The Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General released a report Thursday finding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth improperly used a messaging app, risking the compromise of sensitive information.
The report says using a personal device to send nonpublic Department of Defense information violates department policy. It confirmed that Hegseth used the Signal app to share the “quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately two to four hours before the execution of those strikes.” The Pentagon watchdog said the communications risked sensitive information and “could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.”
The inspector general noted that Hegseth has authority to declassify information and did not determine whether he had divulged classified information through an unsecure network.
Because the report did not conclude that classified material was shared, Hegseth called it a “total exoneration.”
Sen. Jack Reed, the leading Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Hegseth misled Congress and the American people by claiming no classified information was shared in the chat.
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“While the report notes that Secretary Hegseth has declassification authority, it fails to explain why he believed it appropriate or necessary to declassify and share sensitive battlefield information on an unsecured commercial platform with unauthorized recipients, including family members and his personal attorney,” Reed said. “It is also clear that he did not follow established procedures for declassification that apply to every other classification official throughout the Department.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker said Hegseth was “within his authority to communicate the information in question to other Cabinet-level officials.”
“It is also clear to me that our senior leaders need more tools available to them to communicate classified information in real time and in a variety of environments. I think we have some work to do in providing those tools to our national security leaders,” Wicker said.
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The contents of the chat came to light after The Atlantic reported its editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a group discussion about an attack on targets in Yemen. The chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and about a dozen other top officials. The Trump administration said Goldberg appeared to have been inadvertently added to the group.
