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Atlantic Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said the magazine decided to redact a sensitive piece of information out of their follow-up article published Wednesday detailing additional text messages from the Signal group chat of top Trump national security officials.
“We did redact one piece of information because we felt, on our own, that we felt it was best to do. And the CIA asked us, but, you know, at a certain point, the administration is saying that there’s nothing classified or secret or sensitive in these so at a certain point, I just felt, you know, let our readers decide for themselves,” he said on MSNBC of the decision to publish the rest of the information.
He continued, “Read these texts that I got sitting in my car on my phone in a Safeway parking lot two hours before the attack launched. And you tell me if this seems like good operational security.”
Goldberg said the Atlantic “didn’t do this lightly” and asked contacts in the Trump administration all day on Tuesday if there was anything sensitive or classified in the documents.
Reacting to President Donald Trump and his administration making attacks toward Goldberg, the editor-in-chief said, “Well, I mean, it’s kind of rude. First, they invite me to their Signal chat, and then they call me names, that doesn’t seem right. I mean, I get it. Mike Waltz is looking for the real killer. You know, the simple truth of the matter is, on March 11, Mike Waltz sent me a message request on Signal, and I accepted it. That’s the entire story.”
“We discovered something that the government was doing that was wrong and dangerous. And, you know, they could have responded by saying, ‘Yep, we shouldn’t have been on Signal. We won’t do it again.’ That would have been an easy way to deal with this,” Goldberg said.
He also criticized White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s response to the news and said “she’s just playing some sort of weird semantic game.”
The Atlantic on Wednesday published additional text messages from the Signal group chat of top Trump national security officials, underscoring a massive breach in operational security as specific sensitive information about the Houthi attack was shared in the chat before it was carried out.
The messages also rebut the claim from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Trump administration officials that war plans were not discussed on the chain. In a message sent at 11:44 a.m. ET and published by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris, Hegseth shares operational details about the strikes: “Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch,” Hegseth wrote.
Top US officials have said the information shared in the text messages was not classified.
Hegseth goes on to share the plans in extraordinary detail, according to The Atlantic:
- 1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
- “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
- “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
- “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
- “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
That information, according to The Atlantic, was received “two hours before the scheduled start of the bombing of Houthi positions.”
“If this information—particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face,” Goldberg and Harris wrote.
National security adviser Mike Waltz later texted to confirm that the target was in a building that collapsed and the strike was successful. And later in the day, Hegseth confirmed to the group that more strikes were coming.
Moments after The Atlantic published the text messages, the White House continued to push back and seek to discredit Goldberg’s reporting, though the National Security Council has verified the authenticity of the text thread.
The Atlantic magazine on Wednesday morning published what it described as additional messages from the Signal group chat that featured top US military and intelligence officials surrounding strikes in Yemen.
The release came after officials in the Trump administration criticized the Atlantic and its editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg for its initial report and claimed that the messages did not include classified information.
Goldberg and the Atlantic’s Shane Harris said those statements “have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions.”
“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” they added.
CNN is reviewing the report and will continue to update our platforms as we learn from the additional texts.
The CEOs of National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will testify before a government efficiency subcommittee hearing today.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called on the CEOs of NPR and PBS to testify before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, calling their news coverage “biased.”
Both organizations had long been under the scrutiny of budget-slashing Republicans.
President Donald Trump said yesterday that he would be interested in taking away taxpayer dollars from NPR and PBS.
“I would love to do that. I think it’s very unfair. It’s been very biased,” he said after a reporter asked if he’d like to end that funding.
Remember: In January, Federal Communications Commission chairperson Brendan Carr ordered an investigation into the sponsorship practices of NPR and PBS.
NPR says its two largest revenue sources are from corporate sponsorships and fees paid by NPR member organizations.
National security adviser Mike Waltz said yesterday that he accepted “full responsibility” for creating a Signal group chat to discuss US military strikes in Yemen that inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
“It’s embarrassing” Waltz said in an interview tonight on Fox News, adding that “we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s texts in the Signal group chat, which The Atlantic reported included “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” have drawn the most attention.
Here’s the latest from the fallout of the report:
- Trump stands by Waltz: President Donald Trump expressed support for his national security team while denying that classified information was shared.
- Blame shift: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, where they denied the chat contained classified information. When pressed on whether the sensitive operational details were classified, both deferred to Hegseth.
- Hegseth doubles down: The Pentagon chief again denied that anyone in Trump’s Cabinet was “texting war plans” — an assertion echoed by the White House. Hegseth was asked by reporters whether he had declassified the information before putting it in the group chat, or whether the messages may have endangered servicemembers. He did not answer the questions.
- More to come: Goldberg said he wasn’t done reporting on the explosive Signal chat session. When asked by CNN if he will release additional information about the group’s texts about the recent military strike in Yemen now that officials have claimed nothing in the chat was classified, Goldberg said, “I’m just continuing my reporting. More TK (to come).”
- Allies seek lessons: Responding to the Signal leak, the leaders of Canada and Australia said lessons need to be learned. The US is a key member of the Five Eyes alongside Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The grouping of historically close nations share intelligence in one of the world’s tightest multilateral arrangements.
