Standing on the Hawaiian runway, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegses told reporters on March 24, “We didn’t text the war plan. That’s what I have to say about it.” The next day, he repeated the statement.
The Trump Administration Signal Group texts told a different story.
On March 24, Atlantic Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg detailed how it was incorrectly added to the group chat of senior Trump administration officials discussing an imminent air strike against Yemen’s US enemy.
In the first story, Goldberg said the “war plan” received in the chat referred to “precise information on weapon packaging, targets and timing.” Goldberg did not include detailed messages about the military strike due to concerns about the release of sensitive security information.
The National Security Council said it would check the authenticity of the thread and see how Goldberg numbers were added to the chain.
After the White House and Hegustes denied that “war planning” was discussed, the Atlantic released a full-text thread. The message released on March 26th shows that Hegseth sent out information on when the aircraft and drones will be fired, when the bombs fell, and the expected target movement.
When contacting the White House for comment, the spokesman pointed to us a post from Executive Director Caroline Leavit regarding X that “war planning” was not discussed.
The US struck the Houthi Fighters on March 15th as part of an effort to take on a group that repeatedly attacked ships in the Red Sea since the start of Israel’s Gaza War in October 2023.
After the second story of the Atlantic, national security adviser Mike Waltz wrote to X, “There is no place. No sources and no way. No war plans.” Hegseth created a similar post for X, saying that the released message did not contain a name or target. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said, “There was no war plan there.”
The military does not officially use the term “war planning,” military experts said. The most detailed military plan is hundreds, and even thousands, with information on the deployment of the Force.
Still, most experts we spoke to said that civilians would broadly and correctly consider the types of details contained in signal messages as specific plans.
After the Atlantic released its entire message, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institute, said “we can’t give the target coordinates, and that’s tangible enough to get it.”
What Hegseth shares, and what experts make it
In the first article, Goldberg said that Hegses’ message includes “operational details of upcoming strikes in Yemen, including information on targets, weapons deployed by the US, and attack sequences.”
In an interview with MSNBC host Jen Psaki, a spokesman for the White House under former President Joe Biden, after the publication of the story, Goldberg included “specific targets that include specific targets intended to be killed at a specific time of future attacks, their attacks, their weapons systems, and even weather reports.”
A March 26 follow-up article in the Atlantic contained these messages from Hegseth.
“Now (1144et): The weather is advantageous. Just confirmed on Centcom. “1215ET: F-18S Launch (1st Strike Package)” “1345: ‘Trigger Base” F-18 1st Strike Window begins (target terrorists are known locations. Target) “1536 F-18 strike begins.
Military experts said the text does not correspond to the complete plan but contains surprisingly specific details.
“The phrase “war planning” often (but not always) refers to a more comprehensive planning document. This can run hundreds of pages. This provides details on how the US military pursues specific military targets.
After seeing the message, Bensahel replied, “These are clear operational plans for the use of military force. They are clear plans for war, so I don’t know how the administration can argue that it is not a plan of war.”
The 2023 Department of Defense Guide defines an operational plan, also known as an opplan, as a “complete and detailed plan with a complete explanation” and a “timeferb force and deployment list.”
“If we have to go to war, we have options as a contingency,” said Ty Seidule, who has served in the U.S. Army for over 30 years and retired from U.S. Army Brigadier General at Hamilton University, who visits professors of history. “Like we had for Iraq in 1990 and 2003. They run to thousands of pages and contain incredible details.”
Seidule said the text message was not equivalent to Oplan, but it was a “cliff” version with “all important details of the military operation” and “evidently the first order security breaches.”
The newly revealed text “compared to operational details from a Conop or, in this case, colloquially, from a strike package,” said Heidi A. Arben, a professor of practice at Georgetown University and a former military intelligence agent.
Seidule said that Hegseth had a point that text exchanges were not a long war plan, but that “what he used was all the important details of the joint operation against enemy forces, which is even worse.”
Thane Claire, who served in the Navy for 25 years and retired as captain, said the Department of Defense does not use the term “war planning,” and therefore “technically gives Heggs and others something completely dishonest.” Claire is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Strategy and Budget Assessment, an independent source of defense analysis.
However, Claire said, “Yemeni chat is 100% sensitive operational information that reveals important details of the imminent operation.”
Military experts saw many security issues with administrative authorities using signals to communicate the plan.
“Everyone in the Intel-Defense community knows that the signal provides PGP and provides very good protection,” said Robert L’Ditz, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who was the CIA director and senior advisor to the National Security Agency. “It’s great for kids planning a teen drinking party. It’s going to keep their parents out of the loop. But the world’s half-hearted serious organizations aren’t blocked by PGP.”
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