The Editor Who Was Accidentally Texted War Plans

Summary

The Daily: Inside the Group Chat Planning to Bomb Yemen

Host: Rachel Abrams
Guest: Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic
Release Date: March 26, 2025

---

Introduction

In this gripping episode of The Daily, Rachel Abrams delves into a startling breach of national security involving an accidental inclusion of journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in a high-level group chat among top Trump administration officials. This inadvertent addition led to the exposure of sensitive U.S. military plans targeting the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

---

The Accidental Inclusion and Initial Reactions (00:25 - 06:18)

The episode opens with Rachel Abrams introducing the unprecedented situation where Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat named "Houthi PC Small Group," comprising key figures such as National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and others.

Goldberg (00:35): "I received a message request on Signal from someone identified as Michael Waltz... It struck me as unusual."

Initially skeptical about the authenticity of the group, Goldberg dismissed the invitation, suspecting it to be a hoax or an attempt to entrap him as a journalist. Despite his reservations, his journalistic instincts compelled him to monitor the conversation.

---

Inside the Group Chat: Discussions and Contents (06:18 - 13:35)

As Goldberg continued to observe, the group began deliberating on escalating military actions against the Houthis, reflecting internal debates within the administration.

Goldberg (03:20): "The first text in this chain is from Michael Waltz setting up this discussion group... one after another, principal members respond."

Key discussions included:

• Disagreements on Military Strategy: J.D. Vance expressed skepticism about ramping up attacks, questioning the necessity and the message it sends to Europe.

  • Vance (05:07): "I disagree with the decision to attack Yemen at least... We're sending the wrong message to Europe."

• Interventionist Perspectives: In contrast, figures like Michael Waltz and Pete Hegseth advocated for a more assertive approach, criticizing European nations for their lackluster support.

  • Hegseth (13:39): "These are the most significant airstrikes since President Trump returned to the White House."

The conversation painted a vivid picture of internal divisions and the strategic calculus behind military interventions.

---

The Confirmation of Attacks and Aftermath (13:35 - 22:09)

On March 15th, Goldberg received a detailed attack plan within the group chat, complete with timings and weapon specifications. The imminent strike was forecasted meticulously:

Goldberg (12:31): "The text promises that the effects of the first wave of attacks will be felt in Yemen at 1:45 PM Eastern Time."

True to the schedule, U.S. military assets commenced operations against Houthi targets precisely as outlined, confirming the group's legitimacy.

Following the attack, the group chat saw a mix of updates and celebratory emojis, further solidifying the reality of the situation.

Goldberg (14:34): "During the attacks... there's the flexed bicep emoji, the fire emoji, the American flag emoji."

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Goldberg made the crucial decision to exit the group chat, anticipating scrutiny and potential backlash.

---

Official Responses and Political Reactions (22:09 - 35:54)

The episode transitions to the political fallout following Goldberg's revelations. In a contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, officials like CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard denied that any classified material was shared within the group chat, sparking skepticism among senators.

Senator Angus King (36:26): "Wouldn't that be classified? What if that had been made public that morning before the attack took place?"

Meanwhile, Republican figures like Pete Hegseth dismissed Goldberg's claims, labeling him as a "deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist."

Hegseth (18:38): "This is utterly unprofessional. There's been no apology, there has been no recognition of the gravity of this error."

Goldberg critiqued the administration's response, drawing parallels to previous security lapses under different political leaders and highlighting a perceived double standard.

Goldberg (27:37): "If this is not a big deal, then people like Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and all the rest have to go back into time and say that Hillary Clinton wasn't a big deal either."

---

Security Implications and Risks (35:54 - 25:58)

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the severe security risks posed by the breach:

Goldberg (20:00): "If somehow the Houthis understood that American warplanes were heading in their direction, that would give them conceivably more time to prepare a response, which would obviously put the pilots of those planes in danger."

Goldberg elaborates on the vulnerabilities of using platforms like Signal for sensitive communications, emphasizing the potential for foreign intelligence services to exploit such breaches.

Goldberg (23:10): "Everybody's talking about how secure Signal is, but foreign intelligence services spend a lot of time trying to target the actual devices that belong to government officials."

He underscores the importance of adhering to stringent communication protocols to safeguard national security and prevent future lapses.

---

Conclusion and Insights from Jeffrey Goldberg (35:54 - End)

Jeffrey Goldberg reflects on the broader implications of the incident for journalism and national security. He advocates for accountability and transparency, emphasizing the role of the free press in holding government officials accountable.

Goldberg (33:13): "The idea of holding government officials accountable is that you make the world a better place by telling the citizens what's going on and what the government is doing."

He remains steadfast in his commitment to investigative journalism, despite facing personal attacks and challenges from political adversaries.

Goldberg (30:26): "Someone has to just keep trying to do accountability journalism. Even though there are a lot of pressures on people not to do accountability journalism."

The episode concludes with a sobering contemplation on the state of national security protocols and the essential role of the media in a democratic society.

---

Key Takeaways

• Unprecedented Security Breach: The accidental inclusion of a journalist in a high-level government group chat exposed critical flaws in communication protocols.

• Internal Administration Divisions: The group chat revealed stark disagreements within the Trump administration regarding military strategies in Yemen.

• Political Fallout and Double Standards: The administration's dismissive responses mirrored past controversies, raising concerns about consistent standards in handling security breaches.

• Critical Role of Journalism: Jeffrey Goldberg's experience underscores the indispensable role of the free press in uncovering and addressing governmental missteps.

---

This episode of The Daily offers a compelling examination of the intersection between journalism, national security, and political accountability, highlighting the fragile balance necessary to maintain both transparency and safety in governmental operations.

Transcript

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[Sabrina]

Hey everybody, it's Sabrina. It's been a little while. I know. And that's because after three years of hosting this show with Michael, I'm leaving the job as host. I've decided to return to my first love reporting. It was a really hard decision for me. As you know, this is a very special show and I'm really proud of the work I did on it. I said reporting was my first love. But you, our dear listeners, and the amazing thing that is this show is my other one. I always loved hearing from you, knowing you were out there. So as you've probably noticed, there's been some new voices on the show as we figure out who's going to permanently step in. And don't be surprised if I come back to visit as a guest or even to sit in as host.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay, here's today's show from the New York Times.

I'm Rachel Abrams. This is the Daily being called a reckless and devastating breach of national security. Revelations that top Trump officials inadvertently shared secret US Military plans with a prominent journalist by mistakenly adding him to a group chat. Today, Atlantic magazine editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg explains how he initially thought the messages were a scam and now what he makes of the enormous fallout since going public. It's Wednesday, March 26th.

Jeffrey, is that you?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, it's me.

[Rachel Abrams]

Well, hello, Jeffrey. You've had quite a week. It's only Tuesday morning.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah. Tell me what we're doing. Like what is this for?

[Rachel Abrams]

What is it? So I'm with the Daily. My name is Rachel Abrams. I'm.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Oh, the Daily. Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with it.

[Rachel Abrams]

Yeah, you're right. It's one of the podcast of the.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

New York Times local newspaper in New York.

[Rachel Abrams]

No, we're just starting out. So thanks for bearing with us.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, that's great. It's cool. So do you have a lot of listeners?

[Rachel Abrams]

Yeah, we decent amount.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

My mom, my dad, my mom and my mom.

[Rachel Abrams]

Jeffrey and I talked on Tuesday morning. It was a full day after a story came out about how he'd been added accidentally to a group chat with top Trump administration officials.

So, Jeffrey, we have never met before, but yesterday I think I texted you, I emailed you, I called you, I called your publicist. I was desperate to get you on the show to talk about your story and the reaction to it.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Should have tried Signal.

[Rachel Abrams]

Should have tried Signal. That's right. So as we're hinting at, you just wrote something that really everybody is talking about. So tell us, where does the story begin?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, the story begins in earnest about March 11. I received a message request on signal from someone identified as Michael Waltz. He's the National Security Advisor in the United States.

[Rachel Abrams]

Signal, the secure messaging app.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, the commercial, non government end to end encrypted app that a lot of people in journalism and outside of journalism use because it's allegedly safer.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

And I don't know Waltz, I've met him a couple of times. But it struck me as unusual because I have a somewhat contentious relationship with the Trump administration, or more to the point, with Trump, but certainly in the normal bandwidth of Washington experience for a magazine editor, covers politics and foreign policy and national security, to get a message request from the National Security Advisor if it was indeed him. I accepted the request, forgot about it a couple of days later. I'm included in a group called the Houthi PC Small Group.

[Rachel Abrams]

Can you translate that for us? You have deep experience in foreign policy as a journalist, as you've said. What does Houthis, PC Small Group, mean to you in this moment?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Houthis are obviously the Iran backed terrorist organization that runs part of Yemen and been obviously attacking shipping, attacking Israel for the last year and a half, becoming a quite a menace to international shipping. PC stands for Principals Committee, meaning that small group of principals, cabinet members, people who run intelligence agencies.

[Rachel Abrams]

And you are certainly, I think we need to point out, not a principal in this context.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No, I have never been to a principal's meeting.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right. Just to be clear.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what PC stands for. Small group is not actually that small. It was 18 people, 19 people. I wouldn't consider that a small group. I would consider it the medium group.

[Rachel Abrams]

And who is in the group at this point?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

J.D. vance, Michael Waltz and the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, CIA Director, Director of National Intelligence, et cetera. I mean, again, people who are identified as such on my phone. But I'm an appropriately suspicious journalist and obviously for reasons I can go into, I think this is a setup of some sort. I think this is a hoax, a decept, a non state actor trying to entrap a journalist. I don't know what it is, but on the Face premise of this is ridiculous. So it had to be something other than what it was purporting to be, right?

[Rachel Abrams]

Basically like you being on a group chat with really top tier officials in the administration. You're not believing this is the real thing.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Maybe I can be included on something having to do with like the Easter Egg Roll or something at the White House, but I'm not gonna be. I'm not gonna be on this.

[Rachel Abrams]

And even though you think it's fake, at this point, I'm sure you're still kind of curious you're watching this thing.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, yeah. I mean. Cause what if?

[Rachel Abrams]

What if?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I mean, let's be honest, you know, you become a journalist. Cause the most interesting place on the planet is the other side of a closed door, right? So I gotta watch it one way or the other, you know.

[Rachel Abrams]

So what do they start discussing?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, the first text in this chain is from Michael Waltz saying that he's setting up this discussion group. This is on a Thursday, I guess, for basically, you know, we're heading into this weekend. There's this sort of elliptical promise of something happening over the next 72 hours. And the Michael Waltz user name asks these other principals to give their weekend POC point of contact in case there's a reason to have a further discussion. And so one after another, six or seven people respond, Marco Rubio, or the person playing Marco Rubio responds with a name from somebody from, from the State Department and so on, the Defense Department, et cetera. And most interesting in this moment to me is that the CIA director John Ratcliffe names a person and says, this person is going to be representing the CIA in this discussion. Now what I learn over time is that the person he names is an active CIA officer whose name has never been discussed in public. I thought, like, this is really weird what is happening here. But that's the initial foray. And then the next day there's a really interesting substantive policy debate about whether the US should ramp up its military activities against the Houthis in Yemen. And there's a lot of criticism in the chain of the Biden administration's inability to get the Houthi situation under control. Mainly what there is is a lot of resentment expressed toward the Europeans for not being able to float navies that could actually do this work and criticism the Europeans for not being able to pay, you know, this sort of thing that we've heard for a while from these guys. And J.D. vance starts the conversation out by saying he disagrees with the decision to attack Yemen at least Right. Now, he goes on to say that we're sending the wrong message to Europe and why do we have to do this? And it's the European shipping that's in danger, not American shipping. And furthermore, the President doesn't really understand the consequences of doing this. And J.D. vance is. He's doing this in front of half the Cabinet people who work for the President. He's telling them, I disagree with the President, and also, I'm not sure he gets it. And J.D. vance is playing the role that we understand J.D. vance to play, which is like kind of a soft isolationism. It's like, why are we fighting Yemen? What are we doing? And then the more kind of traditional, muscular, interventionist philosophy is represented by Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, is, yes, we recognize that Europe is pathetic. And this is what Hegseth says about Europe in all caps, by the way. You know, they recognize this European dynamic, but they're. They're more interested in just like, let's get this thing going against the Houthis.

[Rachel Abrams]

So this conversation, just to recap, is them discussing whether ramping up attacks on the Houthis militarily will be a good political strategy.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yes.

[Rachel Abrams]

And you're telling it sounds like they're having a kind of a polite disagreement. JD Vance is seemingly disagreeing with the position that Trump has, and that disagreement seems like it hinges on whether or not we're making the Europeans pay enough, which is something we've talked about on the show quite a bit.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Right, Exactly.

[Rachel Abrams]

So just I want to check in with you here, because in this moment, do you still think that this is a hoax? Are you starting to sense that it could be real?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I am suspecting that it could be real because it's pretty accurate depiction of what these guys sound like.

[Rachel Abrams]

Yeah.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

But I. Again, and let me put this in. Like, it can't be true. That's what's keeping me from believing that it's true.

[Rachel Abrams]

It can't be true.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It can't be true. Like, come on. Like, you know, I've been around this world for a long time. They don't do this.

[Pete Hegseth]

No.

[Rachel Abrams]

Bob Woodward has spent an entire career trying to infiltrate groups like this. So how could you possibly have just been added to a group chat?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, so it's weird that substantive government conversations will be taking place over signal, because SIGNAL is not, by the US Government standards, secure, in part, because obviously it's open to. Technically open to anyone, including yours truly. And I know that Previous administrations have used different messaging services, but not for substance. Right. I mean, I think in the Biden administration, it's a good example, they used signal. But my impression is, based on some reporting, my impression is that they used signal to do things like setting up lunch appointments or, hey, I've just left Saudi Arabia. I'll call you from a SCIF when I get to. Whatever.

[Rachel Abrams]

And just to be clear this, the SCIF is a.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

The SCIF is a compartmentalized facility that is built to protect conversations electronically. You know, you can't even take your phone or your Apple Watch or your Fitbit. These are very, very, very secure facilities. And by the way, the senior people in the national security apparatus of the United States have these things built into their houses when they're serving, so they can just go down to the basement and make the secure phone call. Right. And the whole idea is to protect these conversations from foreign surveillance.

[Rachel Abrams]

So what happens after this? How does this discussion progress from here?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, it progressed very quickly. So then on Saturday the 15th, I am running some errands, and the signal chat lights up. And probably the most important text in this entire series of texts comes from the account user Pete Hegseth, who provides what I would call basically the attack sequence, a summary of the war plan. And, you know, it's detailed. It tells the exact time that attack will be launched. It tells the exact time the effects of the attack will be felt in Yemen. It talks about the weapons packages being used. It talks about some specific targets, like actual military planning.

[Rachel Abrams]

That is a settled business and about.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

To happen a forthcoming attack on Yemen. I'm also sitting there in my car. It's 11:44am Eastern Time. I get this text. The text promises that the effects of the first wave of attacks will be felt in Yemen at 13:45, 1:45pm Eastern Time. So it's two hours, right? And I'm thinking to myself, hmm, well, I guess in two hours, I'm gonna find out if this is a real chain or not, right? Definitively. So, you know, I basically just kind of sit there, and at 1:55 or so, I go into Twitter and I put Yemen in the search bar. And then, sure enough, there are bombs falling all over Yemen, just as the user identified as Pete Hegseth promised two hours earlier.

[Schwab Advertisement]

Breaking news overseas right now, where officials.

[Rachel Abrams]

Are confirming that US Air and naval.

[Schwab Advertisement]

Assets hit dozens of Houthi targets in.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yemen, including missiles, radar, drones, and air defense systems.

[Pete Hegseth]

These are the most significant airstrikes since President Trump returned to the White House. And the first time US jets have struck these Iranian backed Houthi rebels in Yemen since President Trump returned to the White House.

[Rachel Abrams]

Trump announced the strikes on social media, threatening the Houthi rebels with, quote, overwhelming lethal force. The US Says it will keep attacking targets in Yemen until the Houthis stop their assault on global shipping in the Red Sea. I want you to describe to us what you're seeing in this group chat after the attacks start.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It's a couple of updates on the consequences of the attack. That's all I'll say. The damage that they think that they have done, combined with some congratulatory texts. And this is of course where they start using emojis.

[Rachel Abrams]

Emojis. Which emojis are they using?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Before the attack started, there was the prayer emoji used by a couple people. And then during the attacks, when the reports are coming in, that's going well from the American perspective. There's the flexed bicep, I guess, emoji, there's the fire emoji, there's an American flag emoji. Sometimes they're repeated a couple of times, you know, and there I'm sitting there watching that and going, wow, you know, every workplace is the same, huh?

[Rachel Abrams]

So what do you do next?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

So, you know, I'm sitting in the car, I'm watching the signal chat react to the Yemen attack. I'm realizing that this is almost certainly a real signal group and not some sort of deceptive disinformation campaign. And so then I had to begin to make a series of decisions, consulting with colleagues that ultimately led me to remove myself from the signal group later that day. Knowing that the group administrator and signal and the members, I believe, of a group as well are notified that you have left the group. I assumed at that point that Mike Waltz was gonna call and say, hey, who is this? Or call and say, why'd you leave the group? And I would say, director Waltz or whatever. Do you even know who this is? But nobody. Look, I mean, here's the truth of it is nobody noticed when I was added and nobody noticed when I was left.

[Rachel Abrams]

And can you tell us why you decided to leave the group chat?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

You know, I think people can make their own deductions here, but I can get into, for various reasons, the conversations I subsequently had with colleagues and others about my decision making. All I will say is that I remove myself from the group, understanding the consequences of that. And what I do is I decide, oh, I have to write a story about the world's weirdest signal group on Monday, I texted and emailed the relevant people in the chat. I used the signal contact. I sent long emails to a large number of players in this drama saying, you know, asking various questions.

[Rachel Abrams]

And what was the response?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, I mean, I got one official response back from the National Security Council, which, you know, came pretty quickly saying, apparently this is a real chain and we're investigating why a journalist was inadvertently invited to the chain. But, you know, I think they had to acknowledge it and they did. Once they acknowledged that it's real, I published our first piece on the subject.

[Rachel Abrams]

We'll be right back.

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[Jeffrey Goldberg]

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[Pete Hegseth]

Mr. President, your reaction to the the story the Atlantic that said that some of your top cabinet officials and aides have been discussing very sensitive material through Signal and included an Atlantic report. What is your response to that? I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of the Atlantic.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It's to me it's a magazine that's.

[Pete Hegseth]

Going out of business. You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again. I just can't to this moment get over the idea that during the days that group was going on not one of the participants said we shouldn't be.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Doing this on Signal.

[Rachel Abrams]

Do you believe that this warrants a congressional investigation?

[Pete Hegseth]

Well, it will. Common sense says this was a Major.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Screw up and somebody should be held accountable. Clearly, I think the administration has acknowledged.

[Pete Hegseth]

It was a mistake and they'll tighten up and make sure it doesn't happen again.

[Rachel Abrams]

I don't know what else you can say about that.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Should Mike Walton accept his discipline? No.

[Rachel Abrams]

Jeffrey, I wanna talk about the immediate reaction. This is such a breach of security protocols. Can you explain the hazards of this from a security point of view?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah. Put aside the weirdness of inviting a journalist by mistake. I mean, okay, it's hard to put aside, obviously, given what's happened. But one of the things that people don't understand, I think, about why there are rules governing privileged conversations within the national security community is that signal might be end to end encrypted, and it might be very hard to hack. But foreign intelligence services spend a lot of time trying to target the actual devices that belong to government officials. Right. Like, in other words, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio is walking around with a cell phone in his pocket. It should not surprise anyone to know that the Chinese government is very interested in knowing what's going on inside that phone. And it uses all kinds of methods where in a remote way, you can target that phone.

[Rachel Abrams]

And in this particular scenario, this particular attack on the Houthis, if a foreign adversary had gotten this information that you saw, what is the worst case scenario? Like, can you just play out the possibilities a little bit?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

If somehow the Houthis understood that American warplanes were heading in their direction, that would give them conceivably more time to prepare a response, which would obviously put the pilots of those planes in danger. You're the National Security Advisor of the United States. You're the CIA director. You don't want your target in Yemen to know that in an hour or so, he's gonna get blown up. So, yes, like, if you put this stuff out in the wild and signal and you're not talking about this in a security way face to face, theoretically, the danger level goes up. I mean, this is so, like, this is so obvious to me. Like, logic dictates this.

[Rachel Abrams]

Yeah. I just don't wanna breeze over it. I wanna make it really clear for people that the reason that it is important for the government to take all of these precautions and conceal these types of plans is that this information getting out there could compromise a military mission. It could put military service members at risk. Those are the stakes.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

At greater risk. Right. Greater risk.

[Rachel Abrams]

Greater risk. Those are the stakes here.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, also the success and failure of your mission.

[Rachel Abrams]

And because these are the stakes, did they break any laws here? Like, we're talking about sort of how things are typically done. But did the existence of this group chat, adding you, was any of this illegal?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I can't answer that question. I'm not a national security lawyer. We've interviewed national security lawyers who say that, you know, there are various risks associated with doing this the way they did it, that will be discovered in the fullness of time. And there's a lot of chatter right now in military forums and government forums of people who are saying, I'm an army captain in the artillery. Right. But every year I have to be recertified in cybersecurity, and I have to watch videos of how to make sure that your information is correct. And what kind of information can you put on your personal phone? And what kind of information can't you put on your personal. And there are people who get kicked out of the military. There are people who go to prison for compromising security at a much lower level than we're about to attack Yemen. Here's how the attack is gonna go.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right? Right. So I can imagine that if you are a member of the military or the State Department, you are frustrated, to say the least. That's. That's what you're. Because you are held to a very, very high standard that these folks, at least for now, do not seem like they were holding themselves to.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Right, right. And that's why there was no sympathy among government employees. There's no particular sympathy for Hillary Clinton for having government emails on her personal server. But still, there's not. You know, guys, you make these rules. You gotta follow them.

[Rachel Abrams]

Is there any chance that anybody on this group chat could believably say that they didn't know that they were supposed to take different kinds of precautions?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I mean, I guess you can say that it's the beginning of an administration. They're two months in. But is ignorance of the law, you know, does that absolve you of following the rules? Although some of them have obviously served. Marco Rubio was on the Intelligence Committee. John Ratcliffe was the former dni. Pete Hexseth served in the army, and so on. Also, like, here's the thing. I mean, even at that level, there's kind of an orientation moment. Here's your office. Here's your computer.

[Rachel Abrams]

Here's your scif.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Here's your skiff. This is the computer that you can communicate with other intelligence agencies with, but you cannot have your personal email on it. It's a closed system. And this is the computer that you get to use to do Internet research. And this is the. You know, I mean, you're presumably told all this stuff.

[Rachel Abrams]

It really makes you wonder what else is being communicated this way?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

How many other small groups are there?

[Rachel Abrams]

And also, why would these folks be communicating this way?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I mean, just, you know, why? You know, why?

[Rachel Abrams]

Tell me.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Cause going into a skiff is a pain in the neck.

[Rachel Abrams]

Even if it's in your basement.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I mean, I had to go to the supermarket. Maybe they gotta go to the supermarket. I mean, you know, you gotta go to the supermarket. You gotta go take your kid to Little League. I mean, all these people do have security details, mind you. They're driven in armored Suburbans, and they have very extensive communications devices associated with those vehicles. The idea is to make it maximally convenient. And by the way, this is.

[Rachel Abrams]

So that's it. It's convenience. That's it.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I don't know. Or if you talk about it on signal, you're obligated to make a copy of that discussion and send it to an official government account so that it can be archived by the National Archives. But signal is a disappearing app. Obviously. You know, the messages disappear.

[Rachel Abrams]

Well, they can. You can set it to disappear. Is that what happened here?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah. And these were set to disappear.

[Rachel Abrams]

I see.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

And so there is the plausible explanation that they're like, we just want to have real talk, and we don't want this to be archived forever in the National Archives.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right. Okay. So that sounds like it potentially could be a legal problem.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Well, I mean, so it's convenience and also a way of having a way of protecting your conversation from future congressional oversight. It's a lot of other things.

[Rachel Abrams]

I think the natural question is to say, under normal circumstances, there would probably be an investigation led by Congress. Democrats are obviously calling for that, but it just feels like there must be so little interest in an investigation from anybody with a power to do it. And I just wanna give you some examples of the reaction to your story that make me say that, because over the past 24 hours, the Republicans have really played this down. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said, this is not our issue. Senator John Kennedy said a mistake was made. It happens. A House Republican called it a learning moment. Trump himself said, mike Waltz is a good man. He's learned a lesson. Do you think there will be any consequences for the people who initiated or participated in this breach of national security?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Nothing that's been said by the administration so far suggests to me that they're treating this seriously or treating it the way they would treat it if this were Democrats who had done this.

[Rachel Abrams]

You mentioned Hillary Clinton earlier, but I wanna bring it back to her for a second because it seems noteworthy that a lot of the people on this Signal chat, and certainly President Trump, all of these people, made a very big deal about Clinton and how she used a private email server for official business when she was Secretary of State. And everybody remembers the chance lock her up at every turn. They described what she did as a very serious breach of national security that should face consequences. And I just. Can you for a second, putting aside whether or not this is hypocritical, could you ruminate on whether you think what you have seen is as serious, more serious, far more serious, just by comparison to what she did?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

If this is not a big deal, then people like Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and all the rest have to go back into time and say that Hillary Clinton wasn't a big deal either. Right? I mean, this is this kind of arid, dispiriting Washington game where when you commit a crime, it's the worst thing that ever happened on the planet. And when I do it, it's perfectly acceptable and understandable. Here's the thing, and this is sort of what I would love to say to Pete Hegseth. Six months ago, if Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of Defense and the Joe Biden administration were communicating with Kamala Harris over Signal about an imminent military attack and describing to Kamala Harris which weapons are gonna be used in the attack, and they mistakenly included a journalist in that conversation, do you really think Pete Hegseth would say it's not a big deal?

[Rachel Abrams]

Do you think that they think that the mistake here is being accidentally included in this getting out or having used Signal in the first place?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

What I understand from inside the White House, I've talked to a couple people and obviously read some of the reporting in the last period of time. They think that Mike Waltz is a dope for including me in the chat, and they're really focused on that. I mean, there's not a fantastic record of Democrats being completely assiduous about the storage and safekeeping of classified information. I mean, nobody's perfect here. But we're coming out of a situation where the current president was actually indicted for hiding classified information in a bathroom. This is the president, of course, who is known to have discussed classified operations on the veranda of Mar a Lago. So, you know, the tone is set from the top. I mean, there are people who take security Very seriously. And there are people who don't take it very seriously. I wouldn't, you know, I don't think anybody would say that Donald Trump is one of those presidents who took it extremely seriously.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right. I think this sort of speaks to the question I asked you about whether you there are gonna be any consequences. Because like all of the examples you just laid out, those suggest that maybe these are folks that think the mistake here was most likely just including you. Which makes me wonder, do you think that you are gonna be now targeted by the administration? And I just wanna quote from Pete Hegseth here, because immediately after your story came out, he denied that he had shared war plans. He said that you yourself were a deceitful and highly discredited so called journalist who made a profession of peddling hoaxes. And just given how aggressive this administration has been toward the press generally, I just wonder if you think you might be the only one, ironically, that could face any punishment from this.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Oh, I don't think about that. And by the way, those are words that hurt. I'm really sorry that he said that. Donald Trump has called me terrible things for five years. Just a few months ago he called me a radical left, disgraceful. I can't even remember. It's like a bunch of words, the usual words that he uses and he's mad at a reporter. So A, I'm used to it. B, I don't care. C, I'm gonna do my job harder when I'm running up against opposition. D, this is our current reality in America and someone has to just keep trying to do accountability journalism. Even though there are a lot of pressures on people not to do accountability journalism.

[Rachel Abrams]

I gotta push back on you because every journalist at a major institution right now is thinking about whether or not the administration is going to be more aggressive with its journalists. And when you are in the position that you found yourself, you are consulting with people like at the Atlantic, you know, there's, there every major news organization has teams of lawyers, has people to talk to. When you find yourselves in situations where you're wondering, what should I do next? Are there any legal consequences? And you had mentioned earlier that people could deduce why you left that chat. Ultimately, and I respect the fact that you can't go into the details, but I do wanna ask you whether part of the reason why you left was that you were concerned you could get in trouble for it. Like, were you worried at all that you had stayed in that chat too long? And not just you, the people that you're talking to at the Atlantic that presumably you're getting advice from.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

I'm going to. Your Honor, I'm gonna respectfully decline to answer that question on the grounds that I can't answer the question. I take the nation's laws very seriously, but I am not in a position to discuss decision making related to the type of material that I was seeing.

[Rachel Abrams]

I understand. And obviously, at the end of the day, the Atlantic published your story. And I just wanna zoom out for a second because as we mentioned earlier, you have covered foreign policy for decades. You have covered a lot of White Houses. And I assume that this is not the first time that you have had to weigh the public interest in publishing information that could be embarrassing or that the government doesn't want you to publish. This is not the first time that you've weighed that against, you know, national security risks. And clearly you decided that the story was worth publishing in the public interest to know how national security leaders are flouting security protocols. And I'm wondering, as you're sitting Here now at 11:41am on Tuesday, how. How are you thinking about this calculation? Do you think that we're safer now knowing what you reported?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

First and foremost, what I discovered was what I consider to be a massive security breach. A breach you can drive a Mack truck through. The idea of reporting and the idea of having a free press and the idea of holding government officials accountable is that you make the world a better place by telling the citizens what's going on and what the government is doing. And so. So let's assume that this is a functional government and responds in ordinary ways to the discovery of flaws. With any luck, they'll tighten up their procedures and policies.

[Rachel Abrams]

I guess the answer to my question depends on if they actually do anything.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's too early to say. I mean, we all can speculate about the unusual qualities of this administration and whether they respond in the way that other administrations would respond to these kind of events or these kind of revelations.

[Rachel Abrams]

Do you think that this event was so egregious that it'll break through just actually, just to regular people, or is this gonna be kind of the same thing that we're so used to, which is one side gets very upset, the other side tries to dismiss it, downplay it until it eventually goes away? Like, is this so bad that it'll break through to the immunity people feel to claims of hypocrisy?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Look, 10 years ago, Donald Trump insulted the war record of John McCain. I listened to that. I thought, oh, well, that's it for the Donald Trump campaign. Because the one thing you don't do is attack war heroes, but the rest is history. We know what happened four years ago. Five years ago, I reported that Donald Trump referred to the World War I and World War II war dead as suckers and losers. And there are people who said, so what? There's always a contingent of people these days who say, so what? For partisan reasons. And so I've gotten out of the prediction business. The ordinary rules of political physics don't really apply anymore.

[Rachel Abrams]

But if it does get brushed off, like, what does that say to you?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

It says that we're in a dangerous place. Successful countries respond to observable reality by changing course to account for that reality. If these guys go back to using SIGNAL to discuss war planning, that's on them. That is what you would call reckless behavior. If they're going to not change certain procedures because they don't like the media or because they think that the Democrats are also bad, it just doesn't sound like a healthy country. It doesn't sound like a healthy way to run a country.

[Rachel Abrams]

Jeffrey, I want to thank you very much for your time.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Thank you.

[Rachel Abrams]

During a contentious hearing on Tuesday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, two members of President Trump's cabinet who were included in the text exchanges with Jeffrey Goldberg, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, both denied that any classified material was shared in the messages. That prompted expressions of disbelief from several senators, including Angus King of Maine.

[Pete Hegseth]

An independent Secretary Hedseff put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets, the weapons we were gonna be using, attack sequences and timing. And yet you've testified that nothing in that tech in that chain was classified. Wouldn't that be classified? What if that had been made public that morning before the attack took place? Senator, I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence.

[Rachel Abrams]

Equities that were included in that chat group at any time.

At one point during the hearing, Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia pressed Radcliffe to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation.

[Pete Hegseth]

Director Radcliffe, this was a huge mistake, correct?

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

No.

[Pete Hegseth]

A national.

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

Hold on.

[Pete Hegseth]

No, no, you let me answer. No, no. Director Radcliffe, I asked you a yes or no question, and now you hold on. A national political reporter, you can characterize it how you want, was made privy the White House sensitive information about imminent military operations against a foreign terrorist organization. And that wasn't a huge mistake. That wasn't a huge mistake. They characterized embarrassment this is utterly unprofessional. There's been no apology, there has been no recognition of the gravity of this error.

[Rachel Abrams]

Meanwhile, after we spoke with him, Jeffrey Goldberg rejected the claims from Radcliffe and Gabbard that there was no classified material in the messages saying they are wrong. We'll be right back.

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[Hannah Dreier]

My name's Hannah Dreier. I'm an investigative reporter at the New York Times. So much of my process is challenging my own assumptions and trying to uncover new information that often goes against what I thought I would find. All of my reporting comes from going out, seeing something and realizing, oh, that's actually the story. And that reporting helps readers challenge their own assumptions and come to new conclusions for themselves. This kind of journalism takes resources. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of reporting trips. If you believe that that kind of work is important, you can support it by subscribing to the New York Times.

[Rachel Abrams]

Here's what else you need to know. Today, Ukraine and Russia agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea and to hash out the details for halting strikes on energy facilities in what would be the first significant step toward a ceasefire three years after Russia launched its war against Ukraine. But the deal falls short of a complete pause in fighting, and it remains unclear how and when the limited truce would be carried out. And President Trump signed a pardon for Devin Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden whose congressional testimony two years ago helped to fuel House Republicans investigation into the Biden family. Archer, who had been convicted in a fraud case, earned fans on the right after he testified against Hunter Biden. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennisketter, Carlos Prieto and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Paige Cowett and Maria Byrne. Contains original Music by Pat McCusker, Alicia Be ItUp and Rowan Niemisto and was.

Engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

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