SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt and Maggie Haberman
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.
Some of those people said that the information Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen – essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.
US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and wife Jennifer in March.Credit: Bloomberg
Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer – a former Fox News producer – is not a defence employee, but she has travelled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.
Hegseth’s brother, Phil, and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.
The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.
Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic editor was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defence secretary. It was named “Defense | Team Huddle”, the people familiar with the chat said.
Hegseth used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.
The continued inclusion following Hegseth’s confirmation of his wife, brother and personal lawyer – none of whom had any apparent reason to be briefed on operational details of a military operation as it was getting under way – is sure to raise further questions about his adherence to security protocols.
The chat revealed by The Atlantic in March was created by President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, so that the most senior national security officials across the executive branch, such as the vice president, the director of national intelligence and Hegseth, could co-ordinate among themselves and their deputies before the US attacks.
Waltz took responsibility for inadvertently adding Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, to the chat. He called it “Houthi PC small group” to reflect the presence of members of the administration’s “principals committee”, who come together to discuss the most sensitive and important national security issues.
Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.
He shared information about the Yemen strikes in the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat at roughly the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior US officials and The Atlantic, the people familiar with Hegseth’s chat group said.
The Yemen strikes, designed to punish Houthi fighters for attacking international cargo ships passing through the Red Sea, were among the first big military strikes of Hegseth’s tenure.
After The Atlantic disclosed that Hegseth had used Waltz’s Signal group to communicate details of the strikes as they were being launched, the Trump administration said he had not shared “war plans” or any classified information, an assertion that was viewed with tremendous scepticism by national security experts.
White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in March.Credit: AP
In the case of Hegseth’s Signal group, a US official declined to comment on whether Hegseth shared detailed targeting information but maintained that there was no national security breach.
“The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before confirmation of his closest advisers,” the official said. “Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”
Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesperson, did not respond to requests for comment. The “Defense | Team Huddle” Signal chat until recently included about a dozen of Hegseth’s top aides and Parnell.
The chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were accused of leaking unauthorised information last week and were fired. Caldwell and Selnick were among three former top Pentagon officials who proclaimed their innocence in a public statement in response to the leak inquiry that led to their dismissals.
While the Signal chat created by Waltz for senior officials was criticised for sharing details of a military operation on an encrypted but unclassified app, the participants – other than Goldberg of The Atlantic, who appears to have been added accidentally – were senior government officials with reason to track the progress of the attack.
But some of the participants in the group chat created by Hegseth were not officials with any apparent need to be given real-time information on details of the operation.
Jennifer Hegseth has drawn attention for the access her husband has given her. He brought her into two meetings with foreign military counterparts in February and early March where sensitive information was discussed, a development first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Parlatore, who has been Pete Hegseth’s personal lawyer for the past eight years, was commissioned as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps about a week before the Yemen strikes were initiated.
Hegseth’s brother Phil works inside the Pentagon as a liaison to the Department of Homeland Security and as a senior adviser to the defence secretary.
Steven Stebbins, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, announced in April that he would review Hegseth’s Yemen strike disclosures on the Signal chat that included top Trump aides.
It’s not clear whether the review has uncovered the Signal chat that included Hegseth’s wife and other advisers.
