The White House on Wednesday accused The Atlantic of sensationalizing the content of additional “attack plans” messages that the outlet released after administration officials denied sharing classified information in a Signal group chat that its reporter was inadvertently added to.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat of top Trump military and intelligence officials to monitor airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. The Atlantic’s first article on the chat, published Monday, left out messages that Goldberg said contained sensitive “attack plans” that could damage U.S. national security if released.
The outlet published those redacted messages on Wednesday after Trump officials denied on Tuesday that any classified information was shared in the group chat. “There was no classified information as I understand it,” President Donald Trump said on Tuesday.
The messages released by Goldberg were sent by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at 11:44 a.m. ET on the morning of March 15, the day of the strike on the Houthis. The messages, sent to the group roughly two hours before the strike was delivered, said:
TEAM UPDATE:
TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.