Hegseth said to have shared attack details in second Signal chat

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said that the information Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.

Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.

The continued inclusion following Hegseth’s confirmation of his wife, brother and personal lawyer, none of whom had any apparent reason to be briefed on operational details of a military operation as it was getting underway, is sure to raise further questions about his adherence to security protocols.

The chat revealed by The Atlantic in March was created by President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, so that the most senior national security officials across the executive branch, such as the vice president, the director of national intelligence and Hegseth, could coordinate among themselves and their deputies before the U.S. attacks.

Waltz took responsibility for inadvertently adding Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, to the chat. He called it “Houthi PC small group” to reflect the presence of members of the administration’s “principals committee,” who come together to discuss the most sensitive and important national security issues.

Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other Cabinet-level officials.

Hegseth shared information about the Yemen strikes in the “Defense Team Huddle” chat at roughly the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior U.S. officials and The Atlantic, the people familiar with Hegseth’s chat group said.

The Yemen strikes, designed to punish Houthi fighters for attacking international cargo ships passing through the Red Sea, were among the first big military strikes of Hegseth’s tenure.

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