A report by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general concluded that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of a messaging app to discuss airstrikes by U.S. forces in Yemen earlier this year endangered U.S. forces, according to two people familiar with the case.
The report, which is scheduled to be released publicly on Thursday, examined Hegseth’s participation in a group on the messaging app Signal with several other senior officials in the Trump administration. The conversation became public because a journalist was added to the group by mistake.
The Pentagon’s internal investigation found that Hegseth’s use of the app may have compromised Defense Department information that could have compromised personnel and missions if disclosed to a foreign adversary.
The report also stated that Hegseth declined to be interviewed by the inspector general about the matter and instead provided a brief written statement.
A classified copy of the report was presented to a small number of members of Congress in a secure room on Wednesday (3).
In March, then-national security adviser Michael Waltz mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a Signal conversation that included Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and White House counsel Stephen Miller. The Defense Minister conveyed a detailed schedule of airstrikes against the Houthis and infrastructure in Yemen just two hours before the first bombs began falling on March 15.
That air campaign, which the Pentagon called Operation Rough Rider, lasted about six weeks, with the United States attacking more than 800 targets in Yemen with munitions worth about $1.5 billion.
The Office of the Inspector General announced it would review Hegseth’s use of Signal on April 3. Later that month, it was revealed that he shared sensitive information in a second Signal chat group that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
The Office of Inspector General is headed by Stephen A. Stebbins, who took office on an interim basis after President Donald Trump fired his predecessor, Robert P. Storch, as part of a purge of inspectors general in the executive branch just four days after Trump took office in January.
The investigation did not clarify whether the use of the app was more extensive or whether additional sensitive information was shared with unauthorized individuals.
The report also did not address whether any of the information was confidential at the time it was shared. However, it noted that Hegseth had “inherent classification authority” as part of his role as Defense Secretary and did not assess whether he had properly sought to declassify the information before discussing it on the unauthorized messaging platform.
Investigators also determined that not all of the messages were properly preserved in accordance with the Federal Records Act, and instead relied heavily on publicly available details about the exchanges.
The release of the report will mark the end of a difficult week for Hegseth, who has faced criticism in connection with a series of air strikes on Sept. 2 by Joint Special Operations Command against a ship in the Caribbean Sea that the Pentagon said was smuggling drugs.