• White House doubles down, insists no classified details were shared on Signal chat that also included journalist from The Atlantic
• Congress livid over security breach, grills top officials for second straight day

WASHINGTON: As the White House fought fiercely to defend itself over the slip-up, US magazine The Atlantic on Wednesday published the full exchange of leaked messages between officials laying out plans for an attack on Yemen.

The story broke earlier this week after an Atlantic journalist was accidentally added to the chat, and the magazine said it was revealing full details of the attack plans now because Trump’s team insisted that no classified details were involved.

Details including the times of strikes and types of planes used were shown in screenshots of the chat between President Donald Trump’s top officials on the Signal messaging app.

The White House reacted defiantly, seeking to contain the fallout from the revelation and launching a coordinated attack slammed the magazine’s journalists as “scumbags” and dismissing the story as a “hoax.”

“There weren’t details, and there was nothing in there that compromised, and it had no impact on the attack, which was very successful,” Trump told podcaster Vince Coglianese when asked about the latest revelations.

Vice President JD Vance, who was on the Signal conversation, said The Atlantic had “oversold” the story.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who has taken responsibility for accidentally adding Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, likewise insisted that the Signal chain revealed “no locations” and “NO WAR PLANS.”

Details of chat

Goldberg revealed Monday that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth sent information in the Signal chat about imminent strikes against Houthis targets on March 15.

According to the released chats, it was Hegseth who texted plans to kill a Houthi leader two hours before a military operation, that would normally be a closely guarded secret.

The magazine — which initially said it published only the broad outlines about the attacks to protect US troops — said it had published the full details after the Trump repeatedly denied that any classified details had been included.

The Atlantic said its full publication on Wednesday included everything in the Signal chain, other than one CIA name that the agency had asked not to be revealed.

It added that it had asked the government whether there would be any problem in publishing the rest of the material, given the official insistence that no secrets were shared.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had replied insisting there was no classified material involved, but adding that “we object to the release”.

Congress grilling

The depth of detail has fuelled a furious outcry from Congress, where lawmakers are accusing the Trump officials of incompetence and putting US military operations in peril.

“I think that it’s by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now,” Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut said at a hearing of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, on Wednesday.

“Everyone here knows that the Russians and the Chinese could have gotten all of that information,” Himes said.

Testifying at the hearing on global threats were two top officials from President Donald Trump’s administration who participated in the chat, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

It was the second straight day of testimony from those officials, after a heated session in the Senate where Democrats — and some of Trump’s fellow Republicans — called for accountability.

“This is classified information,” Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois said, calling for Hegseth’s resignation. “It’s a weapons system as well as sequence of strikes, as well as details about the operations.”

Separately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Senate Democrats wrote to Trump and his top officials urging a Justice Department probe into how a journalist was inadvertently included in a secret group discussion of sensitive attack plans.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2025