How the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg made noise with a Signal scoop

The world might never have heard the whole story.

There would have been no details of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confiding to the “Houthi PC Small Group” his minute-by-minute plan: “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.”

No precise details about what was to happen at “1215et,” the moment when “F-18s LAUNCH.” Or that it would be “1536” when the “F-18 2nd Strike Starts.” Or that in the exact same moment the “first sea-based Tomahawks” would launch.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of Atlantic magazine, had already decided to keep such details secret, because he already had written a story that, on its face, would be shocking enough: Bizarrely, Goldberg found himself earlier this month inadvertently included in a chat group on Signal – an encrypted but potentially vulnerable commercially available messaging app – with Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and the national security and foreign policy heads of the Trump administration. Rather than communicate via secure government channels, the team discussed plans to kill suspected terrorists in Yemen in a March 15 strike.

With Goldberg reading along, not quite believing his eyes.

Goldberg’s first article about the security breach appeared on Monday and quickly commandeered the news cycle. It became one of the biggest stories about the Trump administration since the president’s inauguration.

In his article, Goldberg laid out how he’d been inadvertently invited to join the Signal group by national security adviser Michael Waltz, where plans for the attack were being discussed. At first, he explained in his article, he thought the invitation was a hoax.

But he became convinced that it was the real thing when the attack took place just as it had been discussed in the Signal group. He watched the discussion in real-time as the attack was happening on a Saturday afternoon, Eastern time, while he was sitting in his car at a grocery store. (Because no detail about Goldberg’s reporting now seems too small, people have asked which grocery store, he said. It was the Safeway on Connecticut Avenue NW, near Chevy Chase.)

Goldberg’s article was about how government officials had been recklessly talking about sensitive matters on Signal rather than via secure government channels. In writing his piece, Goldberg held back much of the text thread, and did not reveal some details and specific wording related to the types of military equipment involved and the times they would be deployed.

That might have been it. A scoop for the ages, and another win for the Atlantic, which in recent years has piled up journalism awards, including its first Pulitzers, lured top talent from competing publications and become an essential read for both Beltway insiders and the general public.

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But within hours of the story’s publication (headline: “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans”) the White House started diminishing and rebutting Goldberg. Hegseth complained Monday to reporters that “nobody was texting war plans.” The next day, Tulsi Gabbard – Trump’s director of national intelligence – testified in a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing that she didn’t recall specific weapons being mentioned.

By Wednesday morning, Goldberg had had enough. He decided it was in the public interest to prove them wrong. He published the entire text chain. (He did, however, hold out the name of a CIA officer at the agency’s request.)

“The impetus for publishing the full text chain was that the administration said we were lying about the texts, about the nature of the text and about the texts themselves,” Goldberg said Thursday in an interview with The Washington Post. “And so obviously that presented us with kind of a dilemma. I wasn’t looking to publish these, but if the president and his people are going to take the position that we are lying about this and that this somehow has to do with my character or the character of the Atlantic, I felt compelled to respond.”

James Fallows – a former White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, prolific author and former Atlantic colleague of Goldberg – calls the Signal reporting “a remarkable journalistic coup,” not just because of the information it revealed, but also because of the way Goldberg and the Atlantic handled the complexities of the situation.

“Jeff was very, very careful the first time about not revealing anything that might be sensitive,” Fallows told the Post. “And then when sort of faced with what appears to have been an avalanche of lies from administration officials, he brought out the actual text and was in position to say, ‘Well, actually,’ and, to prove it.”

It was the kind of reporting that students should study to learn a lesson in the value of patient journalism, David Boardman, a former executive editor of the Seattle Times who is now the dean of Temple University’s school of media and communication, said.

“It is a unique moment in American history,” Boardman said of Goldberg’s reporting. “This story is a great demonstration of why legitimate, fact-based, thoughtful, careful, informed journalism matters.”

Goldberg’s reporting has led to calls for investigations by Democrats.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (New York) called for Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who testified before the Senate committee on Tuesday that no classified information was discussed, to be prosecuted for perjury.

Amid the clamor, Republicans have sought to undercut Goldberg’s credibility. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X that the report was a “hoax” written by a “Trump-hater.”

“If this story proves anything, it proves that Democrats and their propagandists in the mainstream media know how to fabricate, orchestrate, and disseminate a misinformation campaign quite well,” Leavitt said at the White House press briefing Wednesday. “And there’s arguably no one in the media who loves manufacturing and pushing hoaxes more than Jeffrey Goldberg.”

Leavitt has sought to convince Americans that the Atlantic has been walking back or softening some of its story because its first piece used the term “war” plans; its second story used the term “attack” plans. Goldberg said he was doing no such thing. In fact, he said, “attack” plans are even more damning because they include specific information, such as the details disclosed in the Signal chat about the types of planes and the timeline.

“Let me be blunt,” Goldberg said. “They didn’t have much in the way of credible response options to the text. So they came up with this semantic game. All right. You know, I think most intelligent people can see through it.”

Goldberg knew he was onto something big with the Signal story, but even he couldn’t imagine the impact it had this week. Perhaps, he said, it resonates because so many of us know what it’s like to accidentally text the wrong person.

“I mean, obviously not everybody is talking to each other about bombing Yemen,” he said. “But yes, in one sense it’s relatable. In one sense, it’s extremely not relatable.”

Trump has defended the officials in the Signal group, dismissing the controversy as a “witch hunt” and calling Goldberg “a sleazebag.”

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That word – sleazebag. Goldberg has heard it before.

In September 2020, two months before Trump lost his bid for reelection, Goldberg published a much-read article about Trump describing U.S. soldiers who died in World War II as “losers” and “suckers.” Trump said it wasn’t true and called Goldberg a “sleazebag.”

New Yorker magazine editor David Remnick described Trump’s remarks in an interview with The Post this week as part of a “continuing playbook.”

“These are the tenets of Roy Cohn that were passed down to Donald Trump and that everybody around him practices, which are never apologize, never admit a mistake. And, you know, try to smear the messenger,” Remnick told The Post, referencing the notorious McCarthy-era lawyer who was a mentor to Trump when he was young. “This is a very familiar playbook. And not just in this country. And you see it in incipient or aspiring autocracies around the world.”

Goldberg said he is unfazed by the verbal attacks.

“It means nothing to me,” he said. “These attacks are designed to get people to stop probing and asking questions … that’s why it’s important to double down on accountability journalism in times like these.”

Goldberg, 59, began his career as a police reporter at The Post. Known for his tenacious reporting and deep sourcing, he would later serve as New York bureau chief for the Forward and as a Washington and Middle East correspondent under Remnick at the New Yorker.

He also worked as a guard at the largest prison camp in Israel in 1990, and wrote the book “Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror,” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He joined the Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and became its editor in chief in 2016. While trying to persuade Goldberg to leave the New Yorker, the Atlantic’s then-owner, David Bradley, sent ponies to Goldberg’s home to entertain his children. The magazine has been majority-owned by the Emerson Collective, an organization led by philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, since 2017.

The Atlantic is that rare publication that seems to have found a way to marry digital and print success. It surpassed 1 million subscriptions in 2024 and reached profitability; it now has more than 1.15 million subscribers, a 14.7 percent increase year-over-year, according to an Atlantic spokeswoman. It also announced in October that it would be adding two more print issues yearly, the first time in 20 years that it has published monthly (which used to be part of its name until 2004).

When the Atlantic announced its print expansion, Goldberg outlined a new direction for the staff: “One new initiative I would like to share with you today,” he wrote then, “is a dramatic new commitment to report stories at the intersection of national defense, technology, and global conflict.”

His Signal group mega-scoop landed exactly at that intersection. And he makes no apologies for that.

“Michael Waltz can label me a loser if he wants,” Goldberg said. “But at least I know how to text.”