Hegseth broke rules in sharing Yemen strike details on Signal, report finds

The Department of Defense’s inspector general released the much-anticipated unclassified report on Thursday about Pete Hegseth’s disclosure of plans for military airstrikes in Yemen in a Signal group chat earlier this year.

It found that Hegseth violated departmental policies when he shared information in the chat, and that if a foreign enemy force intercepted that information it could have endangered the lives of US troops, as the Guardian reported on Wednesday. “Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives,” the report said.

In response, the Democratic congressman Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, called for Hegseth to resign on Wednesday. “Our service members, including those stationed in Virginia and around the world, expect and deserve leaders who honor the sacrifices they make every day to protect our nation and never put them at unnecessary risk. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Pete Hegseth should resign, or the president must remove him at once,” Warner said.

But Hegseth posted on Twitter/X rebuffing critics on Wednesday evening.

“No classified information. Total exoneration. Case closed. Houthis bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this IG report,” he wrote.

The report found that the head of US Central Command sent a secure email to Hegseth and the acting chairman of the joint chiefs of staff on 14 March just before 9pm, approximately 17 hours before the beginning of the 15 March strikes. “This email provided operational details and updates to senior DoD leadership, including detailed information on the means and timing of the strikes,” it said.

That information about the planned attacks was classified as secret, and not to be disseminated to foreign nationals.

The report found that Hegseth “sent a message containing operational information to members of the ‘Houthi PC Small Group’ Signal chat” at 11.44pm on 15 March.

It found that some of the information the secretary of defense sent from his personal cellphone on Signal matched the operation information in the aforementioned email.

It also found that he did so from his residence at Fort McNair in Washington in the presence of “his junior military assistant and his personal communicator”.

According to the report, the Department of Defense provided only “a partial copy of messages from the Secretary’s personal cell phone, including some messages that The Atlantic previously reported, but other messages had auto-deleted because of chat settings”.

That meant the inspector general had to rely in part on a transcript of those messages published by the Atlantic for a full record.

According to the report, in Hegseth’s statement he acknowledged the email briefing he had received about upcoming war plans on 14 March from the US Central Command.

He also stated that as defense secretary “he has authority to decide whether information should be classified and whether classified materials no longer require protection”.

Hegseth also said that he had taken “‘non-specific general details” that he determined “were either not classified or that he could safely declassify and use to create an ‘unclassified summary’ to provide to the Signal chat participants”.