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regular-article-logo Friday, 25 April 2025

Signal leak in US, again: Hegseth adds wife, brother to war-plan chat, says report

The White House late Sunday dismissed the report as a ‘non-story,’ suggesting that disgruntled former Pentagon employees were spreading false claims

Our Web Desk Published 21.04.25, 10:49 AM

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Just when the dust seemed to settle, a second Signal chat emerged...this time with Pete Hegseth’s wife and brother looped in on classified military strike details.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth created another Signal messaging chat that included his wife and brother where he shared similar details of a March military airstrike against Yemen's Houthi militants that were sent in another chain with top Trump administration leaders, The New York Times has reported.

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A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed the second chat to the Associated Press.

The second chat on Signal, which is a commercially available app, included 13 people, the person said. They also confirmed the chat was dubbed “Defence ' Team Huddle.”

The New York Times reported that the group included Hegseth's wife, Jennifer, who is a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser.

Both have travelled with the defence secretary and attended high-level meetings.

The White House late Sunday dismissed the report as a “non-story," suggesting that disgruntled former Pentagon employees were spreading false claims.

“No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can't change the fact that no classified information was shared,” said Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary. “Recently-fired leakers' are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President's agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.”

The revelation of the additional chat group brought fresh criticism against Hegseth and President Donald Trump's wider administration after it has failed to take action so far against the top national security officials who discussed plans for the military strike in Signal.

“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth puts lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X. “Pete Hegseth must be fired.”

The first chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included a number of Cabinet members and came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added to the group.

Top Trump administration officials, including Pete Hegseth, Vice-President JD. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, were huddled in that Signal messaging group called, “Houthi PC small group.”

There, behind the supposed veil of encryption, they coordinated military action.

The only problem? The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the chat.

The magazine’s report, based on Goldberg’s firsthand access to the conversation, laid bare what was either an act of jaw-dropping negligence or a rare peek into the unfiltered backchannels of US war strategy.

The contents of that chat, which The Atlantic published, shows that Hegseth listed weapons systems and a timeline for the attack on Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen last month.

Trump’s response to last month’s incident was ignorance. “I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time,” he told reporters.

He added that The Atlantic was “not much of a magazine.”

Hegseth has previously contended that no classified information or war plans were shared in the chat with the journalist.

The Times reported Sunday that the second chat had the same warplane launch times that the first chat included. Multiple former and current officials have said sharing those operational details before a strike would have certainly been classified and their release could have put pilots in danger.

The new revelations come amid further turmoil at the Pentagon. Four officials in Hegseth's inner circle departed last week as the Pentagon conducts a widespread investigation for information leaks.

Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defence Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth's deputy chief of staff, were escorted out of the Pentagon.

While the three initially had been placed on leave pending the investigation, a joint statement shared by Caldwell on X on Saturday said the three “still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of leaks' to begin with."

Caldwell was the staff member designated as Hegseth's point person in the Signal chat with Trump Cabinet members.

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