The editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, has nothing to say about his relationship with national security adviser Mike Waltz, who inadvertently added him to a group chat about the United States’ highly sensitive plans to bomb Yemen days ago.
“I’m just not going to comment on my relationship with Mike Waltz,” Goldberg told CBS News in an interview Wednesday.
Waltz claimed he has “never met” with Goldberg, wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a police lineup and trashed his reputation, calling him “the bottom scum of journalists.” But photos surfaced online earlier Wednesday of the two together at an event at the French Embassy in 2021.
“If your eyeballs see us together, then I guess your eyeballs are seeing us together,” Goldberg said of the photos.
Waltz has also suggested that Goldberg somehow added himself to the Signal chat that also included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — or that some other technical mishap that led to the breach. Goldberg called the claims “crazy.”
“This is what happened on March 11,” Goldberg continued. “I got a message request from Michael Waltz. I accepted the message request. That’s what happened.” Signal only allows users to add people to chat groups by phone number, QR code or username of the person they wish to add. The Atlantic story published Wednesday included a screenshot that showed Waltz as administrator and “JG” as a member of the group chat, named the “Houthi PC small group.”
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“If I’m such a nefarious character,” Goldberg said, “why am I in Mike Waltz’s phone? Why does he have my phone number? Why is he including me in this chat? And what do you expect a reporter to do when you learn interesting information about the way an administration is contemplating military action? What do they really think is going to happen?”
Goldberg did not publish the contents of the message thread until more than a week after the Yemen strikes. On Monday, he posted a piece detailing how he was added to the 18-person chat and characterized parts of the conversation about plans to bomb Houthi targets, rather than quoting them directly, citing his concerns that the details were too sensitive to publish. But after the group chat members and President Trump repeatedly denied that the information was classified, Goldberg, after checking with the administration to see if officials wanted anything redacted, published the text messages about the strikes on Wednesday.
The additional messages showed Hegseth provided detailed information to the group about the strikes targeting Houthi rebels earlier this month, including a timeline of when fighter jets would take off and what kind of weapons would be used.
Goldberg said it’s in the public’s interest to have the information and be able to judge the incident for themselves.
“The public has a right to know if there’s a massive security breach in the national security apparatus of the United States. There’s obvious proof here that national security officials we’re talking about real-time intelligence and military information on an open source messaging app that they’re not supposed to use for that sort of thing,” Goldberg said. “When reporters discover a massive national security breach, it’s our duty to tell the public.”
