'Guy who peddles in garbage ...': US Defense Secretary refutes journalist's claim on Yemen war plan leak

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth - File Photo

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has denied he mishandled classified information and insisted that he did not post any operational details about the plan for military strikes in Yemen in a Signal chat between top officials of Trump administration, in which Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantis magazine, was mistakenly added.

Hegseth vehemently refuted the claims made by Goldberg, who in his report, detailed how he was added to the group chat on Signal app where the former allegedly shared the details of airstrikes on Yemen-based Houthi fighters.

"Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that," he told reporters while on an official trip to Hawaii on Monday.

“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes This is a guy who peddles in garbage,” said Goldberg, as quoted by Politico.

Goldberg responded to Hegseth's denial in an interview on CNN late on Monday by saying, "No, that's a lie. He was texting war plans."

According to screenshots of the chat reported by The Atlantic, officials in the group debated whether the U.S. should carry out the strikes, and at one point Vance appeared to question whether U.S. allies in Europe, more exposed to shipping disruption in the region, deserved U.S. help.

"@PeteHegseth if you think we should do it let's go," a person identified as Vance wrote. "I just hate bailing Europe out again," the person wrote, adding: "Let's just make sure our messaging is tight here."

A person identified as Hegseth replied: "VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC."

The Atlantic reported that the person identified as Vance also raised concerns about the timing of the strikes, and said there was a strong argument in favor of delaying them by a month.

"I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There's a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices," the account wrote, before saying he was willing to support the group's consensus.

Yemen, Houthi-ally Iran and the European Union's diplomatic service did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

Under U.S. law, it can be a crime to mishandle, misuse or abuse classified information, though it is unclear whether those provisions might have been breached in this case. Messages that The Atlantic report said were set by Waltz to disappear from the Signal app after a period of time also raise questions about possible violations of federal record-keeping laws.

As part of a Trump administration effort to chase down leaks by officials to journalists unrelated to the Signal group, Gabbard posted on X on March 14 that any "unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such."

On Tuesday, Gabbard is due to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats to the United States.

Created by the entrepreneur Moxie Marlinspike, Signal has gone from an exotic messaging app used by privacy-conscious dissidents to the unofficial whisper network of Washington officialdom. Signal does not use U.S. government encryption and is not hosted on government servers.