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Journalist Reveals War Chat; Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) is interviewed about the Shared War Group Chat. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 26, 2025 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:00]

BRIAN STELTER, CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: And I think this morning a lot of scrutiny on Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, because his messages are the key messages here. His messages are the military strike plans that Goldberg originally withheld for security reasons, but is now deciding to publish.

And just for people's background here, it's been an intense 24/36 hours at "The Atlantic" as this publication tried to decide what to do. You know, initially it was meeting - the editors were meeting with lawyers, considering the national security ramifications, considering the possibility that "The Atlantic" might be investigated or subpoenaed if it published more of this information. But it went ahead and did so this morning because of the Trump administration's comments claiming this was not classified.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Brian Stelter, thank you.

Listen, don't go far. A new hour of whirlwind and contradiction begins right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the breaking news this morning, "The Atlantic" now publishing new text messages and details from the Signal group chat, where the - discussing U.S. military plans after one of its own journalists was mistakenly added to that text chain.

The Trump administration has repeatedly denied that war plans were shared on that chat. Now the receipts. The journalist at the center of this, Jeffrey Goldberg, says that wasn't true, and he has evidence now to prove it.

It all seems that these newly revealed text messages will come up an hour from now very - and become a very central focus an hour from now when the nation's top intelligence officials are back on Capitol Hill before House lawmakers, a day after those top intelligence officials struggled mightily to defend this national security breach before the Senate.

Joining us this hour to reset and take us through is CNN's Jeff Zeleny is at the White House, CNN's Alex Marquardt is also in Washington tracking all of this. Alex, talk us through what we now see in these text messages and help

us try to define now what are war plans if it is not this?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is appearing to be an increasingly flimsy defense from the Trump administration, both on the war plans front and their claim that what "The Atlantic" reporters saw was not classified. We have a lot more detail now from Jeffrey Goldberg and his colleague, Shane Harris, over at "The Atlantic."

After that pushback from the Trump administration, claiming that these were not war plans, claiming that this was not classified information, they went ahead - they said they felt the need to go ahead and publish what they had. They did get some resistance, they said, from the Trump administration because the Trump administration did not want their internal deliberations to be published. But again, they are claiming that what these are, are not war plans and not classified information.

We did know that just before noon on March 15th, Kate, that is when Pete Hegseth essentially laid out how this strike was going to go against the Houthis in Yemen. And Goldberg had reported broadly what Hegseth had written. Now we have a lot more detail. A number of bullet points as he - as Hegseth lays out for his colleagues, some 18 people on the chat, including reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, how this was all going to unfold.

The first bullet point that he writes is about the - the fighter jets that are going to be launching this operation. He says that at 12:15 Eastern Time, so half an hour after he posted this, F-18s are going to launch. That, he says, is the first strike package.

And then he goes on to talk about the target terrorists that they're going after. He does not name the terrorist. He just calls him the target terrorist at his known location should be on time.

And then in all caps later, just further down the list, he writes that this is when the bombs are definitely going to drop. So, making very clear what is going to happen here.

And, Kate, here's the kicker, Hegseth writes, "we are currently clean on OPSEC," meaning operational security. They absolutely were not clean on operational security because they had inadvertently included this journalist.

And this is the point that Goldberg and Harris are making, that had it not been an ethical journalist like Goldberg who was included, had it been a foreign official who was accidentally put on here, a foreign intelligence operator, anybody else, these plans could have leaked, not only revealing what was about to happen to the Houthis, but putting these American service members in harm's way.

Guys, one of the new details that we learned here is more involvement of the national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who until this published we thought was kind of hanging out in the background and reacting positively after the strike happened. But now we know that he was actually providing real time intelligence on this Signal chat after the strikes happened.

[09:05:04]

Just before 2:00 p.m. he tweets - or, sorry, he writes to the group, the first target, and he calls them their - the top Houthi missile guy, that he would - they had a positive ID of him and they got him walking into his girlfriend's building, and it is now collapsed. So, essentially, the national security adviser there providing an after action report to the group about what had happened. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, going on to say that he is going to fill the group in on - on what follows. But just an extraordinary amount of detail, an extraordinary amount of sensitive information here.

The Trump administration continuing to quibble about whether these war plans, whether these are classified. No doubt, this is not the kind of information that the U.S. should want in public on an insecure app like Signal, and certainly not going to a journalist. And all of this coming just minutes before these top intelligence officials are supposed to sit down in front of the House Intelligence Committee. It is going to be an extraordinary grilling of those national security officials.

Guys.

BOLDUAN: All right, Alex, stick with us. We appreciate walking - walking through this for us this hour.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so we are already seeing how the White House has been responding to this initial reporting by "The Atlantic." It's deny, deny, deny.

We've heard from Pete Hegseth, who has said these are not war plans. The spokesperson for the White House saying these are not war plans. You even have Representative Davidson, who - who Kate just talked to, said, well, maybe this was somehow nefarious and it was Goldberg who somehow got into this - this chat himself and that needs to look into when Mike Waltz clearly, on this text message, is shown to have added him to the group.

So, I'm curious what you think we're going to be hearing from the White House today, now that we've actually seen the texts that were sent to Goldberg, it has been published in "The Atlantic," after you had all of these members, from the CIA director, to the DNI director, saying, this is not intelligence, these are not classified texts.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, you said deny, deny, deny. Also, the plan clearly is going to be, as we're seeing it shaping up, is blame, blame, blame. Another familiar page from the Trump playbook blaming "The Atlantic" magazine, blaming Jeffrey Goldberg, who the president has had a long standing, a difficult relationship with, going back to stories written about the - the first Trump administration.

But the bottom line here is, we are exactly now 48 hours after the White House first learned of this. When Jeffrey Goldberg went to the White House on Monday morning, shortly after 9:00 a.m., and said, look, this is what we have, this is what the group chat that I was invited into. So now the White House clearly is in damage control mode. They are trying to send the message, which is why we saw the president yesterday here at the White House with Mike Waltz, to send the message that this is not - you know, it might be an embarrassing episode, but it is certainly not a matter of national security.

But these new messages certainly put that in sharp relief. I mean it is really going to be fascinating to see how Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, the - the head of the DNI and the CIA director, answer these questions on Capitol Hill, because some of their responses yesterday were also suggesting that these were not operational messages.

But as Alex was just reading those messages, line by line, hour by hour, minute by minute, these officials talking about what is going to happen. And these were messages that were sent out in advance of that. So, we can expect a familiar response here, trying to blame the messenger.

But the reality here is, a question of competence is setting in. And the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, yesterday, when he was traveling in Honolulu, he said, I know what I'm doing. Out of the blue, seemingly said, I know what I'm doing. That certainly is going to be a question that is raised by many members of Congress, likely many Democrats, because we -- because Republicans are certainly circling the wagons on this already.

But this is the beginning of a very interesting day here at the White House. Again, the same playbook is likely to be played, but we don't know how it will all play out. Will the president lose any confidence in his team? It is certainly an embarrassment. He called it the first big glitch of this administration. It seems like more than a glitch to most people reading this.

BERMAN: All right, Jeff Zeleny, thank you. Alex Marquardt, both of you, stand by for a minute.

I want to point out, two major things now have happened. Number one, now we've seen these text messages on the Signal exchange as they transpired. And number two, it calls into question the last 24 hours of explanation from the White House, from the cabinet about what happened.

[09:10:00]

BOLDUAN: They knew. They were on there. They know what was on them.

SIDNER: The know this all.

BERMAN: They were on there. They knew what happened. It's an extraordinary level of contention. You have to really squint to believe that these are not war plans. It casts doubt on what they have said publicly over the last 24 hours on this.

With us, CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier, CNN military analyst, retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton. And to that second point, Cedric, you know, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, said last night, they are not war plans. All day yesterday this was not classified, yet now we have this exchange before us, 31 minutes before things launch, some two hours before bombs fall, with a level of detail of, this is when the first bombs will definitely drop.

BOLDUAN: And on whom.

BERMAN: And on whom, before they drop.

What do you see here with your vast experience?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: John, I see a war plan. Basically what we would colloquially call a war plan. These are actually operational plans. They are elements potentially of operations orders or op-ords in military terminology.

And not only that, but we also are seeing the first version of a battle damage assessment report. So, although it might not have the neat cover and the types of things that you would associate with an actual war plan that you get handed to you when you're, you know, studying something over the long term, it has all the elements of a war plan.

And what that means is, all of these elements mean that this stuff is classified, full stop. There is no question this is classified. There is no question that anything that is said in these chats, you know, basically boils down to something where what they're looking at is stuff happening in real time.

The reason you classify things is that you want to protect sources and methods. You want to protect military operations. And you want to make sure that the people that are conducting those operations stay safe. And when you put this kind of stuff on - in a - an unsecured system, yes, it's encrypted, but it's a commercially available system, you really risk the lives of the people involved.

So, this is - this is a very serious issue. And -and I think what we're seeing is, you know, the real - the real stuff here. And it is - would be considered classified in any normal read of this.

BOLDUAN: Classified in any normal read of this, though we've heard from, again, we continue - I mean let's see if it changes. It didn't - the feeling about this publicly has not changed in the immediate reaction from a Republican congressman, who's a close ally of the White House, as just was speaking to us.

Kim - but just your reaction, Kim, to what - what we've now seen and what's - and what has happened in the last 24 hours.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I have to agree with Cedric. When I've been embedded with troops and they've been worried that we, as journalists, with them, might share tactics, techniques, or procedures, something that they're about to do that would endanger them, all of the stuff in that chat would count as something we could not share or be kicked out of the embed.

But having covered the intelligence community for years and having been subject of an FBI leak investigation myself, one of the things I learned was that classification authority goes to the head of whichever branch that intelligence comes from. So, you could see the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, and the CIA director, Ratcliffe, yesterday setting up the legal argument that because Hegseth himself typed in most of those details into an unclassified chat, that by the act of doing that, he reduced those details from being classified to being just sensitive. So, you could argue that you're not supposed to share something sensitive over unclassified channels. But I can already hear the government lawyers saying, it's not something illegal that he did. He was just talking around the operation, though if any terrorist on the ground had gotten a heads up ahead of time of those texts, they would have had anti-aircraft trained at the sky to go after those war planes, and they would take cover from those tomahawks.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you, Colonel Leighton. Kate had a really good conversation with the Ohio congressman, Warren Davidson. And he said something that I think sparked all of our interest, which was, well perhaps they actually wanted to put a reporter on this particular text message saying, and I'm quoting here, "there could be a case that it was intentionally released anyway."

[09:15:08]

Does that jive with anything about how things should work when it comes to plans where they're about to strike a target?

LEIGHTON: Well, it would be the equivalent of a virtual embed, you know, kind of what Kim experienced in real life. This would be the virtual version of that.

It is possible that they might want to do something like that, but usually if you do something like that, you would tell somebody like Jeffrey Goldberg and say, hey, we want you to be a part of this. Don't publish this until x. I - and oh, by the way, let us review this and then go from there. But none of that happened. So, it leads me to believe that this is a - the congressman came up with - with an excuse that they were trying out to see if it would work.

But in this particular case, I don't think they (INAUDIBLE), you know, an accident that Jeffrey Goldberg was on this particular signal group, and they are now trying to clean up on aisle five for this. But, you know, it's very interesting attempt at a justification, let's just put it that way, Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, and because we've heard from Mike Waltz, who's apologized for this already. It is interesting the way it is being spoken about by a Republican to try to help clean up the situation.

John.

BERMAN: All right, thanks to both of you.

With us now is Congressman Carlos Gimenez, a Republican from Florida, who is on the House Armed Services Committee.

Congressman, thank you for being with us.

We have this exchange now that was on Signal, which is not a government app, where the secretary of defense is telling people exactly what time planes will be launched and exactly what time bombs will fall, hours before they are set to fall.

How would you describe that information?

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): I would describe that information as highly sensitive, and it shouldn't have gone out on a Signal chat. That's - that's things that should be discussed one on one or in a SCIF. That's not something that should go out on a - on a Signal chat. At least that's what we've been told here. That's what I was taught here when I became a congressman. Those things are discussed in the SCIF and only in the SCIF, or I don't - I don't - I don't know what the rules are for the administration. I mean, they're the ones that classify stuff. So, I would assume that in the White House or there's some other places that that information can be shared.

BERMAN: How would you describe the level of honesty and disclosure over the last 24 hours, from the likes of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has said there were no war plans texted. I know what I'm doing.

GIMENEZ: Well, look, this is a - obviously a huge mistake. I think the - you know, my - what we should do is just fess up to it. OK, we made a mistake. We will clean this up. It will not happen again. No U.S. servicemen were killed. And - and the strikes came out successfully.

And so, you move on and then you take - you take responsibility for what happened. And you said, yes, this was unfortunate. Somebody must have hit the wrong button or the wrong person and included somebody that shouldn't have been on that - on that Signal chat. And then you learn from this and you say, well, these things can't happen anymore on Signal.

Signal is used by a bunch of us for a number of things to keep our conversations kind of private, but there's no sensitive information that should be, you know, exchanged on Signal. And so, that's what you do. You just say, hey, we'll learn from this. We're human. Everybody makes a mistake. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in this instance. And then you move on and you don't do it again.

BERMAN: Secretary Hegseth said that these are not war plans. Do you think these are war plans?

GIMENEZ: Well, this - you know, it's a - it's an outline of what is about to happen. I don't know - I'm not in the Defense Department, so I don't know what they consider a war plan, but it certainly is a strike plan.

Now, you know, it doesn't say where they're going to hit. It just says, this is - this is the package that's going to go out.

BERMAN: Yes.

GIMENEZ: But it does - I doesn't - from what I read, they didn't identify specific target locations. And so, in that sense, you know, it wasn't a complete plan.

BERMAN: No, but it gives the exact time bombs will drop. This is when the bomb - first bombs will definitely drop, 14:15, it says. And we know from the previous exchange this is all about the Houthis.

GIMENEZ: Excuse me. I - I said - excuse me, I said that.

BERMAN: OK, hang on, hang on, hang on.

GIMENEZ: I said - OK, I said that.

BERMAN: Like, right. I get it. I get it.

GIMENEZ: I didn't say - I didn't say that it - but it didn't give you specific places that are going to be bombed. At least what I read, OK.

BERMAN: No - no, it doesn't. But the Houthis -

GIMENEZ: And so I agree, yes, it was - it gave you the strike package but it - yes.

BERMAN: But it tells - but it tells you that it targets the Houthis. So, that kind of narrows it down.

GIMENEZ: Yes.

BERMAN: So, if it were released, the entire Houthi operation -

GIMENEZ: No, not really. Oh, no, no, that - yes, they're all over Yemen, OK.

[09:20:01]

It narrows it down to a country, OK. It doesn't tell you, hey, we're going to hit this particular village, this particular city, this particular target, this particular individual. That's what I was trying to get to.

BERMAN: I understand.

GIMENEZ: Does it say, here's the strike package and it's going to go out and that, you know, bombs are going to fall at this time. But does it really tell you where exactly? And you're talking about Yemen, which is a country. It's not, you know, not - not tied to any one specific location.

Hey, it's a mistake. You know, we own up - up - up to it. Like I said, own up to it. It's a mistake. Learn from it. Don't do it again. You know, and - and, fortunately, nobody - no - no U.S. servicemen were lost. And I think, you know, from every indication that the bombing strike was a success. And so, you know, again, we've got to move on and - and I know that the president will take - take the steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. And then you learn from this, because we are human, and you move on.

BERMAN: Had the Houthis known two hours beforehand, the exact time that bombs will fall, even if they didn't know which house they would fall on, would it have been useful information to them?

GIMENEZ: Probably, because they'd say, hey, the bombs are about to fall somewhere on us in about two hours.

BERMAN: OK.

GIMENEZ: And so, go hide somewhere or - or move from somewhere, because somehow -

BERMAN: Yes.

GIMENEZ: You know, some bombs are going to - going to drop on our heads in about two hours. So, would it have been useful. Of course it's useful, all right. But, fortunately, the - the - the reporter did not disclose that, didn't put it out and - and the targets apparently were hit as they were intended to be hit. And so, you know, again, yes, you know, I mean, I'm not telling you that - that this thing, you know, that somehow it's OK that it happened. It shouldn't have happened. And again, you learn from your mistakes and you make sure you don't do it again in the future.

BERMAN: And I appreciate what you're saying here. And part of it's just common sense, right? Obviously, if they know beforehand, it would have been useful to them. And I appreciate the way you lay that out.

GIMENEZ: Yes.

BERMAN: You talk about the need to fess up and just move on.

GIMENEZ: Yes.

BERMAN: Has the last 24 hours of response from the White House been in that lane of what you call fessing up, admit the mistake and moving on?

GIMENEZ: Well, you know, look, you know, maybe the president didn't know - didn't understand everything that was on that - that chat. And so, again, he needs to look within his administration and find - get to the bottom of it, make sure it doesn't happen again, and then move on.

And unlike Afghanistan, where 13 Marines were actually killed because of a botched operation, and nobody really took blame for that, you know, I think we just move on. We made a mistake. Yes, admit it and go and move on. That's what we need to do.

And, fortunately, in this case, no service people were killed and the targets were hit and apparently successfully.

BERMAN: We -

GIMENEZ: So, yes, it was a mistake, but it didn't - but it didn't have - it didn't have tragic consequences. Or at least not to America. It did have tragic consequences to the Houthis.

BERMAN: Look, and thank God for that.

GIMENEZ: Yes. Yes.

BERMAN: Who should investigate this? Who - who should investigate this at this point?

GIMENEZ: Well, I think, you know, I mean, Congress has a - a role to play in here. The House Armed Services Committee has a role to play here. And other committees of jurisdiction have a role to play. But I don't think there's anything here that's - that needs to be, you know, we - wow, there's some secret here. It's all pretty much in the open of what happened. I certainly can understand what happened and why it happened. And so, I don't think this is going to take long to figure out, you know, who did what and how it got to be, you know, that this reporter got this - got - got to be on this link. And so that's the one thing.

And people are saying, hey, that reporter is not even on my phone. Well, let's check that out. And how in the world did this reporter end up getting this information when he's not supposed to be on your phone? I can't put together a chat group on my phone unless the individuals are actually on the phone. I think that, you know, maybe that person is there and that - and that Mike may - may not have - may not even know that he was there, put him there inadvertently. Who knows? OK. That's what we need to find out. How did this person get in it?

But also, the final thing is, hey, you're not supposed to have these kinds of conversations on a chat group. Get people together in a room, discuss it in a room, in a - in a classified, you know, setting when you have these kinds of discussions.

I thought the discussions were fascinating. The different points of view. It kind of gets into the head of each of the individuals, and that there is discourse and there is discussion inside the administration, which, by the way, is a really good thing. You just don't want to have a bunch of people saying, yes, yes, yes. There was disagreement in that group. And then the decision was made, and it was carried out.

BERMAN: Congressman Carlos Gimenez, we appreciate you coming on and sharing your thoughts in the free-flowing discussion this morning. Please come back. Thank you.

GIMENEZ: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Now, let's get back over to Alex Marquardt right now.

Alex, with some more perspective on all of this breaking news in light of the testimony of two of the people who were on that chat when they testified before the Senate yesterday.

[09:25:06] MARQUARDT: Yes, Kate, given what we now know, these new details from "The Atlantic" laying out how this strike is going to unfold, what fighter jets are going to be carrying out these strikes, what time the bombs are going to drop. It does appear that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, may have misled or even lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee just yesterday. They were asked specifically whether this chat included information on the strike packages, on operational details, on the timing and on the targets. And they either said they weren't aware or that, no, it was not included on this chat.

Here's a bit of their exchange with Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARTIN HEINRICH (D-NM): So, I'm curious, did this conversation at some point include information on weapons packages, targets or timing?

JOHN RATCLIFFE, CIA DIRECTOR: Not that I'm aware of.

HEINRICH: Director Gabbard, same question.

TULSI GABBARD, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Same answer, and defer to the Department of Defense on that question.

HEINRICH: Well, that - those are two different answers. But you're saying that did not - that was not part of the conversation?

GABBARD: Not to my knowledge.

HEINRICH: The precise operational issues were not part of this conversation?

GABBARD: Correct.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: Gabbard saying there that precise operational details were not part of that conversation.

Kate, what we're looking at here this morning from "The Atlantic" are precise operational details.

You also have the question to Ratcliffe about information on weapons packages, targets and timing. He said that he wasn't aware of that.

What we're looking at here, again, we have the weapons packages, the first strike package due to be launched at 12:15 on those F-18s. The targets, they - it's true, they do not name the specific person who is being targeted. But later on, after that person was hit, Mike Waltz identifies him as their top missile guy who was walking into his girlfriend's building. And when Ratcliffe was asked about timing and said he wasn't aware of it, clearly Pete Hegseth here was laying out the timing. So, what the top two intelligence officials in this country told those

- those senators in the Senate Intelligence Committee flies in the face of what we now see printed in "The Atlantic." So, obviously, that is going to be a real area for the House members to explore this morning.

And I just want to reiterate the operational security risks here. Imagine, if you will, that Mike Waltz, who created this group, had included someone else. We know that he speaks with the Russians. We know that he speaks with other foreign officials. What if one of those foreign officials had a similar name to Jeffrey Goldberg, or a similar name to whoever meant to be included, because we know Waltz meant to include someone else. It so easily could have been someone aside from Jeffrey Goldberg, who was - who would have been included, who could have then fed that information to the Houthis, who then would have put American service members in danger? That is really the crux of the issue here, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Well said, Alex. Thank you so much.

Alex is going to continue to work this. We'll get back to you. Thank you, Alex.

SIDNER: All right, we are now joined again by our Brian Stelter, who has been on top of this from the very beginning, getting the fact that these texts were now published in "The Atlantic," saying a lot of things that don't match what the administration has been saying and what the head of, for example, DNI has been saying.

Brian, the White House press secretary has now been tweeting about the messages. Curious what she is saying this morning.

STELTER: Right. The more damning the disclosures, the more furious the denials. And that's an example of what we're seeing from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Here's what she's posted on X. She says, "The Atlantic" now conceding these were not war plans. "The Atlantic" is not doing that, but I think what she means is, the headline of the new article says attack plans, OK, attack versus war. Anyway, Leavitt then goes on to say, "this entire story was another hoax written by a Trump hater who is well known for his sensationalist spin."

The word "hoax" stands out to me there, Sara. I wrote a book called "Hoax" five years ago looking at Trump's use of that word. That's a dirty little word that he uses to try to dismiss news he doesn't like.

The whole point of using the word "hoax," which we've also seen from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in recent days, is to shut down conversation, to stop critical thinking, to tell voters, especially Trump voters, to ignore the story altogether. It's a way of saying, don't pay attention to this it's made up. Of course, this story is not made up. The National Security Council right away admitted these messages are real and everyone can read them for themselves. If you go on to cnn.com, they're now on the home page.

[09:30:01]

People can read these text messages in detail.

But it is notable, Leavitt, really in a desperate way, I would say, trying to discredit.