Leon Panetta, who served as both the secretary of defense and director of the CIA under Barack Obama, said on Monday that Trump administration officials “need to be fired” following revelations that The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was inadvertently added to a group chat detailing recent airstrikes in Yemen.
“I hope the White House takes this seriously because the last thing you want to do when you’re talking about war plans is to have a serious leak like this that could undermine the war plans but also jeopardize lives,” Panetta declared during a CNN interview. “So I hope they take this seriously.”
Panetta’s remarks came shortly after Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s top editor, published a jaw-dropping story about receiving a connection request from national security adviser Michael Waltz on the encrypted messaging app Signal. Days later, Goldberg recounted that he had been added to a text exchange called the “Houthi PC small group,” which included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other senior Cabinet officials.
“The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming,” Goldberg wrote. “The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”
Goldberg added: “I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president… I have never seen a breach quite like this.”
Many of the Trump officials on the chain, specifically Hegseth, had also spent years raging about the poor handling of classified documents and lack of secure communications in past Democratic administrations.
The stunning security breach, which involved the defense secretary providing highly sensitive plans of the Houthi strikes to Goldberg via an unclassified group chat, sparked a bipartisan eruption among members of Congress and the intelligence community over the administration’s “amateur hour” antics.
“This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll,” Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), a member of the Armed Services Committee, told Axios. “The unconscionable action was sending this info over non-secure networks,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) added. “None of this should have been sent on non-secure systems. Russia and China are surely monitoring his unclassified phone.”
During an appearance on CNN News Central with anchor Boris Sanchez, Panetta labeled Goldberg's inclusion in the text exchange a “serious mistake” and said he hoped the administration would launch a “full investigation” into how the journalist was included in the first place.
“This is just a serious blunder,” Panetta stated, adding that it “could violate espionage laws” and “undermine our national security.”
Asked about what would have been the “worst-case scenario” if someone other than Goldberg had access to the group chat, the former Pentagon chief noted that “if it were somebody who did not have the United States national security interests at heart,” they “could have seriously disrupted these war plans.”
As for the administration seemingly shrugging off the story by initially framing it as merely a “deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials,” Panetta reiterated his assertion that the White House take this breach seriously.
“There was a mistake here. Somebody from The Atlantic got the most sensitive emails you can imagine at the federal level. That is a serious blunder. It has to be investigated. And somebody, frankly, needs to get fired,” he exclaimed.
“Who do you think that is, sir?” Sanchez wondered.
“Whoever put that chain together,” the former Obama official replied. “Somebody put that name on a list, and whoever that was deserves to be fired.”
Meanwhile, Trump denied any knowledge of the security lapse, telling reporters on Monday afternoon that he knows “nothing about it.” At the same time, he took the opportunity to blast The Atlantic, a magazine that has long faced the president’s wrath over its critical coverage of him.
“I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” he said. “To me, it's a magazine that’s going out of business. It’s not much of a magazine, but I know nothing about it.”
