The War Chat Leak Was Dumb But Pete Hegseth’s Denials Are Dumber

The war chat leak episode—in which details of a recent bombing mission were sent from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to head editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg—has got to be one of the funniest White House fuckups of all time. Instead of admitting that they fucked up, however, Hegseth and his government allies have conjured up a series of increasingly ludicrous arguments in an attempt to justify what happened. At the same time, Hegseth has sought to attack and demonize Goldberg and The Atlantic for simply reporting on the information that Hegseth, himself, sent to the journalist.

On Wednesday, Hegseth took to X to claim that The Atlantic’s second story showed that he hadn’t released any “war plans,” with the implication being that Goldberg was some sort of fabulist. Hegseth railed: “So, let’s me get this straight. The Atlantic released the so-called “war plans” and those “plans” include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information. Those are some really shitty war plans,” he said. “This only proves one thing: Jeff Goldberg has never seen a war plan or an “attack plan” (as he now calls it). Not even close.”

Hegseth’s sophisticated linguistic analysis of the difference between “war” and “attack” (because apparently a military “attack” with bombs isn’t an act of warfare) runs parallel to another dopey claim being made by his supporters. That claim suggests that Hegseth, as chief of the DoD, is ultimately responsible for what is classified and what isn’t and that the information that was shared with a prominent journalist did not rise to the level of government secrets. Hegseth has also dodged questions about whether the Signal chat took place on personal (as opposed to government-issued) phones—which is something that security pros have worried about, since personal phones are much more hackable than government ones. “Nobody’s texting war plans,” Hegseth recently told a journalist who asked about the phones. “I know exactly what I’m doing,” he said, adding: “I’m really proud of what we accomplished.”

Meanwhile, rightwing influencers like Ian Miles Cheong have made up excuses for why the real blame for the incident should be placed on the media, not Hegseth. “Signal was called the “gold standard” for encrypted comms. Not just by security experts but by The Atlantic itself. Clinton and the Obama administration used it,” Cheong recently wrote on X. “Suddenly it’s a problem that Trump’s people are using it? I’m not buying it.” Yes, while it is true that Signal is considered a really good civilian privacy app, it is for civilians, not leaders of the most powerful military in the world who are regularly targeted by foreign agents. Its group chats feature is the most susceptible element to hacking because it is the most easily overcome by social engineering, stupidity, or whatever Michael Waltz claims was happening when he added the editor of a magazine to the war chat.

Hegseth’s full throated defense seems inconsistent at best and downright divorced from reality at worst. For one thing, it seems clear that some of the information in the chat was—or should have been—classified. Members of Congress seem to think this is the case, and a current Pentagon official interviewed by CNN has alleged the same. “These are operational plans that are highly classified in order to protect the service members,” the anonymous source, described as a U.S. defense official, said. “It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this,” they added.  How egregious was the group chat’s operational security failure? That same unnamed official said even his “junior analysts know not to do this.”

Even a former Trump official has claimed that the information is classified. Mick Mulroy, described as the Pentagon’s top official for Middle East policy during the first Trump administration, told the Military Times: “This information was clearly taken from the real time order of battle sequence of an ongoing operation. It is highly classified and protected.”

Indeed, in a situation that is already thoroughly dumb, Hegseth’s insistence that he’s done nothing wrong only makes him look worse. Truly, if this is a normal chain of events, why doesn’t Hegseth make Goldberg a permanent fixture in all pre-bombing IC chats? It can be a running column for The Atlantic: “Here’s When and Where America Will Bomb Next!” where Americans can tune in to read about imminent aerial campaigns in the hours before the bombs drop. Maybe the government can partner with Wikileaks and release the text messages in real-time so that Americans (and, you know, the rest of the world) are on the same page whenever a U.S. military operation is underway.

Other participants in the chat fiasco were put on blast Wednesday’s during a House Intelligence Committee hearing. Most notably, the new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, continued to answer questions about the incident and, in so doing, did not come off as particularly well suited to her role. During a particular back and forth with Congressman Jim Himes (D-Connecticut), Gabbard, revealed that (unless she’s, you know, a liar) she has a shockingly bad memory for a person who is now tasked with overseeing the entire U.S. intelligence community.

Himes questioned Gabbard about why, during a separate Congressional hearing that took place Tuesday, she testified that she didn’t think the conversation had included specific information about U.S. weapons packages, targets, or timing. She replied: “My answer yesterday was based on my recollection, or the lack thereof.”

Himes: “So it’s your testimony that less than two weeks ago, you were on a signal chat that had all of this information about F-18s and MQ-9 Reapers and targets on strike, and you, in that two-week period, simply forgot that that was there? That’s your testimony?”

Gabbard: “My testimony is that I did not recall the exact details of what was included there.”

Himes: “That was not your testimony. Your testimony was that you were not aware of anything related to weapons packages, targets, and timing.”

Gabbard then responded that she didn’t “remember the exact wording” that she had used in the hearing from the previous day. In other words: Gabbard seems to have trouble remembering stuff that happened a matter of days (or even hours) in the past.

Meanwhile, the government is now putting together a team to understand how Goldberg was added to the group chat, despite the fact that the screenshots of the messages released by The Atlantic (which have been verified as authentic by the National Security Council) appear to clearly show that the editor was added to the chat by national security advisor Michael Waltz. Instead of acknowledging this, the White House has now tasked Waltz, himself, with probing what happened. Also added to the investigative team is the National Security Council, the White House Counsel’s Office, and Elon Musk’s DOGE team, because, you know, they’ve never done anything stupid.