Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman who served in civilian roles at the Pentagon and is a decorated Green Beret combat veteran, was chosen by US President Donald Trump to be National Security Adviser in 2024. Reuters
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News on Tuesday he took "full responsibility for inviting a reporter onto a group Signal app chat of US President Donald Trump's administration officials discussing plans for a looming military strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
"I take full responsibility. I built the group," Waltz said on "The Ingraham Angle." "It's embarrassing. We're going to get to the bottom of it."
Waltz inadvertently invited Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, to join the encrypted chat on called Houthi PC Small Group on March 11. Others in the chat included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Rafcliffe, reports USA Today.
US President Donald Trump and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt each said no classified information was shared in the chat.
But after Goldberg's report described the types of weapons to be used and the timing of the strikes, Democrats called for Hegseth and Waltz to resign over the security breach.
"Putting aside that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system," said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. "It's also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line, and nobody bothered to even check - security hygiene 101 - who are all the names? Who are they?"
Trump defended Waltz, saying he won't be fired over the incident. The president said the incident was a "mistake," though there was "nothing important" in the Signal text thread.
Jeffrey Goldberg was sitting in his car in a supermarket parking lot, waiting to find out if if the U.S. was going to start bombing the Houthis in Yemen.
If they did, it would verify for him that text messages he thought he had been receiving from Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were real.
Goldberg said he knew the texts were real when he searched the social media site X and saw that people were reporting the effects of bomb strikes in Sanaa.
, Yemen, on March 15. He'd seen the plans just a couple hours earlier, but kept telling himself they weren't real - maybe some kind artificial intelligence bot. Fifty-three people were soon reported dead.
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