Atlantic editor hits back at Trump official saying he's never met or spoken to him after Signal message leak
Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said it was "not true" that he and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had never spoken before, after the journalist detailed in a piece that he was added to a group chat with several Trump officials discussing an attack on the Houthis on Signal, a messaging app.
Godlberg responded to a clip of Waltz taking responsibility for the Signal leak and suggesting that the journalist's phone number somehow got "sucked in" via someone else's contact.
"Well, this isn’t ‘The Matrix;’ phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s [Waltz] talking about. Very frequently, in journalism, the most obvious explanation is the explanation: my phone number was in his phone, because my phone number is in his phone. He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me; that’s simply not true," Goldberg told NBC News host Kristen Welker during "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
Goldberg penned a first-person account of getting a connection request from what appeared to be Trump's national security advisor Michael Waltz on March 11 on Signal, a popular encrypted messaging service used by journalists and government officials.
He accepted, and was then added to a chat group called "Houthi PC Small Group," where he proceeded to see a series of top Trump officials discuss what turned out to be an upcoming attack on the Houthis in what critics are calling a massive breach of national security.
"I understand why he’s doing it. But, you know, this has become a farcical situation. There’s no subterfuge here. My number was in his phone; he mistakenly added me to the group chat. There we go," Goldberg added during the interview.
Welker asked Goldberg directly if he believed the information on the group message chain was classified.
"Let me answer it this way. When the texts are coming over as I’m watching them unfold… It’s 11:44 A.M., on a Saturday… Pete Hegseth is promising that U.S. warplanes are taking off in 30 minutes to bomb enemy targets that we know are protected by antiaircraft batteries. Okay? So, if that’s not the most sensitive information, the most secret information in the world, I simply don’t know what the meaning of classified or secret or top secret is… Because American pilots were about to fly into possibly a deadly situation, and the secretary of defense is telling everyone on the group chat — which, by the way, included me — that these pilots were about to go into harm's way."
"Talking about them after they come back is a different thing entirely," he added. "But letting that information out on a commercial messaging app seems very odd, so I was sort of aghast when I’m watching this unfold on my phone."
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Goldberg laid out how 18 members were listed in the group, including Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. What ensued in the following days was a discussion about attacking the Houthis, an Iran-backed terrorist group that's wreaked havoc on ships in the Red Sea and disrupted traffic through the critical Suez Canal.
Goldberg reported he learned the timing of the Yemen strikes on March 15 from the Signal posts.
"According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time," he wrote. "So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city."
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Fox News' David Rutz contributed to this report.