Speaker 1: Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday,
Speaker 3: the twenty seventh of March. I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 2: I'm Sam Kozlowski.
Speaker 3: Earlier this week, the White House confirmed that a journalist
Speaker 3: was accidentally added to a group chat where a number
Speaker 3: of the most senior defense officials were discussing a planned
Speaker 3: strike against the Houthi rebel group in Yemen. The Atlantics
Speaker 3: editor in chief revealed in an exclusive article that he
Speaker 3: was accidentally added to the signal group earlier this month,
Speaker 3: which included Vice President JD Vance and Trump's National Security advisor.
Speaker 2: I am so pumped to get into this story.
Speaker 1: This is a medi one.
Speaker 2: This is one that the Netflix producers are queuing up
Speaker 2: to try and figure out.
Speaker 1: Certainly some commissioning of new pieces.
Speaker 2: It's going to be amazing. But I do want to
Speaker 2: start by fully understanding how all of this happened, because
Speaker 2: the idea of not only somebody being added to a
Speaker 2: grip chat where they're discussing what we're going to tell
Speaker 2: you about, but it being the editor of a huge
Speaker 2: news outlet in America is wild. So This story begins
Speaker 2: on Tuesday, March eleven. Yeah, why is that day important?
Speaker 3: So that's the day that Jeffrey Goldberg says that he
Speaker 3: was first sent a connection request on Signal from someone
Speaker 3: called Michael Woltz.
Speaker 2: So there's a few characters there.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, that might sound like gibberish
Speaker 3: to a lot of our listeners, So let's just unpack
Speaker 3: it one by one. So let's start with Jeffrey Goldberg.
Speaker 3: So Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of the Atlantic, which,
Speaker 3: as you just mentioned, is an American media company known
Speaker 3: mostly for magazines. He is the person who received a
Speaker 3: request on Signal, which is a messaging app that has
Speaker 3: a kind of higher level of security than, for example, texting.
Speaker 3: A lot of journalists are on because it's a secure
Speaker 3: way for them to communicate with sources and to get scoops.
Speaker 1: And on that day he got a fairly random request.
Speaker 2: So it's a Tuesday, a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 2: the editor of The Atlantic gets a notification saying that
Speaker 2: there was a request coming through that he'd be added
Speaker 2: to a group. Ye who actually sent that request?
Speaker 3: So that request came from a user called Michael Waltz. Now,
Speaker 3: just for context, Michael Waltz is President Donald Trump's national
Speaker 3: security advisor, and so naturally, when Goldberg, who is a journalist,
Speaker 3: received the request.
Speaker 2: He thought it was fake, as we would, to be
Speaker 2: honest with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he said, and I'll quote directly from
Speaker 3: the article. I would implore anyone listening to go read
Speaker 3: that article. It is incredibly well written and a very
Speaker 3: good read. But he says, and I quote here, Trump's
Speaker 3: contentious relationship with journalists and Trump's periodic fixation on me
Speaker 3: specifically was what built this doubt that the request was real.
Speaker 3: But regardless of the hesitations, Goldberg said he accepted the
Speaker 3: request and hoped that Waltz, who as I said, is
Speaker 3: Trump security advisor, wanted to talk to him about Ukraine
Speaker 3: or Iran or as he said, some other important matter.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. So his initial gut feel after he
Speaker 2: entertained whether it was false, was maybe this guy's a source.
Speaker 2: Maybe this guy could be leaking something to me. So
Speaker 2: he accepts the message, but then it definitely does not
Speaker 2: go in the way that he expected.
Speaker 3: No, So after that, Goldberg receives a notification that he's
Speaker 3: been added to a signal group Chat.
Speaker 1: That group chat is called the Huthy PC Small Group.
Speaker 2: And we have talked about the Huthis number of times
Speaker 2: on this pod, but for people coming in fresh, give
Speaker 2: me a sense of who the Houthis are.
Speaker 3: So, the Huthis are an Iran backed group based out
Speaker 3: of Yemen. They've been fighting in a civil war in
Speaker 3: Yemen since twenty fourteen. Hoothy forces control parts of the country,
Speaker 3: and Yemen specifically borders the Red Sea, which is a
Speaker 3: popular trade route for international commercial vessels, accounting for roughly
Speaker 3: twelve percent of global trade. Importantly, since just after October
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, the Houthis have been launching these kind
Speaker 3: of sporadic attacks on military and commercial ships in the
Speaker 3: Red Sea, as well as directly at Israel and ships
Speaker 3: linked to Israel. The UN has previously said that these
Speaker 3: attacks are designed to support Hummas.
Speaker 2: And so the US have had the Houthis in their
Speaker 2: line of sight for a while now, particularly since October
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. And so that group chat name the
Speaker 2: houthy PC Small Group. Yeah, how is that actually connected
Speaker 2: to the Hoothies.
Speaker 3: So apparently the houthy PC Small Group was, as we
Speaker 3: later found out a chat designed to pull together a
Speaker 3: group of the most senior decision makers in the US
Speaker 3: to coordinate an impending US attack on the Houthis in Yemen.
Speaker 2: Which we reported on. So this is like this really
Speaker 2: interesting thing reading this story knowing that we actually covered that.
Speaker 1: We covered the attack. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And so in this article, Goldberg says that the group
Speaker 3: was created by Waltz, the Advisor, and he says that
Speaker 3: the group chat members as they were were VP jd Vance,
Speaker 3: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Intelligence head Telsey Gabbard,
Speaker 3: and a whole string.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could list off.
Speaker 3: All of them, but I just want you to understand
Speaker 3: they were really really senior people here.
Speaker 2: And so basically this group was assembled on signal to
Speaker 2: plan how the US was going to attack the who
Speaker 2: he's in Yemen. Yeah, I mean it's the main point
Speaker 2: of communication almost. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't even just how they were going to attack,
Speaker 3: but whether or not they should attack. All of that
Speaker 3: kind of as we understand it now played out in
Speaker 3: this group message. So the article that Goldberg wrote included
Speaker 3: some of the bits of the chat that he believed
Speaker 3: were important to report on. He did leave out sensitive
Speaker 3: kind of national security things like CIA officials names and
Speaker 3: things like that. So we don't have a full picture,
Speaker 3: but what we do understand is that there was this
Speaker 3: kind of to and fro about whether or not to
Speaker 3: attack the Hoothies and some emojis and some emojis, So
Speaker 3: we understand that JD. Vance, as I said, the Vice
Speaker 3: President was questioning in that chat, whether attacking the Hoothies
Speaker 3: was a mistake. He was saying things like Europe would
Speaker 3: benefit more than the US, and he said, I just
Speaker 3: hate bailing Europe out again. But then, according to Goldberg,
Speaker 3: the text debate, so people were debating whether or not
Speaker 3: this should happen, but it ultimately ended when Trump's deputy
Speaker 3: chief of Staff, Stephen Miller wrote, as I understand it,
Speaker 3: the President was clear green light. And then the following day,
Speaker 3: US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent a message titled
Speaker 3: Team Update, reportedly detailing strike targets, weapons, and operational plans.
Speaker 2: And so Goldberg gets all of these messages. He's still
Speaker 2: in the group. Yeah, it's evident from the chat that
Speaker 2: nobody's actually noticed that he's in the group. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: things really, I did.
Speaker 1: Ask you if you would notice if there was some
Speaker 1: one in a group chat and you told.
Speaker 2: Me that you would, I think I would. I feel
Speaker 2: like I would know, especially if there was some serious
Speaker 2: sort of confidential information being passed around. You'd hope that.
Speaker 2: I mean, this wasn't a group of hundreds and hundreds, No,
Speaker 2: it was a select group. Nonetheless, they didn't know Goldberg
Speaker 2: was there by this point. But the contents of the
Speaker 2: message is really escalated, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Goldberg writes in his article that after he read
Speaker 3: that message about those operational plans, things that included like
Speaker 3: timings and what was going.
Speaker 1: To happen, he really started to believe that the group
Speaker 1: was real for the first time.
Speaker 2: Wow. So he was still thinking that this could have
Speaker 2: been fake.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think every journalist has a healthy kind
Speaker 3: of skepticism built into them, and that was very active here.
Speaker 3: He wrote that the last message implied that the attacks
Speaker 3: on the Huthies would start two hours after that last message,
Speaker 3: and so he sat, he said, in a car park,
Speaker 3: and he waited, and then at one fifty five pm
Speaker 3: local time, ten minutes after the attack was planned according
Speaker 3: to that last message, Goldberg said, he logged onto x
Speaker 3: and he saw that lo and behold, explosions were being
Speaker 3: heard across Yemen's capital city. He says at that point
Speaker 3: he checked the signal channel and said he read messages
Speaker 3: calling the attacks an amazing job, a good start. And
Speaker 3: as you mentioned earlier, there were a few emojis that
Speaker 3: went alongside those messages, and so.
Speaker 2: To bring things from the group chat into the real world,
Speaker 2: we know that these attacks on who he targets in
Speaker 2: Yemen have continued this week. Yeah, and that kind of
Speaker 2: brings us to today. And while we're talking about not
Speaker 2: only the release of this group chat and Goldberg's piece,
Speaker 2: but also the actual US activity in Yemen, Jeffrey Goldberg
Speaker 2: published this amazing article on Monday. What's the response been
Speaker 2: since then? Yes.
Speaker 3: So at the end of Goldberg's article, he basically explains
Speaker 3: the steps that he took then to verifying the story itself.
Speaker 3: So he says that he left the chat, and then
Speaker 3: shortly after leaving the chat, he says he can't believe
Speaker 3: no one even noticed that he then left the chat
Speaker 3: let alone.
Speaker 1: Was in it to begin with.
Speaker 2: It's funny for me because you get then he was
Speaker 2: saying that there's a line that emerges in the group
Speaker 2: chat saying, yeah, his phone number has left the chat. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But he says that after he left, he contacted some
Speaker 3: of the officials in the group directly and he asked
Speaker 3: them to confirm whether or.
Speaker 1: Not the group was real.
Speaker 3: He says that a spokesperson for the National Security Council
Speaker 3: responded to him directly and ultimately confirmed the veracity of
Speaker 3: the group. The spokesperson said, and I quote here, this
Speaker 3: appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are
Speaker 3: reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.
Speaker 3: Then on Monday, after this expose was published, we did
Speaker 3: have the White House come out and publicly confirm again
Speaker 3: that the group was authentic.
Speaker 2: And so that all happened on Monday. We're now sitting
Speaker 2: here on Thursday morning. How has the president but also
Speaker 2: his administration more broadly responded to what is one of
Speaker 2: the most significant pieces of journalism I think in yeah,
Speaker 2: the last couple of years at least.
Speaker 3: Yes, So, so the administration has downplayed the incident. They
Speaker 3: called the chat a sign of deep and thoughtful policy coordination.
Speaker 3: So rather than I guess, focusing on the fact that
Speaker 3: there was a journalist who was accidentally added to it,
Speaker 3: they're more focusing on the to and fro that were
Speaker 3: in these messages about how they were discussing approaching the
Speaker 3: issue of the who thy's.
Speaker 1: But then inside of that, it does seem like Mike Waltz,
Speaker 1: who again.
Speaker 3: Was the person who added Jeffrey Golberg to the group,
Speaker 3: that he has taken most of the blame here. He
Speaker 3: has taken full responsibility at the time of recording. He
Speaker 3: has not stepped down, however, and we understand that he
Speaker 3: still has the support of the president. In terms of
Speaker 3: the president himself, Trump has denied knowledge of the chat,
Speaker 3: and again there was nothing in that chat that implied
Speaker 3: that he would have known about it.
Speaker 2: But we do know it.
Speaker 3: As I said a bit earlier, that Jade Vance was
Speaker 3: in that conversation perhaps taking a different position to the
Speaker 3: President when it came to how to respond to the
Speaker 3: who thies. Since that time, Events spokesperson has insisted that
Speaker 3: he fully supports the President's policies. Of course, if we
Speaker 3: go to the other side of the aisle, the Democrats
Speaker 3: have been very vocal in their condemnation of what happened here.
Speaker 3: We had a member of the Armed Services Committee calling
Speaker 3: it one of the most egregious failures of operational security
Speaker 3: and common sense that I have ever seen.
Speaker 2: And it's not just those in Congress and the House
Speaker 2: that are condemning this. I mean, you've got Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 2: who was famously brought into a serious leak of her
Speaker 2: own emails that had confidential information. Arguably some would say
Speaker 2: that ended her prospects of becoming president because of the
Speaker 2: way it was used so effectively by President Trump in
Speaker 2: the debates. She tweeted, You've got to be kidding me,
Speaker 2: and so there's a lot of anger around. Interestingly, the
Speaker 2: House and Senate Intelligence committees were scheduled to meet anyway,
Speaker 2: and so those hearings over the last couple of days
Speaker 2: have turned into an interrogation of these key figures. What
Speaker 2: did you know and when? Zara A really amazing story,
Speaker 2: especially when you think of how many things have had
Speaker 2: to come together to make this story happen. Thank you
Speaker 2: for taking us through it. And we'll be tracking this
Speaker 2: one because I don't think this is the last we're
Speaker 2: hearing of it. And that's all we've got time for
Speaker 2: on today's edition of The Daily OS. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: the best thing you can do to help us as
Speaker 2: an independent media company is to shoot this to a friend.
Speaker 2: This is a really interesting story and we think you've
Speaker 2: got a friend who might like it. We'll be back
Speaker 2: again with your headlines in the afternoon. Until then, have
Speaker 2: a great date. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm
Speaker 2: a proud Arunda Bunjelung Kalkutin woman from Gadigol Country. The
Speaker 2: Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the
Speaker 2: lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all
Speaker 2: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our
Speaker 2: respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past
Speaker 2: and present.