The Pentagon inspector general’s office will investigate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of commercial messaging app Signal to discuss air strikes on Yemen, a memo released Thursday said. The review will also look at other defense officials’ use of the publicly available encrypted app, which is not able to handle classified material and is not part of the Defense Department’s secure communications network.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” the acting inspector general, Steven Stebbins, said in a notification letter to Hegseth.
A major scandal broke out after journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic claimed that he was mistakenly added to a Signal group by national security adviser Mike Waltz. The group included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others, brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis.
The review was launched at the request of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the committee’s top Democrat.
The investigation comes as the Donald Trump administration played down the apparent leak and said no war plan was being discussed in the group. Mike Waltz came under fire as the journalist was added to the group from his phone. Waltz said he did not know the journalist and did not even have his number saved on his phone — a claim that Goldberg rubbished.
Donald Trump said he would not fire Waltz, though reports claimed he deliberated about it as vice president JD Vance too pitched for Waltz’s ouster.