In at least two separate Signal chats, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop – before the men and women carrying out those attacks on behalf of the United States were airborne.
Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by then-national security adviser Mike Waltz. It included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others, brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis.
Hegseth had created another Signal chat with 13 people who included his wife and brother where he shared similar details of the same strike, The Associated Press reported.
Signal is encrypted but is not authorised for carrying classified information and is not part of the Pentagon’s secure communications network.
Hegseth has said previously none of the information shared in the chats was classified. Multiple current and former military officials have told the AP there was no way details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, would have been OK to share on an unsecured device.
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The review was delivered to lawmakers, who were able to review the report in a classified facility at the Capitol. A partially redacted version of the report was expected to be released publicly later this week.
Hegseth said he viewed the investigation as a partisan exercise and did not trust the inspector general, according to one of the people familiar with the report’s findings. The review had to rely on screenshots of the Signal chat published by the Atlantic because Hegseth could not provide more than a small handful of his Signal messages, the person said.
When asked about the investigation in August, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters that “we believe that this is a witch hunt and a total sham and being conducted in bad faith”.
Lawmakers had called for inspector general to investigate
The revelations sparked intense scrutiny, with Democratic lawmakers and a small number of Republicans saying Hegseth posting the information to the Signal chats before the military jets had reached their targets potentially put those pilots’ lives at risk. They said lower-ranking members of the military would have been fired for such a lapse.
Some Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees suggested on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) that Hegseth’s actions would be a fireable offence for anyone else.
“This was not an isolated lapse. It reflects a broader pattern of recklessness and poor judgment from a secretary who has repeatedly shown he is in over his head,” Senator Mark Warner said in a statement.
The inspector general had opened its investigation into Hegseth at the request of the Republican chairman of the Senate armed services committee, Senator Roger Wicker, and the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Jack Reed.
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It all ties back to the campaign against Yemen’s Houthis
The Houthi rebels had started launching missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in late 2023 in what their leadership had described as an effort to end Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Their campaign greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) of goods move through it annually.
The US-led campaign against the Houthis in 2024 turned into the most intense running sea battle the navy had faced since World War II.
A ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war had begun in January before falling apart in March. The US then launched a broad assault against the Houthis that ended weeks later when Trump said they pledged to stop attacking ships. The latest Gaza ceasefire began in October.
Following the disclosure of Hegseth’s Signal chat that included the Atlantic’s editor, the magazine released the entire thread in late March. Hegseth had posted multiple details about an impending strike, using military language and laying out when a “strike window” starts, where a “target terrorist” was located, the time elements around the attack and when various weapons and aircraft would be used in the strike. He mentioned that the US was “currently clean” on operational security.
Hegseth told Fox News Channel in April that what he shared over Signal was “informal, unclassified co-ordinations, for media co-ordinations and other things”.
AP
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