Messages with the War plans of Yemen inadvertently shared with Reporter: a timeline of the signaling accident

The Trump Administration is under scrutiny after the Atlantic editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, said inadvertently added to a signal group chat that included senior national security officials, including the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, in which the officials discussed the plans for an American attack against Houthis in Yemen.

Goldberg revealed the accident in a Piece for the magazine On Monday and told ABC News that it was apparently added to the chat by national security advisor Mike Waltz.

Goldberg provided two screenshots in the magazine piece and did not provide details or appointments, just a description of the operational part of the signal message chain.

Both the Trump administration and the high officials involved have repeatedly denied that war plans or classified information were discussed, as Goldberg reported.

Below is a timeline that covers from the creation of the group chat to what has happened since then.

March 11

In an interview with “ABC News Live” on Monday night, Goldberg told Lensey Davis that he received a message application in the signal application of the National Security Advisor of the National House Mike Waltz, or someone “who intends to be Mike Waltz” on March 11.

He said the invitation “was not unusual in Washington.”

“I am a journalist, I have met him in the past, so I accept it,” he told ABC News.

Goldberg said he accepted the application, with nothing that happens until several days later, when he was added to a “group of apparently very high national security officials of the United States,” including vice president JD Vance, and Waltz apparently created this chat.

“Mike Waltz brings together this group and says it is a planning group for the essentially close action in Yemen,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg told ABC News that he initially thought it was a hoax, since it would be “completely absurd to me that the national security leadership of the United States would meet in a messaging application to discuss the next military action, and that they would also invite the editor of Atlantic magazine to that conversation.”

March 14

Goldberg told ABC News that there was a “long conversation” between the members of the group chat on March 14, arguing “whether or not they should take measures in Yemen.”

The messages were back and forth with “much resentment aimed at the European allies of the United States, which obviously improved the credibility of this chain,” Goldberg said.

He told ABC News at this point that chat members sounded like people he knew within the administration, but he was not yet sure whether or not it was a hoax.

March 15

Goldberg told ABC News that he continued to track the incoming messages of the group chat to see “who was trying to catch me or deceive me.” Then, on March 15, he said he was “overwhelmingly clear” that he was a legitimate group chat, he told ABC News.

At 11:44 AM, he said he received a text in the chain of someone who claims to be Hegseth, or “someone identified as Pete”, providing what Goldberg characterized as a war plan. The message included a “sequence of events related to an upcoming attack against Yemen” and promised results at 1:45 pm east time.

Goldberg told ABC News that he was in his car and waiting with his phone to “see if this was something real.”

“Indeed, around 1:50 [p.m.] Eastern time, I see Yemen is under attack, “he said.

When the attacks seemed to be “going well,” Goldberg told ABC News that chat members began to send congratulations together with Emojis Fist, Fire and American Flag.

“That was the day I realized that this is possibly the incredibly leaders of the United States who discuss this in my messaging application,” Goldberg told ABC News. “My reaction was, I think I discovered a mass security violation in the United States National Security System.”

Goldberg told ABC News that he withdrew from the group chat once the operation was completed.

“I saw that this Yemen operation will pass from an initial end to the end, and that was enough for me to learn that there is something wrong in the system here that would allow this information to approach the wild open,” Goldberg said.

March 16

Waltz appeared in “This Week” of ABC the day after the attacks on Yemen and said that US air attacks “took” multiple leaders of the hutis backed by Iranian, which according to him differed from the launches of the administration biden against the group.

“These were not a kind of puncture, round trip, which finally turned out to be attacks without feck,” Waltz said. “This was an overwhelming response that actually attacked the Hutis leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, chasing Hutí leadership, and two, holding Iran.”

March 24

Goldberg Posted a story In the Atlantic revealing the setback, in an article entitled “The Trump administration sent me an accidentally text message.”

Shortly after the publication of the story on Monday afternoon, the spokesman of the National Security Council of the White House, Brian Hughes, shared with ABC News the statement he provided to the Atlantic confirming the authenticity of the chat of the signal group.

“At this time, the thread of the message that was reported seems to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and reflective political coordination between the high officials. The current success of Operation Hutí demonstrates that there were no threats to our service services or our national security,” Hughes said in a statement.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, Hegseth denied having sent war plans in the chat.

“I have heard how it was characterized. Nobody was sending text messages to war plans, and that is all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told journalists in Honolulu while he was on a scale on his trip to Asia.

Hegesh called Goldberg a “deceptive and highly discredited journalist and called a journalist who has made a profession of wetlands sold again and again.”

“This is the guy that garbage pedals. This is what he does,” Hegseth said about Goldberg.

During an event at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump was asked about Goldberg’s article. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a great Atlantic admirer,” he said.

The main Democrats, including the leader of the minority of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, expressed indignation in the administration after this setback.

“It is another unprecedented example that our nation is increasingly dangerous due to the elevation of reckless and mediocre individuals, including the Secretary of Defense,” Jeffries said in a statement on Monday.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who faced scrutiny for her alleged use of a private email server while in the State Department, He shared his reaction to the signs group chat: “You have to be joking.”

The leader of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, also criticized this apparent violation of military intelligence, urging Senate Republicans to work with Democrats in a “complete research” to analyze how this incident happened.

“If you were in arms by not sure emails years ago, it should certainly be outraged by this behavior of fans,” Schumer said on the Senate’s floor, referring to the scandal on Clinton’s emails.

March 25

On Tuesday morning, the White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Goldberg is “known for her sensationalist turn” and emphasized that “no war plans were discussed.”

“As the National Security Council declared, the White House is investigating how Goldberg’s number was added inadvertently to the thread. Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and all in the group, Houthi’s strikes were successful and effective. The terrorists were killed and that is what is most important for President Trump,” shared in x.

Trump told NBC news Waltz is kept safe even after the use of an unknown group chat.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and is a good man,” Trump told NBC correspondent, Garrett Haake.

The director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, were interrogated by Democratic Senator Mark Warner on Tuesday regarding the setback. Both officials said that when testifying before the select committee of the Senate about intelligence there was no classified information about the chain.

Ratcliffe said he believed that “the national security advisor intended that this would have been, a mechanism to coordinate between high -level officials, but not a substitute to use high or classified lateral communications for anything that is classified.”

The speaker Mike Johnson continued to minimize the accident, but admitted that the violation was a “serious” mistake on Tuesday.

“Look, they have recognized that there is an error, and they are correcting it. And I would have asked the same of the Biden Administration,” Johnson said during a press conference on Tuesday morning.

During a White House meeting with ambassadors on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said that this incident is “something that can happen” and that “there was no classified information” in the group chat.

He added that the signal “is not a perfect technology.”

“Sometimes someone can enter those things,” Trump said. “That is one of the prices you pay when it is not sitting in the situation room without phones, which is always the best, frankly.”

Waltz said that the White House Legal and Technological Teams are investigating the accident.

“No one in his national security team would put anyone in danger,” said Waltz.

He also claimed to have met Goldberg.

“We are investigating, reviewing how Devils got into this room,” said Waltz.

Fritz Farrow, Luis Martínez de ABC News, Isabella Murray, Lauren Peller, Michelle Stoddart, Selina Wang and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.