Pentagon watchdog to probe Signal chat about Houthi attack

Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News on Apr 3, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s inspector general will conduct an investigation of the Signal group chat where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Trump administration officials discussed details of an impending attack on Houthi militants in Yemen.

“We are initiating the subject evaluation” in response to a request from lawmakers for “an inquiry into recent public reporting on the Secretary of Defense’s use of an unclassified commercially available messaging application to discuss information pertaining to military actions in Yemen in March 2025,” the inspector general’s office said in a statement Thursday.

Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed, the panel’s top Democrat, asked the inspector general last week to look into the “facts and circumstances” around the episode, which came to light because a magazine editor was inadvertently included in the discussion, and to assess Defense Department classification policies.

“If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information,” the senators said in a letter to Steven Stebbins, the acting Pentagon inspector general.

Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a story saying he had been inadvertently added to the group chat on pending strikes against the Houthis that included top U.S. officials including Vice President JD Vance and Hegseth.

The Atlantic later published the transcript of the chat, including a text in which Hegseth shared details of timing shortly before the attacks as well as which U.S. military assets would carry it out.

In normal circumstances, such a letter would trigger a probe almost immediately. But President Donald Trump fired Stebbins’ predecessor, Robert Storch, along with several other inspectors general after taking office in January, leaving questions about the office’s current status.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has indicated she won’t seek a probe of the Signal episode, saying it was simply a mistake.

“It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” Bondi said. “What we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission. Our world is now safer because of that mission. We’re not going to comment any further on that.”

Hegseth has been defiant when addressing the issue, telling reporters “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I’m going to say.”

Democrat Reed said in a statement Thursday that he welcomed the review. "Whether intended or not, Secretary Hegseth endangered the lives of American servicemembers through his recklessness,” Reed said.

It’s rare but not unprecedented for the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate senior defense leaders, including the defense secretary.

Storch opened an inquiry in early 2024 after controversy arose over concern that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to keep his hospitalization secret unnecessarily posed risks to national security. Storch issued a report concluding that such risks didn’t materialize but called for more clarity on what should happen if a senior leader is incapacitated.

Likewise, the inspector general completed a review in 2019 of Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan after he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he’d welcome an inquiry over an assertion by an advocacy group that he’d shown bias toward Boeing Co. where he was an executive before joining the Trump administration. The inspector general didn’t substantiate the allegation.

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