On CNN, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg discusses how he received a group chat of Trump Administration officials detailing Yemen war plans.
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NewsTranscript
00:00My lead source tonight is the reporter at the center of this story, the editor-in-chief
00:04of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.
00:07And it's great to have you here tonight.
00:08I want to start by getting your reaction to what we heard from Secretary Hegseth there,
00:12saying that nobody was texting war plans, given you were privy to this group, Chad.
00:17Is that how you saw it?
00:18No, that's a lie.
00:20He was texting war plans.
00:22He was texting attack plans.
00:24When targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at
00:29the targets, when the next sequence of attacks were happening.
00:33I didn't publish this, and I continue not to publish it, because it felt like it was
00:38too confidential, too technical.
00:42And I worry, honestly, that sharing that kind of information in public could endanger American
00:49military personnel.
00:51But no, they were plans for the attack.
00:54And they were texted before the attack.
00:57And there were things texted that you viewed as so sensitive, you did not even publish
01:01them in your report today.
01:03I made the decision that the technical aspects of this, including what kinds of weapons packages,
01:10the attack sequencing, and so on, that's not necessarily in the public interest.
01:14What's in the public interest is that they were running a war plan on a messaging app
01:20and didn't even know who was invited into the conversation.
01:24It's an obvious, ridiculous security breach.
01:28And if you notice, he didn't actually answer the question.
01:33But his attempt at a denial also stood out to me because no one that I talked to at the
01:37White House today argued this or tried to say these were misconstrued or altered or
01:44this is not real.
01:45I mean, the National Security Council confirmed the veracity of it.
01:49The National Security Council, I asked various officials, including Pete Exet this morning
01:54for comment.
01:55And the first question I had for everyone, is this real?
01:58I wanted to make sure, obviously, before we go public, and say, are you sure that this
02:02is not a disinformation campaign run by a foreign state, a non-state actor of some sort,
02:07trying to target a journalist for reasons I couldn't explain?
02:09And they're like, no, no, this is apparently a real channel.
02:14And I appreciate them telling the truth about that.
02:17And we published.
02:18Did they seem alarmed when you reached out for comment?
02:21Probably is not the happiest day that they experienced in the White House so far, but
02:25they were professional about it.
02:27I thought that as you were kind of walking through when this began, you weren't even
02:31sure if it was real yourself.
02:33You thought maybe I'm being spun or conned or something's happening here.
02:38No, until the day that I received the attack plan from Pete Hegseth at 1144 a.m. that Saturday,
02:45March 15th, and then saw the attack plan said that 1345, 145 p.m. Eastern Time, that
02:53the first bombs would be dropping in Yemen.
02:57Until that moment, until that period elapsed, the two-hour period between that text and
03:03the first bombs being dropped, I thought it was a hoax.
03:05I thought somebody was trying to entrap me.
03:09Again, could it have been a foreign intelligence service?
03:12Could it have been a gadfly organization that tries to entrap journalists, which we
03:16know happens?
03:17I didn't know what it was or who it was, but what I did know was that the obvious answer
03:26was that this is a real conversation of the national security leadership of the United
03:29States seemed improbable to me, because why would they do it on Signal?
03:35Why would they do this on a messaging app?
03:37And why would they invite the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to watch?
03:40And how many people were on this chat?
03:42Eighteen.
03:43And did any of them at any point, when you were included in here, ever raise that question,
03:48why are we talking about this over Signal?
03:51Nobody raised the question, why are we talking about this over Signal?
03:54And nobody said, hey, who is JG?
03:57Because you show up in a little bubble as your initials.
04:00And no one at any point said, who's JG?
04:03And when I withdrew from the group, you formally remove yourself, you hit a button.
04:08It says, JG has removed himself from the group.
04:11I assumed that somebody would say, hey, who just removed himself from the group?
04:15Nothing.
04:17You didn't hear from Mike Waltz or anyone else after that?
04:19No.
04:20No, nothing at all.
04:21I mean, it's a level of incuriosity.
04:26I guess that's the polite way of saying it.
04:28It's a level of recklessness that I have not seen in many years of reporting on national
04:33security issues.
04:35And so you eventually remove yourself from the chat.
04:38Right.
04:39Once I was sure that it was real.
04:40But after you've seen everything, I mean, you published these messages.
04:42Well, I don't know what I haven't seen since then, but yes, I removed myself and I started
04:47writing this story.
04:48That's fair.
04:49In order to expose the security breach.
04:50And some White House reporters today were saying, maybe I would have never removed myself
04:54from that.
04:55You know, these are tough questions, and I can't go into it, all the decision making
05:01involved in this.
05:02But I found out what I needed to find out, A, that it was real and B, that it did represent
05:11the kind of gap, the Mack truck sized gap in their security that I could never have
05:18imagined a White House experiencing.
05:21I mean, because you're a reporter and probably a worse nightmare to have someone included
05:27on a chat, but a foreign adversary or someone who wanted to do real harm to the United States.
05:33I think that's the concern that is so obvious.
05:35Look, I say this only half jokingly.
05:37I mean, I'm sitting in a Safeway parking lot watching my phone, realizing, oh, my God,
05:43this might be real.
05:44I think Pete Hegseth just sent this group actual targeting information, actual sequencing
05:51of an attack.
05:53And I'm holding on to the phone.
05:55And then I thought to myself, well, I mean, I guess they're lucky they didn't send this
05:59to a Houthi by mistake or to a foreign diplomat or to somebody who would plausibly be in one
06:06of their phones.
06:08I guess that counts as a kind of luck.
06:11That's why they don't, that's why they're not supposed to use open source, privately
06:17owned messaging services.
06:18They're supposed to keep all those conversations on what they call the high side.
06:23That's the classified side, where only government officials who are cleared to talk about this
06:27stuff get to talk about it.
06:29That's why they have that.
06:31You typically can't even download signal to a classified device that they issue at the
06:35Pentagon, for example.
06:37Was there anyone in the group chat who surprised you that you were wondering why would they
06:41be included in this conversation?
06:42Well, it was an interesting chat.
06:43It wasn't just CIA or intelligence officials, not just defense officials.
06:48The Secretary of State was there.
06:49The Secretary of Treasury was there.
06:50The White House Chief of Staff was there.
06:52White House political aides like Stephen Miller, I believe, was there.
06:56It was a pretty broad group, given the level that it was at.
07:01It was just a kind of an all-encompassing coordination group for a specific action.
07:10I would say, to answer your question, I've been surprised by most aspects of this story
07:14since I first got invited into the signal chat.
07:18What have you heard today?
07:19I was getting blown up about this, messages of people saying that they couldn't believe
07:24what they were reading in your piece.
07:27What did you hear from people today?
07:28That they couldn't believe what they were hearing in the piece.
07:33Like I said, I'm very interested, obviously, in what the professionals say about this,
07:37professional reporters who've covered these issues like I have, people who have been in
07:41government.
07:45It's a combination of extreme bad luck.
07:48How could you possibly invite the editor of The Atlantic into your chat?
07:52What are the chances of that?
07:54And also just real anxiety and anger, both about the sloppiness.
08:02Remember, American service people were involved directly in this attack.
08:09It wasn't just standoff weapons fired from 1,000 miles away, but you can't just put out
08:15this kind of information and hope for the best.
08:19The other piece that people are upset about, and there's a lot of military people feel
08:23this way, is like, hey, we have guidelines about how we're supposed to handle sensitive
08:29information.
08:30We have to pass tests every year on this.
08:32We get punished if we leave something on a desk.
08:35We get punished if we don't put it in a safe.
08:38What's going to happen here?
08:39These guys are just chatting.
08:40They're sitting on the weekends in their homes, at stores, at restaurants, on their
08:46phones, and what's going to happen?
08:51They're wondering if there's a double standard.
08:53What did you make of the argument that, which we keep hearing from officials, this revealed
08:58the thoughtful and deliberative process that they went through, because there was disagreement
09:03over how to proceed, which I want to ask you about in a moment.
09:05What did you make of that, saying this actually just reveals how this process works?
09:09It does.
09:10That was part of the interesting part of the reporting for me, was that, oh, wow, we just
09:14found out that J.D. Vance really disagrees with the president on this particular issue.
09:19J.D. Vance made a compelling argument.
09:22Other people countered the argument.
09:23What was really interesting was that the person designated S.M., which I took to be Stephen
09:28Miller, shut down that conversation, said, I heard the president say we're doing this,
09:33and we're doing this, and that was the end of the conversation.
09:35For those who haven't read the story, which everyone should, the vice president's disagreement,
09:39you said, was clear with moving forward on the strike, because you quoted him as saying,
09:43I'm not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.
09:49There's a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices.
09:52I'm willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself.
09:57But he was arguing for delaying these strikes.
09:59Yeah, well, what's interesting is that he's arguing, he's saying that he would keep those
10:02concerns to himself, but he's basically just told the entire cabinet that he disagrees
10:07with the president's decision, and not only that, that he doesn't think the president
10:12understands—that's pretty heavy—doesn't think the president understands the consequences
10:18and ramifications.
10:19That was very revealing and interesting.
10:21I would say, yes, I found the policy dialogue very, very interesting to read, and you could
10:28see the different strains of thought in this administration.
10:31Ultimately, they came into line, and they launched the attack.
10:35The president responded today by pointing to the success of the attack and bashing the
10:40Atlantic.
10:41The reporter didn't cite you specifically.
10:43He may not have known at that point that it was you who was included.
10:46I think that might change his reaction, just based on how he's responded in the past.
10:50What was your reaction to that?
10:52I found it interesting, and I want to look at the timeline, but I find it interesting
10:57that—I believe that was early in the afternoon.
11:00I alerted the White House shortly after nine in the morning, and that was emails and texts
11:05and calls to Mike Waltz, Stephen Miller, Suzy Wiles, and so on.
11:10I found it interesting, and again, I want to figure this out.
11:15The president said he didn't know three or four hours later.
11:19That struck me as noteworthy and worth more exploration.
11:24Who do you think they meant to add instead of you?
11:27Have you figured that out?
11:28I have not.
11:29I've been searching JG all day on the White House website.
11:34Maybe Jeff Goldblum.
11:37I think there is somebody in Washington right now who finally understands why he wasn't
11:44or she wasn't included in this conversation that they should have been included in.
11:48I don't know.
11:49I mean, it could have been a mistyped name.
11:53It doesn't necessarily have to be somebody with the initials JG.
11:57I don't know.
11:58I've also heard speculation that they wanted me in this conversation in order to show how
12:02thoughtful and tough they are on Yemen.
12:05My response to that is there are easier ways to let me know, which is just call me and
12:10tell me.
12:11Yeah.
12:12That's 3D chess.
12:13I'm not sure that's what it is.
12:14That's 5D chess.
12:15Jeffrey Goldberg.
12:16I mean, it was the story of the day.
12:18Thank you for joining to talk about it.
12:20Really appreciate that.