(The Center Square) – U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, is leading an effort to demand Senate hearings on discussing classified military operations on unsecured devices.
A letter signed by Rosen and 15 other Democratic senators was sent to three Senate committees after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted attack-plan details in a Signal messaging chat ahead of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. The chat list included Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President J.D. Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and others, including, inadvertently, a reporter.
The White House Thursday said it was “making changes” to prevent the mistake from happening again and noted Waltz has taken responsibility for the error.
The senators’ letter, dated March 27, calls for hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The senators signing the letter sit on one or more of those committees.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is planning an investigation, said Chairman Roger Wick, R-Mississippi, Tuesday.
In their letter, Rosen and the other senators said they want hearings to investigate why President Donald Trump’s national security team “recklessly and illegally” discussed classified military operations on a group chat. They noted Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whose story about the messaging chat was published Monday, was inadvertently included in the chat.
The chat featured Hegseth listing times of planned attacks against the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group.
In their letter, senators noted “consumer-grade, internet-connected smartphones” can be hacked by foreign governments.
“This gross mishandling of highly classified information has weakened our national security and could have put at risk American lives, particularly the men and women involved in the military strikes in Yemen,” the senators said.
In addition to Rosen, the letter is signed by senators from Arizona, Illinois, New Mexico, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, Michigan, Oregon and Georgia.
