The White House’s acknowledgment that top Trump administration officials had discussed military planning using an unclassified messaging platform - and in a group chat that included a journalist - drew immediate criticism from Washington’s national security establishment.
The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in a report Monday said he had been included in a group chat on encrypted messaging platform Signal this month that discussed upcoming military strikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi militants. The conversation included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and national security adviser Michael Waltz. The White House said that the message thread “appears to be authentic,” and that administration officials were “reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.” Hegseth on Monday denied any wrongdoing, insisting, “Nobody was texting war plans.”
Both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, called for an investigation - saying that it “should go without saying that Trump administration officials must not use Signal for discussing sensitive intelligence matters reserved for the Situation Room - and doing so including members of the public is gross incompetence.”
Rep. Michael Lawler (R-New York) said on X, “Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels - and certainly not to those without security clearances, including reporters. Period. Safeguards must be put in place to ensure this never happens again.”
Here’s what to know about the protocol for government officials to communicate sensitive and classified information.
What are the rules for communicating sensitive or classified information?
The federal government has different protocols for handling information based on its level of classification. But war plans and weapon designs are among the information often considered “top secret.” The Atlantic reported that Hegseth posted “operational details” in the Signal chat about the upcoming strikes - including about targets, specific weapons and the sequence of attacks.
Generally, the federal government requires officials to handle high-level classified information in person, with personal cellphones and other electronic devices left outside of secure rooms where confidential meetings take place, said Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-Rhode Island), a member of the House cybersecurity and infrastructure protection subcommittee.
The facilities with these rooms - called sensitive compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs - are “designed to prevent adversaries from being able to listen in to what is being discussed,” Magaziner said in a phone interview Monday. He added that information presented during meetings inside SCIFs is usually printed out and stored securely.
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If an official is not physically able to be at a secure facility, the government operates secure communication channels that can be used instead, Magaziner said. “But Signal is not one of those systems,” he said.
Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior CIA and NSA official, said top administration officials like those involved in the group chat have government-approved communications with them 24 hours a day, even when traveling.
“Back in my time, it would have included secure phone, computer and video teleconference. In the office and at home,” said Pfeiffer, who also was senior director of the White House Situation Room. “And there was a travel kit that would be with them on the road and in the air.”
What are the risks in using Signal for sensitive information?
The Defense Department has previously referred to Signal as an “unmanaged” messaging app. In a 2023 memo, the department defined unmanaged apps as those “NOT authorized to access, transmit, process nonpublic DoD information.” It listed Apple’s iMessage and Meta-owned WhatsApp as other examples of unmanaged apps.
The apps that are authorized to access Defense Department information are controlled by an enterprise management system, which “can enforce controls on the application and data in a way that can reduce the risk of data compromise or exposure/spillage of data to unmanaged applications,” according to the memo, signed by then-Defense Department Chief Information Officer John B. Sherman.
Signal offers some level of protection for messages since it is an encrypted platform, but it is not suitable for highly sensitive, classified conversations, Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University, told The Washington Post. Signal runs on “fundamentally insecure devices” - smartphones and laptop computers attached to the internet that may be “subject to all sorts of attacks against the devices that have nothing to do with the security of the software.”
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Signal also has a feature allowing stored messages to disappear after a time specified by the user. Should a foreign intelligence service or another skilled agency obtain a phone involved in a sensitive conversation, they may be able to access the stored messages, Blaze said. “Signal does as much as it can to delete messages when disappearing messages expire, but it’s still running on a fundamentally vulnerable platform.”
Are there other ways officials communicate over Signal or other apps?
A former senior Defense Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to fear her security clearance could be revoked, said she and her colleagues did communicate on Signal - but only to tell each other to check their government devices if a national security threat was emerging. They would message vaguely about any issue, the official said, such as referring to “that thing in the Middle East” or “that sensitive subject that I briefed you on.”
The official said she would then access the information through her laptop’s secure modem. “We were very, very careful about not discussing classified information [on Signal],” the official said.
“I would worry deeply about the ability of a foreign nation to be able to penetrate any of our unclassified tech,” she said, adding she has never seen a similar situation during her roughly two decades working in federal government. “This is not how you conduct national security.”
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More broadly in Washington, federal workers migrating their correspondence to Signal in a zeal for secrecy after Trump took office could be against rules that most government correspondence and internal communications are preserved and archived for public transparency.
How significant is it to share military plans with a journalist?
The only people who should have access to classified information are those whom national security protocol has cleared to receive information, people who need to know the information for their jobs and people who have completed a nondisclosure agreement, according to the Center for Development of Security Excellence, a directorate in the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.
Top Trump administration officials have said in recent weeks that they would aggressively investigate unauthorized leaks of sensitive and classified material to journalists from people in U.S. spy agencies and the Defense Department, citing reporting in various publications including The Post.
The Atlantic’s report, Magaziner said, raises questions about how often Trump administration officials have been using Signal to communicate sensitive information - and whether any information may have been compromised.
Magaziner, like some other Democratic lawmakers, have called for an investigation - and said the officials referenced in the Atlantic’s report should testify in front of Congress.
Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this report.