Hegseth Risked Troops’ Lives With Signal Messages, Watchdog Concludes
A bad week got even worse for Pete Hegseth, as a new watchdog report from the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General reveals that the defense secretary directly endangered U.S. troops when he used the messaging app Signal to discuss sensitive plans to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen in March.
Sources told CNN that the classified report details Hegseth’s lack of urgency and seriousness when speaking freely on the public messaging app about active U.S. war plans, updates and even when “the first bombs will be dropped.”
It is unclear whether any of the information was properly declassified before being broadcast on Signal – and before The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to the chat. As CNN reported, Hegseth claimed to have declassified all the information after the messages became public, but no such documentation exists.
A classified version of the inspector general’s report was sent to Congress on Tuesday, and an unclassified version is expected to be dropped on Thursday.
This report comes amid another controversy for Hegseth in which he is currently attempting to place blame for a double boat bombing that killed two survivors – a potential war crime – on himself and on Admiral Frank Bradley.
At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Hegseth claimed that he did not know there were any survivors after the first strike, adding that the “fog of war” would have made it difficult to determine whether anyone had survived – a response from both the Left and the Left. RIGHT proves insufficient.
“This week has made it clear that Pete Hegseth should not be leading the most powerful military on the planet,” said podcaster Jon Favreau. written the.
