By Katherine Tinsley
1:30am PDT, Mar 26, 2025
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Screenshots of the text chain showed Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and more discussing the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
"We are currently clean on OPSEC," Hegseth wrote, referencing "operational security."
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Rachel Maddow couldn't help but discuss the blunder on MSNBC.
"They were not clean on OPSEC," she said. "They were not clean on operational security. Not even close. We know he sent that text because a journalist was in the group chat that he was texting!"
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Pete Hegseth claimed that The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg didn't have access to any classified information.
"Nobody was texting war plans," he said.
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Rachel Maddow quoted Pete Hegseth while pointing out the security concern the mistake caused.
"'Currently clean on OPSEC,'" she repeated. "Must have felt cool to say it though, right?"
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CNN's Kaitlan Collins interviewed Jeffrey Goldberg after he revealed he was in contact with the nation's defense team.
"After Secretary [Pete] Hegseth argued 'nobody was texting war plans,' The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg responds: 'That's a lie. He was texting war plans, he was texting attack plans,'" Collins wrote on X on Monday, March 24.
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The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg did not publish all of the sensitive information discussed in the group chat.
"When targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targets, when the next sequence of attacks were happening — I didn't publish this … because it felt like it was too confidential," Goldberg said.
