President Donald Trump’s top intelligence officials claimed Tuesday that they did not share any classified materials in a group text about U.S. military plans that inadvertently included a journalist.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe both downplayed the mishap during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing a day after The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported that he had been added to a text thread about U.S. military plans to strike Houthi militias in Yemen.
The incident has raised questions about the Trump administration’s handling of classified information as well as its use of Signal and other electronic communications.
In testimony, Ratcliffe acknowledged he was on the text chain but said it was “lawful.” He said the Signal app was loaded on his work computer at the CIA when he started the job and claimed it was permitted as a communication tool for work purposes.
He did not address whether it was appropriate to share detailed military plans on Signal.
Gabbard, asked by Democrats whether the timing and location of planned military strikes were shared on the chat, replied: “I can attest to the fact that there were not classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time.”
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, pressed Gabbard on the information discussed in the chat and said: “It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.”
Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the magazine and a veteran national security journalist, reported that the thread on the encrypted messaging application Signal appeared to include Ratcliffe and Gabbard as well as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
The military plan discussed in the group chat “included precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing,” Goldberg wrote. He said he would refrain from reporting specific information shared in the Signal chat that could potentially damage national security.
The White House seemed to confirm the veracity of The Atlantic report. In a statement Monday, the National Security Council said that “the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
Ratcliffe and Gabbard, responding to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said they would cooperate with an “audit” looking into whether they had used Signal or another messaging platform to discuss classified information.
Sen. Mark Warner, of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, said it was “mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line and nobody even bothered to check” whether a journalist or another unauthorized person was in the chat.
In an opening statement, Warner blasted the Trump administration for what he characterized as a “cavalier attitude towards classified information,” describing it as “reckless” and “sloppy.”
“The Signal fiasco is not a one-off,” Warner added. “It is, unfortunately, a pattern we’re seeing too often repeated.”
The lawmaker cited an earlier incident in January when the CIA, complying with a presidential executive order, sent an unclassified email to the Office of Personnel Management with the first names and initialized last names of recently hired employees at the spy agency.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., the chairman of the intelligence committee, did not directly address the Signal text chain in his prepared opening remarks. Republican senators largely focused their questions on other issues, including drug cartels and China.
Trump, speaking to NBC News by phone earlier Tuesday, stood by his national security adviser, Michael Waltz. Goldberg reported that he was added to the Signal chat after receiving a request from a user identified as Waltz.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said.
Kelly O’Donnell, Benjamin Deeter and Garrett Haake contributed.
