Some of US president Donald Trump’s top national security officials, blamed secretary of defense Pete Hegseth for sending potentially classified information in a group chat about US military strikes in Yemen that included a journalist.
During a senate intelligence committee hearing, CIA director John Ratcliffe and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard faced rigorous questioning from Democratic senators. Both officials consistently denied that the chat contained classified material.
“There were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time,” Gabbard testified. Ratcliffe also remained adamant in denying the claims during the Tuesday hearing.
However, when questioned about the sensitive operational details reportedly sent by Hegseth, both officials deferred to the defense secretary’s authority.
“With respect to the assertions and the allegations that there was strike packages or targeting information or things that relate to DOD, as I pointed out, the secretary of defense is the original classification authority for determining whether something is classified or not, and as I’ve understood from media reports, the secretary of defense has said the information was not classified,” Ratcliffe informed lawmakers, quoted by CNN.
Gabbard, on being asked if such information should be classified, said, “I defer to the secretary of defense and the national security council on that question.”
The group chat, which was reported by The Atlantic, majorly involved general foreign policy discussions about the March strikes. While these deliberations are sensitive and typically kept private by the UA government, and are not necessarily classified.
However, Hegseth’s messages reportedly included operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing.” Such specifics have raised significant concerns.
Multiple current and former defense officials have asserted that discussions involving the timing, targets, or weapons systems for an attack are invariably classified due to the potential risks to US service members if such plans are prematurely disclosed.
The officials used Signal, an encrypted messaging platform that is a commercial app not approved for transmitting classified information.
During the hearing, Republican senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the intelligence committee, suggested that Gabbard and Ratcliffe were distinguishing between military intelligence information classified under the defense secretary’s authority and information controlled by the civilian intelligence community, such as the CIA.
“They testified — correct me if I’m wrong — there’s no intelligence community classified information,” Cotton said.
Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard confirmed, with Ratcliffe adding, “I can again confirm that with respect to the communications that were related as to me, there was no classified information.”
Hegseth denied on Monday evening that war plans were discussed over text, despite the Trump administration‘s earlier acknowledgment that the messages appeared authentic. “Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters when asked about the inadvertent sharing of details with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, after landing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. The defense secretary also criticized the journalist, describing him as “deceitful and highly discredited.”
President Trump told reporters on Tuesday that, “there was no classified information, as I understand it,” shared on the Signal chain but declined to specify who informed him that the information was not classified.
Neither Gabbard nor Ratcliffe directly criticized Hegseth or explicitly suggested he was to blame for the controversy now engulfing the president’s cabinet. Ratcliffe emphasized that Signal is approved for use on U.S. government computers — including by the CIA — without taking responsibility for Hegseth’s messages. However, he acknowledged that, hypothetically, “pre-decisional strike deliberation should be conducted through classified channels.”
Gabbard, meanwhile, frequently claimed not to recall the specifics of what was discussed in the thread. However, some Republicans in Congress are pointing the finger squarely at Hegseth.
“I think the most accountable, or the most guilty person is the secretary of defense because he put in all the highly classified information,” Republican representative Don Bacon, a member of the house armed services committee and former air force brigadier general, told CNN.
The controversy may ultimately stall on the interpretation of Hegseth’s classification authority as the defense secretary. Hegseth possesses the authority to declassify such information, but Ratcliffe stated on Tuesday that he was not aware if Hegseth had exercised this authority.
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