Pentagon watchdog launches probe into Signal chat

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others discussed a U.S. strike on Yemen.

The acting Inspector General of the Defense Department will review Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal in a group chat with other key national security officials to discuss military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen last month, the IG’s office announced on Thursday.

In a letter to Hegseth, Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins wrote that the objective of the IG’s “evaluation” is to determine whether Hegseth and other Pentagon personnel “complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business.”

The probe will also examine whether Hegseth complied with classification and records retention requirements, the letter says. The review will take place both in Washington, DC and at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, it adds.

The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee requested that Stebbins conduct a review after The Atlantic magazine reported last month that Hegseth and other senior national security officials used the messaging app Signal to discuss military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen.

The information Hegseth disclosed in the Signal chat, including the exact timing of strikes against the Houthis and the kinds of aircraft and weapons systems that would be used, was highly classified at the time he wrote it, CNN has reported. Hegseth shared the information with the group, which included the vice president and the national security adviser, 30 minutes before the operation began, the texts released by The Atlantic showed.