Team Trump’s group chat blunder has stunned Washington. Will anyone be held to account?

In any other presidency, the story would rock the United States: Washington’s most senior national security advisers having a highly confidential discussion about plans for the US to launch military strikes, and every word of it being read by an astonished journalist.

But in these times of the New World of Donald Trump it was seen as yet another day — a story that might run for a few hours before blowing over.

Washington is not what it used to be. When news emerged that The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief had been accidentally included in a group chat about a plan to bomb Yemen, Trump barely missed a beat.

He knew nothing about it, he told a media conference. He asked journalists for detail, but wasn’t particularly fazed. Later, on social media, he re-shared a satirical headline poking fun at The Atlantic’s readership numbers.

There was no apparent sense that there would be any accountability. These things happen.

The story broke when Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic that he knew in advance that the US was about to conduct air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis on March 15.

“The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defence, had texted me the war plan at 11.44 am,” Goldberg revealed. “The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing.”

Goldberg wrote:

“On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz.

“Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. 

“I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.”

Goldberg, as an experienced journalist, was concerned that it may have been a hoax but accepted the request, hoping it was the real Mike Waltz and that perhaps he wanted to talk about Ukraine or Iran.

One can imagine Goldberg’s surprise when he became part of a group chat discussing a military operation to bomb Yemen.

Emojis and casual celebration

The group included Vice-President JD Vance, and key officials or representatives of them, including Waltz; Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. The group also included a CIA official, who Goldberg chose not to name as that person is an active intelligence officer.

Goldberg wrote he “could not believe that the national security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans”.

“I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior US official, up to and including the vice-president,” he wrote.

For Goldberg, the security breach continued. After the bombing, Waltz celebrated by posting three emojis — a fist, an American flag and fire. There had indeed been fire — Yemen’s health authorities say the bombing killed at least 53 people.

Witkoff was not to be outdone, and, Goldberg wrote, sent five emojis to the group: two sets of hands praying, a flexed bicep and two American flags.

For 18 senior US officials to have a casual chat on a commercial social media platform has shocked many in Washington.

It comes only days after The New York Times reported on a plan for Elon Musk to be given a tour of the Pentagon — including, according to anonymous sources, a briefing about US plans for any war with China. (The Trump administration both labelled the story fake and launched internal probes into how it was leaked.)

Although Trump’s support ensured Hegseth was confirmed as secretary of defence, many concerns were raised as to whether someone who before this position had been a weekend host on Fox News was qualified to oversee the world’s largest military.

The incident raises some obvious questions about the level of competence of Trump’s national security team.

The first questions that naturally come to mind are about how a magazine editor was invited to join — and then able to lurk in — this 18-member group with nobody asking: “Hang on, who’s that guy?”

But beyond that stunning blunder, the bigger questions are about the handling of confidential, and potentially classified, military plans by these top officials.

Keeping secrets safe

Anyone who’s watched an American spy drama or war movie knows the US has incredibly tight protocols around where and how state secrets are discussed.

That’s why Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state blew up into a damaging scandal during the 2016 election campaign — one that Donald Trump repeatedly said she should be jailed over.

And it’s why Trump himself faced criminal charges — ultimately dropped — over the alleged stashing of classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago ballroom and bathroom.

This new revelation appears to represent a significant breach of those protocols.

It’s not clear exactly what was in the messages, because The Atlantic deemed some of it too sensitive to print. Hegseth has disputed the description of them as “war plans”.

But on the known facts, it appears at least some of the chat should have been confined to the authorised, secure channels set up for purposes like sensitive military discussion.

Signal is a more secure app than others, thanks to its encryption technology, but no app can ever be considered free of vulnerabilities.

Security and defence experts here in Washington say it looks like the Espionage Act may have been breached.

The fall-out will be felt beyond Washington.

You can imagine the chatter today in parts of Canberra.

When conversations like the group chat take place in Australia, there’s an expectation it’s done over secure lines. 

A similar howler in Australia would almost certainly send heads rolling.

Australia and America’s other Five Eyes intelligence partners — Canada, the UK and New Zealand — were already being forced to wrestle with questions about how much they could continue to trust their long-time ally.

Incidents like this will only shake that faith further.

But will there be any accountability?

The agencies that would traditionally investigate something like this are now under the tight control of fierce Trump loyalists.

And the Trump administration’s flood-the-zone strategy is likely to push the news agenda through another dizzying series of events before the week is out.

Perhaps the most America can hope for is that this shocking error — and the publicity that results from putting a magazine editor in the middle of it — serves as a wake-up call that leads to more care in future.

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