WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared information about an airstrike in Signal chats with his wife, brother, and dozens of other people from a secure communications channel used by the United States Central Command, raising new questions about whether the Pentagon chief leaked classified information through an open and unprotected network.
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NBC News first reported that the launch and bomb drop times of the planes about to attack Houthi targets in Yemen -details that multiple officials have said are highly classified- were taken from secure communications of the Central Command. A person familiar with the second chat confirmed that to The Associated Press.
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The information published in the second chat was identical to the 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 for fear of reprisals for speaking to the press.
It is the second questionable chat involving Hegseth
This is the second chat group where Hegseth posted information about the airstrike in Yemen. The first leaked Signal chat accidentally included The Atlantic editor and has prompted an investigation by the inspector general at the Department of Defense.
Hegseth has not directly acknowledged that he set up the second chat, which had more than a dozen people, including his wife, his lawyer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired as a senior liaison with the Pentagon for the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the secretary blamed the disclosure of the second Signal chat on disgruntled former employees.
Hegseth has strongly denied that the information he published was classified. Signal is a commercially available application that is encrypted but is not a government network and is not authorized to carry classified information.
“I have repeatedly said, no one is sending war plans via text message,” Hegseth told Fox News on Tuesday. “I review war plans every day. What was shared on Signal then and now, however they characterize it, were informal, unclassified coordinations for media and other things. That is what I have said from the beginning.”
Former Secretary of Defense calls it a “serious” violation
Based on the specificity of the launch schedules, that information would have been classified, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated in a phone interview with the AP.
“It is unheard of for a Secretary of Defense to commit this type of serious security violations,” said Panetta, who served during the Obama administration and was also the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency during Obama’s presidency. “Developing attack plans for defensive reasons is undoubtedly the most classified information one can have.”
The news comes as Hegseth has changed much of his inner circle. It is said that he has become increasingly isolated and suspicious about who he can trust, and is relying on a smaller and smaller circle of people.
In the last week, he has fired or transferred six of his inner circle of support, including Hegseth’s assistant, Dan Caldwell; the chief of staff for Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg, Colin Carroll; and Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick.
Those three were escorted out of the Pentagon as the department investigates internal information leaks, and in his interview on “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday, a agitated Hegseth accused those employees - whom he had worked with and known for years - of “trying to leak and sabotage” the administration.
Hegseth confirmed on Tuesday that Chief of Staff Joe Kasper would be transitioning to a new position. Former Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell is also temporarily moving to a more direct support role for Hegseth, and former Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot announced his resignation last week, unrelated to the leaks. However, the Pentagon stated that Ullyot was asked to resign.