The White House doubled down Wednesday on its insistence that its top national security officials did nothing wrong when they discussed a pending military strike in Yemen over a commercial messaging app known as Signal.
Former military and intelligence officials, though, say there’s little doubt such exchanges never should have happened that way and warned that U.S. troops could have been put at risk.
Here’s what to know about White House claims on the Signal flap:
Experts say the timing of pending military strikes is closely held sensitive information
President Donald Trump and his top aides aren’t denying that they started a chat group in Signal to talk about a pending military attack on Yemen.
Instead, they are insisting the information wasn’t classified because the data didn’t include the location of the strikes or specific sources and methods. They also say they are looking into how the journalist — The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg — was inadvertently added to the chain.
“No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS,” national security adviser Mike Waltz wrote on X on Wednesday.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a similar statement, noting that no location data or sources or methods were compromised.
In interviews, several former defense and intelligence officials insisted that an exact location of a strike isn’t needed for the information to be damaging to national security.
According to The Atlantic, Hegseth gave a detailed account of which weapon systems would be used at specific times, including F-18 fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles. The White House confirmed that the texts appear to be authentic.
“THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP,” Hegseth wrote at one point, noting the military time of 1415 (2:15 p.m.) for the planned strike.
Experts said those details are so sensitive that if leaked, they could put troops carrying out the strike in danger because it gives the adversary time to prepare to fight back.
“It was 100 percent classified,” said Darrell Blocker, a former CIA field operative and ABC News contributor, said of the reported text exchange, based on his three decades with a security clearance.
Blocker added that Trump’s national security team “failed the soldiers, diplomats and intelligence officers by not adhering to their own rules and orders.”
ABC News contributor Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official and CIA officer, added that the location of a strike isn’t the most sensitive detail for an enemy to have.
“If leaked to the enemy, they know where they are,” said Mulroy. “[Adversaries] just need to know when and what platform to be looking for.”
Former officials also questioned whether intelligence sources were compromised when Waltz reported in the chat that the enemy’s “top missile guy” had walked into a building that collapsed after the attack.
Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, said this detail most likely suggests the use of an overhead surveillance drone or signals intelligence like device-tracking technology. But it could also reveal the presence of assets on the ground in Sanaa tracking the movements of senior Houthi officials, he said.
“For us to know where this gentleman was at that exact moment means you’ve got real-time intelligence,” Kupperman said.
‘Attack plans’ can be just as sensitive as ‘war plans,’ experts say
Trump’s top aides also seized on The Atlantic describing the online chat group as discussing “war plans,” though in subsequent reporting it used the term “attack plans.”
“The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT “war plans,” wrote White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on X on Wednesday. “This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
In general, experts say “war plans” might refer to broad plans for conflict for another country, such as invading Iraq or responding to aggression from China. Attack plans might refer to a more specific, targeted military operation like the strikes in Yemen.
Both are highly sensitive and shouldn’t be discussed on commercial apps not cleared for classified information, they say.
“One could actually make the argument that attack plans are more sensitive because they are more detailed and specific on time, place and manner,” Mulroy said.
Signal isn’t supposed to be used to send sensitive, non-public data
In a press conference Wednesday, Leavitt also insisted that it was OK for government officials to use Signal.
“This is an approved app. It’s an encrypted app,” she said.
Signal is indeed considered a highly secure, encrypted app that can be used by government personnel. But, according to a recent policy posted by the Pentagon, it does not appear to be authorized to transmit sensitive information, like the timing of a military strike.
The Defense Department did not respond to questions about current policy and whether exceptions were made that would have allowed Hegseth to use the app for sensitive information.
According to the October 2023 Defense Department memo, Signal and other messaging apps are regarded as unclassified and personnel are told not to use them for transmitting anything regarded as “non-public.”
Gen. Timothy Haugh, head of the National Security Agency, told lawmakers on Wednesday that U.S. personnel have been advised on the risks involved in using Signal.
“What we’ve done is we put out an advisory on how to use the Signal app and other encrypted applications because we do encourage our employees and their families to use encrypted apps,” he said.
When asked if the advisory was because there are risks to that app, Haugh responded: “There are.”
Brian O’Neill, a former CIA executive and intelligence veteran, said Signal wouldn’t be the approved venue to discuss a target walking into his girlfriend’s building that later collapsed.
If it’s not a revelation of sources and methods, it comes “really close,” he said.
“It’s nothing that would be news to adversaries,” O’Neill continued. “But regardless, this is not the channel to convey that sort of info.”
The post Former intel officials not buying White House dismissals of Signal chat risks appeared first on ABC News.
