Top intel officials shift responsibility to Hegseth for sharing Yemen strike plans in group chat

(CNN) — Several of President Donald Trump’s top national security officials, at times with assistance from a top Senate Republican, shifted responsibility to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for sending potentially classified information that appeared in a group chat about US military strikes in Yemen that a journalist was included in.

Under sharp questioning from outraged Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard repeatedly denied that the chat contained classified information.

“There were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time,” Gabbard testified under oath. Ratcliffe was similarly adamant in his denials at various points during Tuesday’s hearing.

But when pressed on whether the sensitive operational details for the forthcoming strikes against Iran-backed militants that Hegseth reportedly sent to the thread were classified, both top intelligence officials deferred to the defense secretary.

“With respect to the assertions and the allegations that there was strike packages or targeting information or things that relate to DOD, as I pointed out, the Secretary of Defense is the original classification authority for determining whether something is classified or not, and as I’ve understood from media reports, the Secretary of Defense has said the information was not classified,” Ratcliffe told lawmakers.

Asked if such information should be classified, Gabbard told the committee, “I defer to the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council on that question.”

It was a subtle arms-lengthening of one of Trump’s most controversial — and least experienced — cabinet members. Most of the group thread reported on Monday by The Atlantic included general foreign policy discussion about the wisdom of the March strikes — certainly sensitive deliberations amongst top officials that the US government would normally want to keep private, but likely not classified.

But Hegseth’s texts, which reportedly included “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” have drawn the most attention.

Multiple current and former defense officials have said that any discussion of the timing, targets or weapons systems to be used in an attack is always classified — because of the potential risk to US service members lives if those plans are revealed prematurely.

Signal, the encrypted messaging platform that the officials were using, is a commercial app that is not approved for classified information.

At one point during Tuesday’s hearing, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, interjected from the dais to suggest that Gabbard and Ratcliffe were drawing a distinction in between military intelligence information that is classified under the defense secretary’s authority and information that is collected and controlled by the civilian intelligence community, like the CIA.

“They testified — correct me if I’m wrong — there’s no intelligence community classified information,” Cotton said.

“That’s correct,” Ratcliffe and Gabbard both said. “I can again confirm that with respect to the communications that were related as to me, there was no classified information,” Ratcliffe added.

From the dais, at least one Democrat objected, pointing out that Ratcliffe and Gabbard had both testified that there was no classified information at all contained in the text exchange.

Hegseth denied on Monday evening that war plans were discussed over text, despite the Trump administration’s earlier acknowledgement that the messages appeared authentic.

“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters when asked why those details were inadvertently shared with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, after landing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. The defense secretary also took jabs at the journalist, who he described as “deceitful and highly discredited.”

Trump told reporters on Tuesday that there “was no classified information, as I understand it” shared on the Signal chain but declined to say who told him the information was not classified.

Gabbard initially refused, on Tuesday, to answer directly if she was a participant on the thread, citing an ongoing National Security Council review, but later answered direct questions based on her recollections of the chat.

Ratcliffe and Gabbard both said they did not recall any discussion of operational planning, although Gabbard later acknowledged “a discussion around targets in general.” In messages the NSC later confirmed as authentic, The Atlantic reported that Hegseth sent “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”

In the end, the dispute may hinge on the interpretation of Hegseth’s classification authority as the defense secretary. Hegseth has the authority to declassify such information, but Ratcliffe said Tuesday he was not aware if he had.

Neither Gabbard nor Ratcliffe directly criticized Hegseth or made any explicit statement to suggest they blamed him for the roiling controversy that has now engulfed the president’s cabinet.

Ratcliffe, in particular, sought to walk a fine line by emphasizing that Signal is approved for use on US government computers — including by the CIA — without taking responsibility for Hegseth’s messages.

But at one point, he acknowledged that hypothetically, “pre-decisional strike deliberation should be conducted through classified channels.”

Gabbard, meanwhile, routinely claimed not to recall the details of what was discussed in the tread.

However, some Republicans in Congress are pointing the finger squarely at Hegseth.

“I think the most accountable, or the most guilty person is the secretary of defense because he put in all the highly classified information,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and former Air Force Brigadier General, told CNN.

CNN’s Annie Grayer, Michael Williams and Donald Judd contributed to this report.

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