The Pentagon’s inspector general has reportedly determined that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth improperly used the messaging app Signal to convey sensitive information, thereby putting a United States military operation at risk.
Media reports, released on Wednesday, offered a preview of the inspector general’s report, slated to be released in full on Thursday.
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Anonymous sources familiar with the document told news agencies, including The Associated Press, that Hegseth’s use of a personal device to transmit sensitive information was deemed to run afoul of Pentagon policy.
The inspector general’s report focuses on a scandal that unfolded in late March, when the editor-in-chief at The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote an article describing an extraordinary series of events.
Goldberg described how, on March 11, he received an invitation to join a Signal chat, apparently sent by then-national security adviser Mike Waltz.
Unsure whether the message was a hoax, Goldberg nevertheless accepted the invitation. Two days later, he said, he found himself in the middle of a conversation that appeared to feature some of the most senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Among the participants were Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump defends Signal chat
In the Signal chat, Hegseth reportedly divulged details in advance about a March 15 attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. Those details included the precise timing when the F-18 planes would launch, when the drones would arrive, and when both parties would conduct their air strikes.
Goldberg’s reporting on the chat prompted outrage towards the Trump administration and Waltz and Hegseth in particular.
Critics decried the risks that the messages posed to US military operations overseas, with some worrying that, if the Signal chat had fallen into the wrong hands, it could have endangered service members’ lives.
This week’s inspector general report recommends greater training to ensure compliance with operational security standards.
But it declines to weigh whether the material Hegseth transmitted over Signal was, in fact, classified at the time.
Instead, the inspector general points out that, as secretary of defence, Hegseth has the right to determine the classification level of military intelligence and could have declassified the information if he decided to do so.
Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for Hegseth’s office, described that finding as a victory for the embattled defence secretary, who has long denied that “war plans” were shared over the messaging app.
“The Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along – no classified information was shared,” Parnell wrote in a statement.
“This matter is resolved, and the case is closed.”
Parnell also took the media to task for highlighting the risks the information posed to US military members.
“There is zero evidence that supports this conclusion. None,” Parnell wrote in response to a New York Times post that raised the potential dangers.
On the contrary, Parnell argued, the “flawless execution & success of Operation Rough Rider” – the name of the Yemen bombing campaign – was evidence that no troops were put in harm’s way.
President Trump himself has previously called the fallout from the scandal a “witch-hunt” and questioned whether Signal itself was not “defective”.
Administration officials have repeatedly called for the scandal, dubbed Signalgate, to be “case closed”. Hegseth, meanwhile, has received no public reprimand from the administration for his participation in the chat.
A ‘breach in protocol’
But critics like Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have called the conversation one of the “most stunning breaches of military intelligence” in recent years.
Some pointed out that foreign intelligence operatives could have intercepted the Signal messages. Others argued that Signal’s auto-delete function violated government transparency requirements that require documentation to be kept, albeit securely.
Democrats and some Republicans demanded an investigation into Hegseth’s actions. In a March 26 letter, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee at the time, the late Gerald Connolly, echoed that call.
“I request that you immediately open an investigation into this severe breach in protocol and national trust,” he wrote.
“The use of Signal to communicate this information jeopardized the lives of men and women of the military and embarrassingly advertised to our adversaries the careless attitude of our nation’s senior leaders.”
On April 3, Steven Stebbins, the acting inspector general for the Pentagon, responded to the outcry. He launched a probe and explained he was prompted to do so by the leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD [Department of Defense] personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Stebbins wrote in a short, one-page memo.
“Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”
Stebbins took up the post of acting inspector general in January, after Trump led a purge of government watchdogs.
On January 24, just days into his second term, Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general – the nonpartisan officials charged with the oversight of various executive agencies.
That included Stebbins’s predecessor Robert Storch, who served as inspector general for the Department of Defense from 2022 to 2025.
