United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deflected questions from reporters about an Atlantic article by Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who said in the report that he was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat in which top US officials discussed sensitive military plans for recent US attacks on the Yemen-based Houthis.
When asked about the group chat, Hegseth went after Goldberg instead, calling him a "so-called" journalist. "You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again," he said of Goldberg. "Nobody was texting war plans and that's all I have to say about that," Hegseth stressed before walking away from reporters.
National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said the message thread reported in The Atlantic "appears to be authentic," adding that the Council was "reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain."
