The Defence Secretary accused of leaking details of an operation against the Houthis in a private chat on Signal. The Pentagon denies the presence of classified information
A new case shakes up the Pentagon and directly involves Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. According to what was revealed by the New York Times and confirmed by CNN, Hegseth allegedly shared detailed plans for a military operation against the Houthis in Yemen within a private chat on Signal, called ‘Defense Team Huddle’, in which his wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil, currently a senior advisor and liaison officer at the Department of Homeland Security, also participated.
The chat, initially created to coordinate Hegseth’s Senate confirmation phase, would later become an informal space used regularly for sharing updates. According to cited sources, more than a dozen people participated, including Hegseth’s personal attorney, Tim Parlatore.
According to a senior administration official quoted anonymously, the chat was ‘informal and never used to discuss classified information’. However, the leaked content would show relevant operational details, such as the flight schedules of F/A-18 Hornets engaged in actions against the Houthis, similar to those disclosed in another chat revealed in March by The Atlantic.
Unlike that first case – an institutional chat set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, to which editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg had also been added by mistake – this new conversation was handled directly by Hegseth via his personal phone.
‘It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,’ John Ullyot, Hegseth’s former spokesman, told CNN. ‘From leaks of sensitive operations to mass layoffs, the dysfunction is now a major distraction to the president who deserves better from his top brass.’
In a tweet, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell downplayed the affair, stating that ‘there was no classified information in any Signal chat’. But the episode, the second within a few weeks, raises further questions about the management of communications security at the top of the Department of Defence at a time of high international tension.
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