Updated March 25, 2025 at 16:05 PM ET
In a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill, the nation's top intelligence officials testified that they did not share classified information in a messaging group chat that discussed the U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen.
Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee pushed back aggressively against those claims by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The hearing, which was previously scheduled, took place just a day after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed that a top Trump administration official mistakenly added him to a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal about highly sensitive plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.
Signal is a publicly available app with a reputation for strong security. But it is not part of the government communications network that's used when the most sensitive information is being discussed.
"My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information," Ratcliffe testified.
Gabbard refused to say whether she was on the Signal chat group, but added that she has not shared any classified information outside of proper channels.
Goldberg wrote that Gabbard and Ratcliffe were among the 18 individuals who participated in the text chain, a group that Goldberg said also included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, called on the intelligence officials to release the material in the group chat.
"If there was no classified material, share it with the committee," Warner said. "You can't have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security."
He described the actions of the national security leaders as "sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior."
Goldberg says he received an invitation to join the group on March 11 from the account of national security adviser Michael Waltz.
Goldberg said he initially thought it might be a hoax, but came to believe it was real as he read the texts over the course of several days. He said his inclusion in the group must have been inadvertent. He speculated that Waltz, or an aide handling his account, intended to include someone else with the same initials as Goldberg — "JG."
Goldberg said that Hegseth shared "war plans" in the chat group on March 15, just two hours before the U.S. began bombing Yemen.
Goldberg told NPR on Monday that Hegseth shared "operational military information" that included targets, weapons and attack sequencing. Goldberg said he would not provide additional details because he considered the information to be too sensitive to share more widely.
Hegseth has questioned the integrity of Goldberg and told reporters that "nobody was texting war plans."
At the White House, the National Security Council confirmed the authenticity of the message thread on Monday, saying it was "reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain."
"There was no classified information, as I understand it," Trump told reporters from the White House on Tuesday, noting that many people in the government and media use Signal. He said that the National Security Council is looking into the incident, and predicted that Waltz likely would not be using Signal very often in the future.
"Look, if it was up to me, everybody would be sitting in a room together, the room would have solid lead walls and a lead ceiling and a lead floor. But you know, life doesn't always let you do that," Trump said.
Waltz said technical experts and lawyers at the National Security Council were looking at the incident, but he slammed The Atlantic and the media more broadly over the focus on the issue.
"There's a lot of journalists in this city who have made big names for themselves making up lies about this president, whether it's the Russia hoax or making up lies about Gold Star families, and this one in particular, I've never met, don't know, never communicated with, and we are and we are looking into him, reviewing how the heck he got into this room," Waltz said.
The Pentagon has warned about risks with Signal
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the security breach, saying the incident raises questions about the Trump administration's handling of sensitive information.
Such conversations are supposed to take place in what's known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), a secure room that top-ranking officials have in their offices and homes.
National security experts have voiced alarm that they instead used a publicly available messaging app. In fact, a 2023 Department of Defense memo obtained by NPR specifically cited Signal as an example of an "unmanaged" messaging app that is not authorized to transmit non-public DOD information.
Additional warnings were issued as recently as last week. In a March 18 Pentagon-wide advisory obtained by NPR, military personnel were again cautioned against using Signal due to the risk of Russian hackers who are "targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest."
A Signal spokesman said the Pentagon memo is not about the messaging app's level of security, but rather that users of the service should be aware of so-called "phishing attacks." That's when hackers try to gain access to sensitive information through impersonation or other deceptive tricks.
"Once we learned that Signal users were being targeted, and how they were being targeted, we introduced additional safeguards and in-app warnings to help protect people from falling victim to phishing attacks. This work was completed months ago," said Signal spokesman Jun Harada.
Lawmakers are demanding accountability
Democrats in Congress had roundly criticized many of Trump's security and intelligence picks for their perceived lack of experience during the nomination process — and are now calling for further investigation.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have publicly called for an investigation into what they respectively called "this unacceptable and irresponsible national security breach" and the "damage it created."
While many Republican lawmakers have largely downplayed the incident, several have been more vocal about the need to find out what happened.
"We're very concerned," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters on Monday, adding that his panel would look into the matter directly.
"I think there will be, yes," Wicker said of a potential hearing.
Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the armed services committee, said he and Wicker would be meeting Tuesday to chart out a course forward, and collecting evidence as part of conducting a probe. "It is an egregious violation" he told NPR.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has also said Congress needs answers.
"Obviously, we got to run it to [the] ground, figure out what went on there," Thune told reporters on Monday.
Other Republicans have been more direct with their alarm, including Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who serves on the Intelligence Committee. Collins said the incident was "inconceivable to me."
Another member of the intel panel, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., suggested ahead of Tuesday's hearing that the committee would have a deeper conversation on the breach behind closed doors.
"I don't think it was a good thing, but I want to hear an explanation of it from the individuals involved in it in a classified setting so I get the full story before I make a judgement on it," Rounds told NPR.
In the House, Republicans have largely been more muted. The issue did not come up during the House GOP weekly meeting on Tuesday, signaling hopes to downplay the matter.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Tuesday echoed Trump administration claims that no war plans or classified information was shared on the group chat.
"Obviously that was a mistake, and a serious one," he said. But Johnson described the participants in the chat as "patriots," adding, "that was a successful mission."
Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon, a retired Air Force general, disputed the White House claims repeated by Johnson.
"That's baloney," he said. "They ought to be honest and own up to it."
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., expressed confidence that a probe will settle any unanswered questions.
"As far as I'm concerned, obviously that should never happen again, and they should have safeguards in place to make sure that does not happen again," Lawler said. "Any classified material should be discussed on a classified platform, on a secure platform, not on an unsecured network."
NPR disclosure: Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation.
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