A journalist was accidentally included in a group chat in which top officials from the Donald Trump administration were discussing upcoming strikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels. The journalist who was "accidentally" made privy to this sensitive information has been identified as Jeffrey Goldberg.
Who is Jeffrey Goldberg?
Goldberg is the Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. Earlier, he worked for the New Yorker as a correspondent in the Middle East and then Washington.
Also read | 'Nobody was texting war plans': Hegseth denies sharing Yemen war plans, calls journalist 'deceitful'
He started his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post.
Goldberg is also the author of "Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror," a biography that details his time as a prison guard at Ketziot, the largest jail in the Middle East during the 1990s.
What was shared in the chat?
Writing in the magazine, Goldberg in an article said, "US national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn't think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling."
He claimed that he knew about the strikes two hours before the authorities made them public.
In the article titled "The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans," Goldberg said he was added to the group on Signal, an open-source, encrypted messaging app.
The journalist revealed that the discussion included "operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing."
"The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility," he stated.
At one point or the other Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others, messaged in the chat.
(With inputs from agencies)