WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — The chairman and ranking member on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter to the Defense Department inspector general on Thursday asking the independent watchdog to open an investigation into top officials’ use of the Signal chat app to discuss plans for bombing Yemen.
Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker and Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Jack Reed wrote that the group chat, which somehow inadvertently included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, warranted further inquiry.
“This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen,” the two wrote in the one-page letter. “If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know.”
They asked the inspector general to include an “assessment of DOD classification and declassification policies and processes and whether these policies and processes were adhered to” as well as a determination of whether anyone “transferred classified information, including operational details, from classified systems to unclassified systems, and if so, how.”
The senators called on the inspector general to figure out if “the policies of the White House, Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and other Departments and agencies represented on the National Security Council on this subject differ.”
The letter requests the inspector general make recommendations to address any issues that might be identified by an investigation.
Signalgate, as it’s become known, began Monday when The Atlantic published excerpts of the group chat that included Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and others.
President Donald Trump and numerous White House officials have repeatedly tried to downplay the use of a commercial communications app to discuss plans to bomb Houthi rebels inside Yemen.
Hegseth has said publicly that no classified information was shared in the group chat, but Wicker told reporters on Wednesday that the “information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted to classify it.”
A spokesperson for the Defense Department Inspector General said the office “received the request yesterday and we are reviewing the letter. We have no further comment at this time.”
