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Mar 27, 2025

Chuck Grassley: Signal leak a 'screw up,' but info wasn't classified

This story was updated to include additional information. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said there was a “screw up” after a journalist revealed that the nation’s top national security officials

This story was updated to include additional information.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said there was a “screw up” after a journalist revealed that the nation’s top national security officials accidentally shared with him their plans to attack Houthi targets in Yemen in an unsecured group chat.

But Grassley, who said he did not read transcripts of the text messages and "probably won't," also said he doesn’t believe classified information was shared — even though the messages revealed the timing of expected airstrikes.

“I have to assume, even without knowing what was there, that there had to be some screw up,” he told reporters on a media call Wednesday. “But I don't know to what extent that screw up actually hurts national security. Because I read today and yesterday (that) people in the executive branch of government that are concerned about national security, including people in the White House, that said there wasn't any national security damage done as a result of that.”

The White House has denied that the text thread included classified information, downplayed the seriousness of the situation and tried to discredit the journalist involved.

“I have to go back to what the administration said, since I haven't heard it,” Grassley said. “There's no classified information in it.”

The Atlantic magazine on Wednesday published the full text thread — which included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance and other top Trump officials — detailing operations to carry out U.S. military airstrikes.

The magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the group’s discussion on Signal, a free encrypted messaging app that is available to the public.

According to screenshots of their conversation, Hegseth disclosed the timing of planned airstrikes by U.S. attack jets and armed drones on militant Houthi targets in Yemen on March 15.

According to the account, Hegseth at 11:44 a.m. on March 15 — about 30 minutes before the first airstrikes — sent an update to the group that read: "TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.”

Officials with decades of experience at senior levels at the Pentagon, CIA and White House, told USA TODAY it was unprecedented to have these deliberations outside the most secret and secure government communications systems.

If the information had fallen into the wrong hands, the Houthis could have put weapons in bunkers, scattered their forces, and preemptively struck and killed U.S. troops in the region.

“How in the Hell could this happen?” asked former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a Republican who served under Democratic President Barack Obama. “I have never, ever heard of senior officials — the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor — using an app like Signal to discuss quite possibly classified information."

“A conversation like this," he said, "has to be done in a secure room at the White House or on a secure line.”

Grassley has previously been outspoken about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, condemning her for communicating classified information over a private email server while serving under Obama.

“According to the FBI, Secretary Clinton sent and received emails that contained that highly classified information. It’s hard to fathom how that wouldn’t undermine our national security,” he said during a floor speech in October 2019 following an FBI investigation.

He told reporters there’s “no connection” between Clinton’s case and what members of the Trump administration did.

“There's no connection between this, because all of Clinton's stuff was on internet and things like that,” Grassley said.

He reiterated that Trump administration officials said there was no classified information included in the group chat.

“Hillary Clinton’s intentional move to set up a non-government server to communicate government business and evade federal recordkeeping for all electronic communications throughout her term as Secretary of State — which included thousands of classified e-mails — is beyond comparison to the Trump administration’s limited communication via a Signal group chat, which contained no classified information," a Grassley spokesperson wrote in a follow-up email.

USA TODAY contributed to this report.

Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Des Moines Register. Reach her at [email protected] or 515-284-8244. Follow her on X at @brianneDMR.