The Pentagon’s inspector general is set to release in coming days a redacted report scrutinizing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the commercial messaging app Signal to share sensitive U.S. military plans, according to four congressional aides familiar with the matter.
The full, classified document has been shared already with the House and Senate Armed Services committees, as well as Hegseth’s office. The aides, who declined to discuss the inspector general’s findings, spoke on the condition of anonymity citing the issue’s sensitivity.
Spokespeople for the inspector general’s office and for Hegseth did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The report’s impending release was reported earlier by NBC News.
Top lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee requested the report in March after revelations that Hegseth, or a subordinate acting on his behalf, had used Signal group chats to divulge to other top Trump administration officials the details of a forthcoming U.S. attack in Yemen.
That information derived from a classified email that Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, then the commander overseeing U.S. operations in the Middle East, had shared with senior defense officials, according to people familiar with the inspector general’s inquiry.
As The Washington Post first reported in July, Kurilla’s message was labeled “SECRET/NOFORN,” a government designation meaning the contents were classified at a level at which unauthorized disclosure could be expected to cause serious damage to national security and was not meant for anyone who is a foreign national, including close allies of the United States.
The incident became a major political crisis for the administration after Trump’s national security adviser at the time, Mike Waltz, inadvertently added the editor of the Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal group chat as he and Hegseth, and other senior officials deliberated bombing Houthi militants in Yemen. Waltz was eventually removed from his White House post. He now serves as U.N. ambassador.
The Atlantic’s disclosure that highly sensitive operations were discussed on an unclassified communications system raised questions about the Trump administration’s security practices and prompted Hegseth to attack Goldberg in personal terms as a “deceitful” journalist who “peddles in garbage.” Hegseth has denied that the information he divulged over Signal was classified and said that his communications were “authorized,” including when pressed by lawmakers in hearings this summer.
The release of the inspector general’s report occurs at a fraught moment for Hegseth, whose leadership of the Pentagon has drawn scrutiny once more following The Post’s exclusive report Friday revealing his involvement in a lethal military strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean.
The Republican-led House and Senate Armed Services committees have opened inquiries into that incident to determine whether the controversial attack, which resulted in the death of two people who survived an initial strike on their boat, amounted to a war crime.
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