WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pulled the airstrike information he posted into Signal chats with his wife, brother and dozens of others from a secure communications channel used by U.S. Central Command, raising new questions as to whether the embattled Pentagon head leaked classified information over an open, unsecured network.
NBC News first reported that the launch times and bomb drop times of U.S. warplanes that were about to strike Houthi targets in Yemen — details that multiple officials have said is highly classified — were taken from secure U.S. Central Command communications. A person familiar with the second chat confirmed that to The Associated Press.
The information posted in the second chat was identical to the sensitive operations details shared in the first chat, which included members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, the person said.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity of out fear of reprisal for speaking to the press.
It’s the second chat involving Hegseth to be called into question
This is the second chat group where Hegseth posted the Yemen airstrike information. The first leaked Signal chat accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic and has caused an inspector general investigation in the Defense Department.
Hegseth has not directly acknowledged that he set up the second chat, which had more than a dozen people on it, including his wife, his lawyer and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired as a senior liaison to the Pentagon for the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the secretary blamed the disclosure of the second Signal chat on leaks from disgruntled former staff.
Hegseth has aggressively denied that the information he posted was classified. Regardless of that, Signal is a commercially available app that is encrypted but is not a government network and not authorized to carry classified information.
“I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans,” Hegseth told Fox News on Tuesday. “I look at war plans every day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”
Former defense secretary calls it a ‘serious’ breach
Based on the specificity of the launch times, that information would have been classified, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the AP in a phone interview.
“It is unheard of to have a Secretary of Defense committing these kind of serious security breaches,” said Panetta, who served during the Obama administration, and who also was director of the Central Intelligence Agency during Obama’s term. ”Developing attack plans for defensive reasons is without question the most classified information you can have.”
The news comes as Hegseth has shaken up much of his inner circle. He is said to have become increasingly isolated and suspicious about whom he can trust, and is relying on an increasingly smaller and smaller circle of people.
In the last week he has fired or transferred six of his inner support circle, including Hegseth aide Dan Caldwell; the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, Colin Carroll; and Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick.
Those three were escorted out of the Pentagon as the department hunts down leaks of inside information, and in his “Fox and Friends” interview Tuesday, an agitated Hegseth accused those staff — whom he had worked with and known for years — of “attempting to leak and sabotage” the administration.
Hegseth confirmed Tuesday that chief of staff Joe Kasper would be transitioning to a new position. Former Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell is also temporarily shifting to a more direct support role for Hegseth, and former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot announced he was resigning last week, unrelated to the leaks. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.
