will also investigate whether it followed rules about storing such data.
Previously, Pete Hegseth stated that the chat, where The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added, did not discuss plans to strike Yemeni Houthis. But only after the incident became known.
What preceded
Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine Jeffrey Goldberg said he was accidentally added to a chat on the Signal messenger, where the American operation against the Houthis was being discussed.
He was added to the chat by an account under the name Mike Waltz, the name of the US Presidentʼs national security adviser. According to Goldberg, the chat contained information about the targets, the weapons the US would use, and the sequence of attacks. Shortly after, direct attacks on Yemen took place.
There were only 18 people in this chat, including accounts writing on behalf of the Vice President JD Vance, the Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Trump advisor Steve Witkoff, and others.
Later, Waltz took responsibility for the incident and noted that another person was supposed to be added to the chat instead of the journalist, but the number mistakenly ended up in someone elseʼs list.
The head of the Pentagon, the directors of the US National Intelligence and CIA, as well as President Donald Trump, denied that military plans and classified information were discussed on the Signal messenger. Therefore, journalists at The Atlantic decided to publish this correspondence.
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