Iran announced on Thursday it had responded to a letter from President Trump in which the American president had urged direct negotiations with the government in Tehran on a deal to curb the country’s advancing nuclear program. Iran appeared to be taking the middle ground, neither rejecting negotiations with the United States nor accepting face-to-face … Read more
President Trump has long had, at best, a cavalier attitude about the handling of classified material. In his first term, he took a photograph of a satellite image of an Iranian launch site that had been included in his daily intelligence brief and posted it on social media. During a meeting in the Oval Office, … Read more
As far as the Trump administration is concerned, there are government secrets and then there are government secrets. Details sought by a federal court about a military flight of immigrants that landed many days ago with video cameras recording its arrival? Sorry, judge, too secret to reveal, even now long after the fact. Details about … Read more
A federal judge in Washington on Thursday ordered several Trump administration officials who participated in a Signal group chat discussing the details of a pending attack in Yemen to preserve all of the messages they exchanged on the app from March 11 to March 15. The decision by the judge, James E. Boasberg, came in … Read more
The intelligence breach was bad enough, current and former fighter pilots said. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s refusal to acknowledge that he should not have disclosed sensitive information about when American fighter pilots would attack sites in Yemen, they said, was even worse. On air bases, in aircraft carrier “ready rooms” and in communities near … Read more
The bombshell publication of a group chat involving Trump administration officials discussing U.S. battle plans revealed in unusually stark fashion what the Trump administration hopes to achieve with airstrikes this month against the Houthi militia in Yemen. The attacks, some of the chat’s participants said, were meant to deter the Houthis from attacking commercial ships … Read more
Members of President Trump’s cabinet insisted at a House committee hearing on Wednesday that there was nothing wrong with using a consumer messaging app to discuss U.S. military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen. On Tuesday, the spy chiefs told the Senate that they did not believe any of their material, no classified “intelligence,” … Read more
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Wednesday that he took part in the group chat on the Signal app earlier this month among top United States officials ahead of American airstrikes in Yemen and said that someone had made a “big mistake” by adding a journalist to the group. Mr. Rubio’s remarks were the … Read more
The U.S. military has conducted strikes against Houthi militia targets in Yemen daily since March 15, but the Pentagon has not provided details about the attacks since March 17, when it said more than 30 Houthi targets had been hit on the first day. The military’s Central Command posts images on social media of jets … Read more
The White House effort to defend Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday leaned heavily into a semantic argument. What he posted on the now-infamous Signal chat with his national security colleagues was not a “war plan,” they insist. Technically, they may be right. What The Atlantic published, from the chain in which its top editor, … Read more