Pentagon Had Warned Against Using Signal

Three days after a journalist was accidentally looped into a Signal group chat with top national security officials discussing military strikes in Yemen, the Pentagon warned the app should not be used even to discuss unclassified information. The department-wide advisory dated March 18 warned Signal's use by "common targets of surveillance and espionage activity" made it "a high value target to intercept sensitive information." It said Russian hacking groups were employing "malicious QR codes" in phishing attacks to access group chats and add their own devices as a "linked device," allowing them to "view every message sent by the unwitting user in real time," NPR reports.

The Pentagon memo said third-party messaging apps like Signal "are permitted by policy for unclassified accountability/recall exercises but are NOT approved to process or store nonpublic unclassified information." A 2023 memo had also warned against using Signal for nonpublic official information, per NPR. Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg reported national security adviser Mike Waltz added him to the group chat that included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and senior National Security Council members, who discussed pending airstrikes on Houthi-controlled areas on March 15.

Hegseth said Monday that "nobody was texting war plans." Ratcliffe said Tuesday there was no breach of security protocol, per Politico. Both he and Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, claimed no classified information was included in the chat. But nonpublic unclassified information "is many degrees less important than information about ongoing military operations," NPR reports, noting "there's almost no precedent for the heads of defense, state, intelligence and national security to be sharing such sensitive military intelligence in a forum that was known to be unsecured." Democrats have vowed to get the full transcript of the chat, which Goldberg did not release. (More Signal breach stories.)