'Shockingly detailed' new report dissolves White House defense for chat blunder: analyst
CNN's Brian Stelter analyzed new reporting by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg on the detailed discussions to which he was privy, and he said those plans were almost certainly classified information.
Donald Trump and his top national security officials insisted the war plans disclosed by defense secretary Pete Hegseth were not classified, after Goldberg reported that he was added to a group chat consisting of top-level administration officials, and The Atlantic's editor in chief published specific details from the discussion.
"These are shockingly detailed descriptions of the bombs that are about to fall in Yemen, and Jeffrey Goldberg is getting these details many minutes before the bombs fall," Stelter said. "If this is not classified information, I would like the president to tell us what would count as classified information."
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"Now The Atlantic is publishing this on theatlantic.com because Trump and his aides have said that none of this is classified," Stelter continued. "That has been the main defense from the Trump White House in the past two days, that these text messages were a mistake, Goldberg never should have seen them, but nothing was classified, nobody was in any danger. That's the argument we've heard advanced, [and] because of that argument Goldberg went back to his colleagues and talked with his lawyers at The Atlantic, and they decided to go ahead and publish the text messages that they had originally withheld. Remember, Goldberg withheld some of this information because he thought it could risk national security, because it could have put U.S. military members in harm's way. So now he's decided to go ahead and publish the full, unredacted text message chain with one with one omission. He is still withholding the name of a CIA employee because the CIA has asked him to do so, so that is notable. There still is something in these messages that is considered so sensitive that The Atlantic is choosing not to publish it."
"But the headline here is that defense secretary Pete Hegseth did send detailed descriptions of the military strike in Yemen to this group ahead of time," Stelter added. "Goldberg was able to read this, these messages, ahead of time. He looked at it and didn't know if it was real or not, but then he looked on social media and saw that the bombs were beginning to fall in Yemen. People can read this for themselves on The Atlantic website, but what you see in Hegseth message, the key message here is from defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and he specifically specifies the timing for the attack, the first wave, the second wave, which military fighters were going to be used, and exactly what would happen when. So again, if that's not classified information, honestly, I don't know what is."
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