Messages with Yemen war plans inadvertently shared with reporter: A timeline of the Signal mishap

The Trump administration is under scrutiny after The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg said he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat that included top national security officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which the officials discussed plans for a U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen.

Goldberg revealed the mishap in a piece for the magazine on Monday and told ABC News that he was apparently added to the chat by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

Goldberg provided two screenshots in the magazine piece and did not provide details or quotes, only a description of the operational part of the Signal message chain.

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

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

March 11

In an interview with “ABC News Live” Monday evening, Goldberg told Linsey Davis he received a message request on the Signal app from White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, or someone “who’s purporting to be Mike Waltz” on March 11.

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

“I’m a journalist, I’ve met him in the past, so I accept it,” he told ABC News.

Goldberg said he accepted the request, with nothing occurring until several days later, when he was added to a “group of seemingly very high national security officials of the United States” including Vice President JD Vance, with Waltz apparently creating this chat.

“Mike Waltz puts this group together and says it’s a planning group for essentially upcoming action in Yemen,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg told ABC News 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 be meeting on a messaging app to discuss forthcoming military action, and that then they would also invite the editor of The Atlantic magazine to that conversation.”

March 14

Goldberg told ABC News a “long conversation” occurred between the group chat members on March 14, discussing “whether or not they should or shouldn’t take action in Yemen.”

The messages went back and forth with “a lot of resentment directed at European allies of the United States, which obviously enhanced the credibility of this chain,” Goldberg said.

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

March 15

Goldberg told ABC News he continued to track the incoming messages from the group chat, to see “who was trying to entrap me or trick me.” Then on March 15, he said it became “overwhelmingly clear” it was a legitimate group chat, he told ABC News.

At 11:44 a.m., he said he received a text in the chain from someone claiming to be Hegseth, or “somebody identified as Pete,” providing what Goldberg characterized as a war plan. The message included a “sequencing of events related to an upcoming attack on Yemen” and promised results by 1:45 p.m. Eastern time.

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

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

When the attacks seemed to be “going well,” Goldberg told ABC News that members of the chat began sending congratulatory messages along with fist, fire and American flag emojis.

“That was the day I realized this is possibly unbelievably the leaders of the United States discussing this on my messaging app,” Goldberg told ABC News. “My reaction was, I think I’ve discovered a massive security breach in the United States national security system.”

Goldberg told ABC News he removed himself from the group chat once the operation was completed.

“I watched this Yemen operation go from beginning to apparent end, and that was enough for me to learn that there’s something wrong in the system here that would allow this information to come so dangerously close to the open wild,” Goldberg said.

March 16

Waltz appeared on ABC’s “This Week” the day after the strikes on Yemen and said the U.S. airstrikes “took out” multiple leaders of the Iranian-backed Houthis, which he said differed from the Biden administration’s launches against the group.

“These were not kind of pinprick, back and forth — what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks,” Waltz said. “This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership, and two, holding Iran responsible.”

March 24

Goldberg published a story in The Atlantic revealing the mishap, in a piece titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”

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

“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears 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 thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security,” Hughes said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Hegseth denied he sent war plans in the chat.

“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters in Honolulu while on a layover on his trip to Asia.

Hegseth called Goldberg a “deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”

“This is the guy that pedals in garbage. 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 big fan of The Atlantic,” he said.

Top Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced outrage at the administration after this mishap.

“It is yet another unprecedented example that our nation is increasingly more dangerous because of 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 over her alleged use of a private email server while at the State Department, shared her reaction to the Signal group chat on X: “You have got to be kidding me.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also criticized this apparent breach of military intelligence, urging Senate Republicans to work with Democrats in a “full investigation” to look into how this incident occurred.

“If you were up in arms over unsecure emails years ago, you should certainly be outraged by this amateurish behavior,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, referencing the scandal over Clinton’s emails.

March 25

On Tuesday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Goldberg is “well-known for his sensationalist spin” and emphasized that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed.”

“As the National Security Council stated, the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread. Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective. Terrorists were killed and that’s what matters most to President Trump,” Leavitt shared on X.

Trump told NBC News he remains confident in Waltz even after the use of an unsecured group chat.

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

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were grilled by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Tuesday regarding the mishap. Both officials said while testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence there was no classified information on the chain.

Ratcliffe said he believed the “national security adviser intended this to be as it should have been, a mechanism for coordinating between senior level officials, but not a substitute for using high side or classified communications for anything that would be classified.”

Speaker Mike Johnson continued to downplay the mishap but admitted the breach was a “serious” mistake on Tuesday.

“Look, they have acknowledged that there is an error, and they are correcting it. And I would’ve asked the same thing of the Biden administration,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday morning.

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

He added that Signal is “not a perfect technology.”

“Sometimes somebody can get onto those things,” Trump said. “That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly.”

Waltz said the White House’s tech and legal teams are looking into the mishap.

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

He also claimed to have never met Goldberg.

“We are looking into him, reviewing how the heck he got into this room,” Waltz said.

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