NBC News reports:

Minutes before U.S. fighter jets took off to begin strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen last month, Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, used a secure U.S. government system to send detailed information about the operation to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The material Kurilla sent included details about when U.S. fighters would take off and when they would hit their targets — details that could, if they fell into the wrong hands, put the pilots of those fighters in grave danger. But he was doing exactly what he was supposed to: providing Hegseth, his superior, with information he needed to know and using a system specifically designed to safely transmit sensitive and classified information.

But then Hegseth used his personal phone to send some of the same information Kurilla had given him to at least two group text chats on the Signal messaging app, three U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the exchanges told NBC News.

The sequence of events, which has not been previously reported, could raise new questions about Hegseth’s handling of the information, which he and the government have denied was classified. In all, according to the two sources, less than 10 minutes elapsed between Kurilla’s giving Hegseth the information and Hegseth’s sending it to the two group chats, one of which included other Cabinet-level officials and their designees — and, inadvertently, the editor of The Atlantic magazine. The other group included Hegseth’s wife, his brother, his attorney and some of his aides.

Hegseth shared the information on Signal even though, NBC News has reported, an aide warned him in the days beforehand to be careful not to share sensitive information on an unsecure communications system before the Yemen strikes, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced earlier this month that he would review Mr. Hegseth’s Yemen strike disclosures on Signal.

Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee, and the committee’s senior Democrat, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, requested the review. In a letter last month, the senators asked the inspector general to “conduct an inquiry” into whether Mr. Hegseth had shared sensitive or classified information in the first group chat.

In an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, Mr. Hegseth continued to press a semantic argument.

“I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans,” he said. “What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things.”

Mr. Hegseth accused members of his own staff, whom he had brought to the Defense Department but fired last week, of leaking news of the chats, saying they were angry about being let go.

“Once a leaker, always a leaker, often a leaker,” Mr. Hegseth said, appearing on Fox from the Pentagon briefing room.

“But I know you know these guys,” the host, Brian Kilmeade, said to Mr. Hegseth. “These are the guys you picked.”

Mr. Hegseth responded by saying that details of ongoing Defense Department issues, including one relating to the Panama Canal, had been leaked to the news media and that a subsequent investigation “led to some unfortunate places.”

The revelation that Mr. Hegseth received the information he put on the Signal chats straight from Central Command via a secure government system is only the latest in what his former press spokesman has referred to as a “month from hell.” [Continue reading…]