WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s top watchdog has concluded that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “created a risk” for servicemembers by sharing sensitive information on unsecure platforms during strikes on Houthi forces earlier this year.
However, the inspector general said, Hegeseth as secretary had the right to declassify information as he sees fit, something Hegseth has argued he did in the moment — leaving both sides of the aisle to claim the report backs their arguments about one of the stranger information sharing scandals in modern history.
“The Secretary sent nonpublic DoD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes,” the IG wrote in the unclassified version of the report, released today. “Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.”
Later on, the report notes, “the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.”
It also concluded that “the Secretary and OSD did not retain records of the Secretary’s conversations on Signal discussing official government business, as required by” the DoD Records Management Program. However, “We are not making any recommendations in this report related to the Secretary’s use of Signal to send sensitive nonpublic information because it represented only one instance of an identified, DoD-wide issue.”
In March, The Atlantic published an explosive report detailing how its Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a group chat on Signal where senior members of President Donald Trump’s national security team discussed plans to attack the Houthis, including details such as timing and methods of the strikes. Hegseth’s messages in particular contained operational information that, critics have said, put members of the military in danger.
The report states that Hegseth refused to take part in interviews with the IG, instead submitting written statements. As a result, the IG also had to rely on information made public by The Atlantic for its investigation.
Turning R&D into reality to meet the challenges of the modern battlefield
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
Hegseth, for his part, is casting the report as an absolute victory, tweeting out late Wednesday that he considers the matter closed. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement to media that “The Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along — no classified information was shared. This matter is resolved, and the case is closed.”
However, that doesn’t appear to be the case for Democrats on the Hill, whose early responses have largely fallen along the lines of a statement from Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
“This report is a damning review of an incompetent secretary of defense who is profoundly incapable of the job and clearly has no respect for or comprehension of what is required to safeguard our service members,” Smith wrote in a statement Wednesday. “The IG report confirms the concerns that we have raised since the news first broke of his inappropriate use of the Signal app. His poor judgment has been on display throughout this past year.”
Ultimately, the IG made only one formal recommendation: that US Central Command review its classification procedures and ensure clear requirements for marking what is and isn’t classified.