The head of the highest investigative authority within the US Department of Defense has an investigation into the use of commercial chat services by Defense Minister Pete Hegseth initiated. Specifically, Hegseth was involved in a signal group that coordinated the start of US attacks on the Yemeni Huthis.
Goal of this Investigation Be it to determine to what extent the Minister of Defense and other employees of the ministry had met his guidelines and procedures for the use of a commercial chat application for business purposes, Steven Stebbins, the incumbent general inspector, wrote in a memo. Compliance with the classification and storage regulations is also checked.
Last month, a signal chat set up by the national security advisor Mike Waltz between him, US Defense Minister Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and other high-ranking government employees became public. In the chat group, the top politicians exchanged high-sensitive details about an attack on positions of the Huthi rebels in Yemen-they ignored safety regulations. However, Waltz had also invited the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat group, whose magazine
The Atlantic the breakdown made public. A government spokeswoman and participants had always downplayed the violation of the security requirements.
This article is updated.
