Yemen attack plan shared by Hegseth was classified, revealed exact time & nature of operation, say officials

Even though the Donald Trump administration has downplayed the leak of Houthi attack plan, US officials have said that the plan was classified at the time of sharing.

Earlier this month, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic’s Editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a group on Signal where top officials, including Vice President JD Vance, State Secretary Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussed the upcoming attack on Houthis in Yemen. Hegseth went on to share attack plan on the group.

While the Trump administration has maintained that the plan was not classified, Fox News and CNN have reported officials as saying that the plan shared by Hegseth was classified at the time of sharing — and that such plans are always classified.

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The kind of information that Hegseth shared is always classified and is marked ‘Secret, NOFORN’, which means that it is secret and cannot be shared with anyone outside of the government, not even with a treaty ally like Five Eyes members, according to Fox Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin.

“In other words, the information is ‘classified’ and should not be shared through insecure channels,” said Griffin in a post on X.

Hegseth shared exact time & platforms

A US defence official familiar with the operation told CNN that the information shared by Hegseth on Signal was highly classified at the time of sharing.

Hegseth shared the exact timing and weapon platforms that would be used in the attack hours ahead of their launch. The chat also revealed that a Houthi leader, who was among the targets of the strikes, was supposed to be attacked at his girlfriend’s house.

As per messages published by Atlantic’s Goldberg, Hegseth told the group that F-18 warplanes would launch at 12:15 pm, F-18s’ time window to attack would start at 01:45 pm, and a second batch of F-18s would launch at 02:10 pm, and first strikes from F-18s and MQ-9 drones would be expected at 02:15 pm, and the second round of strikes from F-18s and Tomahawks missiles would start at 03:36 pm.

Had such information leaked to Houthis or to the internet, the entire operation as well as the safety of the US assets deployed for the operation could have been compromised.

A former senior defence official told Fox’s Griffin that such ‘attack orders’ or ‘attack sequence’ “puts the joint force directly and immediately at risk” and “allows the enemy to move the target and increase lethal actions against US forces”.

Even though a key line of defence of White House and others in the Trump administration is that the leak does not comprise ‘war plans’ (the phrase initially largely used by the media) but ‘attack plans’, two former senior US defence officials told Griffin that the kind of real-time operational intelligence that Hegseth shared is more sensitive than ‘war plans’ which “makes this lapse more egregious”.

A second former senior US defense official told Griffin, “If you are revealing who is going to be attacked (Houthis – the name of the text chain), it still gives the enemy warning. When you release the time of the attack – all of that is always ‘classified’."

The updates Hegseth was giving on Signal were the kind of real-time play-by-play that a commander would be giving to the president in a highly classified setting as the operation unfolded, according to CNN.

“These are operational plans that are highly classified in order to protect the service members,” a defence official told CNN.

A defence official told CNN that if a uniformer personnel had done what Hegseth did, they would have been court martialed for the act.