Rabat – The Trump Administration is under scrutiny after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was unintentionally added to high-level military chat on March 15, in which he reportedly received details of US attacks on Yemen hours before they occurred.
Jeffrey Goldberg revealed the shocking story in an article published on Monday titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans,” detailing his unexpected access to classified information.
According to Goldberg, he received a message on an encrypted app (Signal) from a user named “Michael Waltz.” Initially skeptical, he later realized that the person who added him was in fact none other than the National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz.
Goldberg was added to a discussion called “Houthi PC Small Group” involving 18 senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Goldberg revealed the chat he was added to discussed the US plans to bomb Yemen, an attack which killed 53 people. The journalist boasted that while the world knew of the US attacks on Yemen on March 15, shortly before 2 p.m. EST, he “knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attacks might be coming.”
The US National Security Council later confirmed the authenticity of the chat, saying that the journalist’s inclusion was an error: “The message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes explained. Despite the mistake, he defended the group chat discussion as an example of “deep and thoughtful policy coordination” among senior officials.
Trump’s response
While the Trump administration has acknowledged that a journalist from The Atlantic was mistakenly included in a high-level group chat discussing the American military strikes on Yemen, president Trump denied any knowledge of the incident during a White House event.
Trump appeared confused and asked the reporters for further details, commenting that the breach must not have been very successful in comparison to the strikes.
“It couldn’t have been very effective because the attack was very effective. I can tell you that,” Trump fumbled to the press. “I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.”
Trump also seemingly couldn’t resist the urge to slate Goldberg’s publication, stating that he’s “not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business.”
The incident has sparked calls for investigation and accountability, with lawmakers raising concerns about the handling of classified information. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, called for an immediate congressional investigation.
“Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting in The Atlantic calls for a prompt and thorough investigation,” said Coons. “If senior advisors to President Trump used non-secure, non-government systems to discuss and convey detailed war plans, it’s a shocking breach that could have put American service members at risk.”
As scrutiny grows, questions remain about how such a serious security lapse occurred and what steps will be taken to prevent future breaches. Some have even speculated that Waltz added Goldberg intentionally, thinking that the conversation paints the administration in a positive light.
Twitch streamer and renowned online leftist political commentator Hasan Abi speculated during a livestream that there might be some validity to the claims, “considering who Jeffrey Goldberg is and the roles that he has played.” Abi pointed out that Golderg was formerly a member of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stationed as a prison guard, and he has run cover for US foreign policy since the Iraq war.
In fact, Goldberg was a vocal proponent of the claim that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), thus justifying the US actions in Iraq. In a 2002 New Yorker article, he said that “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq has biological weapons, and has probably been working on nuclear weapons for years. This is the nature of the threat posed by Iraq.”
All this considered, it would not be a far fetch to assume that Goldberg may have been put as a pawn to paint Trump’s administration in a strong, positive light, in efforts to dig it out from under the weight of global condemnation due to their full support of Israel’s war crimes in Palestine.
