The Signal and the Noise

Breaking down the Yemen Group Chat bombshell

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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Everything about today’s Atlantic’s bombshell piece on Trump administration officials discussing plans to attack Yemen on the Signal messaging app and accidentally including the editor of the magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, is insane. If you haven’t read it, you need to do so immediately … but this is the gist:

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

I can’t keep track of the number of texts I received yesterday about this article that were some variation of “you’ve got to be kidding me” or “this can’t possibly be true.”

But there’s one part of the story that deserves particular attention.

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

Here was the Secretary of Defense putting highly classified operational plans on a messaging app, accessed by the phones of a dozen and half national security officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz and the White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, and Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, among others. It’s genuinely hard to think of a more irresponsible security breach than transmitting secret military plans on an unclassified, third party messaging app. Revealing these plans — before the attack took place — could have put US troops directly in harm’s way.

What comes next is perhaps most shocking and revelatory.

The only person who responded to Hegseth’s text was Vance, who wrote, “I will say a prayer for victory.”

Not one of these public officials asked Hegseth, “Why the hell are you sharing this information on Signal?”

It doesn’t seem that anyone on the group chat questioned whether it was appropriate or legal to discuss American war plans on a third-party app. (Fun fact: It’s neither appropriate nor legal). It also wasn’t the first time on the chat that one of the users shared classified information. According to Goldberg, Ratcliffe shared the name of an active intelligence officer and “information that might be interpreted as related to actual and current intelligence operations.” This information was sensitive enough that Goldberg didn’t publish it. Ratcliffe was formerly CIA director. If anyone should know better than to share operational information on an unclassified messaging app, it would be him … and yet.

There’s an obvious and troubling inference to draw from the silence of so many Trump national security officials.