On the 20th, the Associated Press, the U.S. New York Times and other media reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, u.S. Secretary of Defense Peter Heggseth created another messaging app, Signal chat, which includes his wife, brother and others, in which he shared with senior U. S. Government officials in March this year, U. S. air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, the content of the“Group chat door” leak last month, the information is basically the same.
Hegesses, file photo: n media
A person familiar with the matter and the people who received the messages confirmed the second group leak, the Associated Press said. The person asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter.
According to the New York Times, the second group has 13 members, including Heggseth’s wife and former Fox News Channel producer Jennifer Heggseth, and his brother Phil Heggseth, who is employed at the Pentagon as Senior Adviser to the Secretary of Homeland Security and liaison to the Department of Defense. The two men have been traveling with Heggseth and attending high-level meetings recently.
The latest revelations have triggered a new round of criticism of Hegesseth and the Trump administration, the Associated Press said, the Donald Trump administration has yet to take action against senior national security officials who discuss military secrets on Signal.
Chuck Shurmer, the Democratic Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, wrote on social media platform X that, the details keep coming out, we keep learning how Peter Hegesseth put people’s lives at risk, Peter Hegesseth must be fired
The White House and the National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment on the second Signal group chat, the report said.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly, published an article on the website of the Atlantic Monthly on March 24, saying that, on the 11th he received a connection request from a user with the same name as Waltz on the“Signal” software, and two days later he was joined in a“Houthi PC group” chat. On the 15th, a user with the same name as U.S. Defense Secretary Hegeses sent a message in a group chat, revealing the U.S. battle plan to strike Houthi forces in Yemen in two hours, including details on targets to be attacked, sequence of attacks and weapons to be deployed.
US media also revealed on March 29 that Heggseth had twice taken his wife to meetings to discuss classified information, raising further questions about the way officials in the Donald Trump administration handled classified information.
The Pentagon has recently expanded its investigation into leaks of sensitive or classified information, and in the past week four people in Heggseth’s inner circle have been fired, including his senior adviser, Dan Caldwell. U. S. “Political News Network” 18 quoted sources as saying that the U. S. Department of Defense high-level power vacuum and leadership crisis, “The Pentagon has completely collapsed.