The American Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, shared the details of a March attack on the Houthis aligned by Iran of Yemen in a group of messages which included his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer, said a familiar source on Sunday.
The revelations of a second signal cat raise more questions about HegSeth use of an unsecified messaging system to share the very sensitive security details and appear at a particularly delicate moment for him, senior officials, senior Pentagon officials last week as part of an internal leak investigation.
In the second cat, Hegseth shared the details of the attack similar to those revealed last month by Atlantic magazine after its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate cat on the signal application by mistake, in an embarrassing incident involving all the senior national security officials of the American president Donald Trump.
The person familiar with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the second cat included a dozen people and was created during their confirmation process to discuss administrative issues rather than detailed military planning.
The cat included details on the air strike calendar, the person said.
Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former producer of Fox News, attended sensitive meetings with foreign military counterparts, according to images published publicly by the Pentagon.
The Trump National Security Team continues to deny that any classified information has been published after the Atlantic has published the entire transcription of a group of signal messaging groups that revealed that US officials discussing air strikes against Yemen.
During a meeting, Hegseth had with his British counterpart at the Pentagon in March, his wife could be seen sitting behind him.
Hegseth’s brother is a Pentagon internal security liaison department.
The Trump administration aggressively continued the leaks, an effort that was enthusiastically embraced by Hegseth at Pentagon.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said, without evidence, that the media took “enthusiastically, the grievances of former dissatisfied employees as the only sources of their article”.
“Trump’s hateful media continues to be obsessed with destroying it anyone who has committed to the agenda of President Trump. … We have already produced both for the American Warfighter, and we will never go back,” said Parnell in a statement on X.
The White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said that “recently dismissed” leaks “” continue to distort the truth to appease their broken Egos and undermine the president’s agenda.
Tumultuous moment for Hegseth
Democratic legislators said Hegseth could no longer stay in his work.
“We continue to learn how Pete Hegseth has endangered,” said the head of the Senate minority Chuck Schumer
Senator Tammy Duckworth, a veteran of the war in Iraq who underwent serious combat injuries in 2004, said that Hegseth “was to resign”.
An American Pentagon official asked how Hegseth could keep his job after the latest news.
The latest revelation comes from days after Dan Caldwell, one of HegSeth’s main advisers, was escorted by the Pentagon after being identified during a leak investigation at the Ministry of Defense.
Although Caldwell is not as well known as the other senior Pentagon officials, he played an essential role for Hegseth and was appointed the point of the Pentagon point in the first signal cat.
“We are incredibly disappointed with the way our service at the Ministry of Defense has ended,” Caldwell posted on X on Saturday. “Named Pentagon officials slandered our character with baseless attacks when leaving the door.”
After the departure of Caldwell, less sensitive officials Darin Selnick, who recently became the deputy chief of staff of Hegseth, and Colin Carroll, who was chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary Steve Feinberg, was put on administrative leave and was dismissed on Friday.
