“Amateur Hour” declares Politico, after the White House confirmed that the editor of The Atlantic magazine was accidentally included in a top-secret discussion group among senior U.S. officials in which they prepared plans for attacks against the Houthis, which were then launched a few days later. However, the disdain of Trump’s top advisers for Europe, which is increasingly seen as more of a burden than an ally, also shines through in the messages in addition to details about the military operation.
“When I saw the message in my email inbox, I thought it was a joke played on me by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,” writes Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who broke the story. His name was actually added to the ultra-confidential chat between top officials devoted to military operations against the Houthis.
The chat discusses plans for bombing Yemen on March 15 as a necessity to ensure safe navigation in the Suez Canal. Vice President JD Vance points out that this is essentially a European problem (U.S. traffic amounts to 3 percent of the total versus Europe’s 40 percent), expressing misgivings about “going to the rescue of European countries.” He writes, “I hate to have to do this.” Hegseth replies, “They are pathetic, but it must be done.” Entering the conversation at this point is White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steve Miller, who floats the idea of asking European countries for money to ensure “safe” shipping. He argues that if the U.S. succeeds in its goal, both Europe and Egypt should offer economic compensation somehow. “We should have some tools to enforce these demands: if Europe does not compensate us, then what happens? There has to be some additional economic benefit in return for our intervention.”
This is recounted by Goldberg himself in a lengthy article in which he recalls the initial perplexity about the authenticity of the various messages that ran for several days before the attack, in a chat that included Vice President JD Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steve Miller, among others. In all, the chat was sent to 18 people.
In his article, Goldberg believes the error was generated by an account on Signal that he shared with Mike Waltz.
According to National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes, the reporter’s number was “mistakenly included in the chat” and authorities “are investigating how this error occurred.”
The oversight has had congressmen from both parties laughing and infuriated, with some Democrats already calling for an investigation and potential repercussions against National Security officials involved in the affair.
“This is an incredible and amateurish breach of national security,” Democratic Congressman Chris DeLuzio, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, told Axios. ”Heads should roll. There needs to be a committee investigation as soon as possible.”
“We can’t chalk it up to a simple mistake. People should be fired for this gross incompetence. It’s evidence of the incompetence of this Administration,” said Democratic Congresswoman Sara Jacobs, also of the Armed Services Committee.
Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the equivalent Senate committee, wrote on X: “this Administration is playing games with our nation’s most classified information, and that makes all Americans less safe.”
Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan, a war veteran who was a captain in military intelligence in Iraq, said the message “mistakenly sent” to The Atlantic, one of the most prestigious and most critical newspapers of the Trump Administration, merely “grotesquely demonstrates the incompetence and sloppiness of the people called by the president to be part of the U.S. defense apparatus.”
Republican Congressman Don Bacon, also of the Commission on Armed Services and a former Air Force brigadier general, tried to downplay the seriousness of the matter. “It happened to me, too, to send the message to the wrong people. These things happen.” He added, however, that “the seriousness of the fact remains because the message was sent over unsecured networks. None of this should have been sent over unsecured systems. Russia and China are definitely monitoring his unclassified phone.”
