JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Presidential administrations usually want to keep sensitive military operations closely guarded while the media calls for more details. Today, this was all turned upside down. The Atlantic magazine published a group chat with the defense secretary providing real-time information on U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. The Trump administration and Republicans dismissed this as no big deal. For more, we're joined now by NPR's Greg Myre. Hey, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Greg, start if you can by just telling us what The Atlantic published about this group chat, which was among the country's highest-ranking national security officials.
MYRE: Yeah. The Atlantic's editor Jeffrey Goldberg said in his initial story Monday that he considered some of the military information shared on the publicly available messaging app, Signal, to be too sensitive to be published. But President Trump and other top officials downplayed the group chat and insisted it didn't contain any classified information. So The Atlantic published it today. And two hours before the operation began on March 15, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, quote, "we are a go for mission launch." And then he kept providing updates, saying F-18 war planes and reaper drones had taken off to carry out attacks.
And, Juana, keep in mind, the Houthis have shot down U.S. drones, so there are some real risks here. And Hegseth gave these real-time updates for several hours. He knew he was on Signal and not a secure government network. But he, of course, was unaware Goldberg had been inadvertently included in this group.
SUMMERS: Right. OK, so this new Atlantic story - it came out this morning, and that was shortly before the House Intelligence Committee held a hearing where some of these senior officials were present. How did that hearing play out?
MYRE: The Democrats on the committee said repeatedly, this was a major security breakdown, and they simply did not believe Trump administration officials claiming this was not classified information or that they couldn't remember details. Here's one exchange between Jim Himes from Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the committee, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, who was on that Signal chat.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JIM HIMES: Less than two weeks ago, you were on a Signal chat that had all of this information about F-18s and MQ-9 reapers and targets on strike. And you, in that two week period, simply forgot that that was there. That's your testimony?
TULSI GABBARD: My testimony is I did not recall the exact details of what was included there.
SUMMERS: Greg, are we likely to see a formal investigation into this episode?
MYRE: Right now, that looks unlikely. FBI director Kash Patel was also questioned at the hearing. He said he wasn't part of that Signal group chat. He didn't know much about it, and he just didn't give any indication that he would investigate. Now, Democrats still have lots of unanswered questions. Were these officials using their personal phones, which are much easier to hack, or were they on government devices? You know, have security officials been setting up other group chats like this on Signal? So Democrats may keep pushing for answers, even if there's no formal investigation.
SUMMERS: Greg, before I let you go, I just want to sort of take a step back here and ask you a sort of basic question, which is this. Why is the U.S. bombing Yemen again?
MYRE: So when the U.S. attacks began on March 15, the U.S. officials on Signal were congratulating each other and sending emojis. But Juana, we could be looking at an open-ended, extended military campaign. The Trump administration says it wants to halt the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which the Houthis have been doing for well over a year, and they call it an act of solidarity with the Palestinians. The Trump team says this military campaign will be much more robust than under the Biden administration. But the Houthis have proved very resilient, and it's just not clear whether a U.S. bombing campaign - even a sustained one - could end their attacks or bring about a resumption of normal commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
SUMMERS: That is NPR's Greg Myre. Greg, thank you.
MYRE: Sure thing, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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