The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, shared detailed information on the upcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private signal group which included his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer, according to four people knowing the cat.
Some of these people said that the information that Mr. Hegseth had shared on the reporting cat included the flight schedules for the Hornets F / A -18 targeting the Houthis in Yemen – essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separated cat separated the same day which wrongly included the editor of the Atlantic.
The wife of Mr. Hegseth, Jennifer, a former producer of Fox News, is not an employee of the Ministry of Defense, but she traveled with him abroad and aroused criticism for having accompanied her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.
Mr. Hegseth’s brother, Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as a personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why one or the other should know about the upcoming military strikes intended for the Houthis in Yemen.
The previously unsuccessful existence of a second signal cat in which Mr. Hegseth shared very sensitive military information is the last in a series of developments that have put his management and his judgment under surveillance.
Unlike the cat in which the Atlantic was wrongly included, the newly revealed was created by Mr. Hegseth. This included his wife and a dozen other people from his personal and professional interior circle in January, before his confirmation as a defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Buddle team, ”said people familiar with the cat. He used his private phone, rather than his government, to access the reported cat.
Continuous inclusion after confirmation by Mr. Hegseth of his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer, none of whom had an apparent reason to be informed of the operational details of a military operation during his presence, will certainly not raise other questions on his membership in security protocols.
The cat revealed by the Atlantic in March was created by President Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, so that senior senior national security officials through executive power, such as the vice-president, the director of national intelligence and Mr. Hegseth, could coordinate between them and their deputies before the American attacks.
Mr. Waltz took responsibility for the addition of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic, to the cat, inadvertently added. He called it “small Houthi PC group” to reflect the presence of members of the “main committee” of the administration, who meet to discuss the most sensitive and most important national security problems.
Hegseth created the signal group initially separated as a forum to discuss administrative or routine planning information, two of the people familiar with the cat said. People said HEGSETH had generally not used the cat to discuss sensitive military operations and said that he did not understand other officials at the office.
Mr. Hegseth shared information on the strikes of Yemen in the cat “Defense | Team Huddle, “almost at the same time as he put the same details in the other group of reporting cats which included senior US officials and the Atlantic, people familiar with Mr. Hegseth’s cat group said.
The strikes of Yemen, designed to punish Houthi fighters for having attacked international cargoos who passed through the Red Sea, were among the first major military strikes of Mr. Hegseth’s mandate.
After the Atlantic revealed that Mr. Hegseth had used Mr. Waltz’s signal group to communicate the details of the strikes when they launch, the Trump administration said that he had not shared “war plans” or classified information, an assertion that had been seen with huge skepticism by national security experts.
In the case of Mr. Hegseth’s signal group, an American official refused to say if Mr. Hegseth shared detailed information on targeting, but argued that there was no violation of national security.
“The truth is that there is an informal group cat that started before confirmation of its closest advisers,” said the official. “Nothing was classified on this cat.”
Sean Parnell, the spokesperson for the Pentagon, did not respond to several requests for comments before the publication of this article.
After his publication, Mr. Parnell responded on social networks. “Another day, another old story-returning from the dead,” he wrote. “There was no classified information in a signal cat, regardless of the number of ways to write history.”
The signal cat “Defense | Team Huddle “until recently included a dozen of the best aids from Mr. Hegseth, including Joe Kasper, the chief of staff to Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Parnell.
The cat also included two main advisers to Mr. Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were accused of having disclosed unauthorized information last week and were dismissed.
Mr. Caldwell and Selnick were among the three former senior Pentagon officials who proclaimed their innocence in a public declaration on Saturday in response to the flight investigation which led to their layoffs.
On Sunday, another former head of the Ministry of Defense, John Ulyot, who left the department last week, said in an opinion test for Politico that the Pentagon “was in disarray under the direction of Hegseth” and suggested that Mr. Trump should withdraw him.
When Mr. Goldberg published details on what Mr. Hegseth put in the reported cat created by Mr. Waltz concerning the upcoming strikes in Yemen, Trump defended him and said that he had done nothing wrong.
In a press release, Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House, did the same after the last revelation. “Regardless of the number of times the inherited media try to resuscitate the same non-history, they cannot change the fact that no classified information has been shared,” said Kelly.
Some Congress Democrats said it was new evidence that Hegseth was to be deleted.
“Each day, it remains in his work is another day that the life of our troops is threatened by his singular stupidity,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois and a combat veteran.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the principal democrat of the Armed Services Committee, added: “If this is true, this incident is another disturbing example of the unpredictory Hegseth for the laws and protocols that all other members of the military service must follow.”
Although the reported cat created by Mr. Waltz for senior officials has been criticized for sharing the details of a military operation on an encrypted but not classified application, participants – other than Mr. Goldberg of the Atlantic, which seems to have been accidentally added – were senior officials due to following the progress of the attack.
But some of the group cat participants created by Mr. Hegseth were not civil servants who have an apparent need to receive real -time information on the details of the operation.
Jennifer Hegseth drew the attention to the access that her husband gave her. Hegseth brought it into two meetings with foreign military counterparts In February and early March When sensitive information was discussed, a development reported for the first time by the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Parlatore, who has been Mr. Hegseth’s personal lawyer for eight years, was put into service as a commander of the navy in the body of the general judgment for about a week before the start of the strikes of Yemen.
In an interview before joining the army, Mr. Parlatore told the New York Times that he would work with Mr. Hegseth’s office to improve the formation of lawyers in army uniform.
Mr. Hegseth Phil’s brother works inside the Pentagon as a connection with the Department of Internal Security and as the main advisor to the Secretary of Defense.
A person familiar with the cat said that Mr. Hegseth’s aid warned him a day or two before Yemen strikes not to discuss these sensitive operational details in his group’s cat cat, which, although encrypting, is not considered secure that the government channels generally used to discuss very sensitive planning and war combat operations.
We did not know how Mr. Hegseth, a veteran and former Fox News host who, before his confirmation in January, had never served before in a high -level position, responded to these warnings.
Many of those in the inner circle of Mr. Hegseth in his first months in the Pentagon were combat veterans with a deep experience in the army but little knowledge of the first hand on the functioning of the government at the highest level.
Several of these staff members encouraged Mr. Hegseth to move the questions related to work in the cat “Defense | Team Huddle ”with his government phone. But Mr. Hegseth has never made the transition, according to some of the people familiar with the cat who spoke under the guise of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The interim inspector general of the Pentagon announced earlier this month that he would examine the disclosure of the strike of Mr. Hegseth on the reported cat, including the best Trump aid.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine to what extent the Secretary of Defense and the other DD staff are content with DOD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging request for official cases,” the acting inspector general Stebbins said in a notification letter to Mr. Hegseth.
It is not clear if the exam by Mr. Stebbins discovered the cat reporting which included the wife of Mr. Hegseth and other advisers.
Stebbins began the exam in response to a joint bipartite request from Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the republican president of the Armed Services Committee and Mr. Reed.
Beyond the controversy of the reported cat, Mr. Hegseth’s office was shaken by the sudden layoffs of Mr. Caldwell, Mr. Selnick and Colin Carroll, all the best advisers to the Secretary of Defense. They were escorted from the Pentagon last week After being accused of having disclosed sensitive information.
The layoffs and troubles around the Inspector General’s investigation raised tensions and encouraged to speak of more resignation,, According to current and former defense officials.
Among those who plan to leave are Mr. Kasper, the chief of staff to Mr. Hegseth, who helped conduct the leak investigation which led to the dismissal of his colleagues but was not involved in reprehensible acts, according to senior defense officials.
In the wake of the report in the Atlantic which discloses the first signal cat, Mr. Hegseth and other senior administration officials have repeatedly denied that any classified information had been shared between the participants.
“No one sent war plans, and that’s all I have to say about it,” HegSeth told journalists. During a hearing in the Senate, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, echoed the assertion of Mr. Hegseth that no classified information was shared.
But other former senior defense officials said that texts describing the launch times and the type of plane used before a strike would be classified information which, if they were disclosed to the enemy, could have endangering the life of the pilots.
