Top US Officials Mistakenly Leak Yemen Attack Plans to Journalist

Top Trump administration officials texted a group chat including a journalist plans for strikes on Yemen's Houthi rebels, the White House said, an extraordinary security breach that shocked Washington's political elite.

- Agencies

WASHINGTON:

US President Donald Trump announced the strikes on March 15, but The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on Monday that he had hours of advance notice via the group chat on Signal, which included Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.

Top Democrats were quick to condemn the breach, saying it was potentially illegal and calling for an investigation to find out how it happened, while Republicans tried to play down the incident.

"The message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain," National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said.

The White House said Trump "continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team", after the US president earlier said he did not "know anything about" the issue.

The leak could have been highly damaging if Goldberg had publicised details of the plan in advance, but he did not do so.