The top Republican and Democrat on the US Senate Armed Services Committee said they had asked the Pentagon to investigate the Trump administration’s use of the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive attack plans.
In a letter to Steven Stebbins, the acting Inspector General at the Defense Department, Republican Senator Roger Wicker, the panel’s chairman, and Senator Jack Reed, its ranking Democrat, asked for an inquiry and assessment of the facts surrounding the Signal chat and department policies “and adherence to policies” about sharing sensitive information.
Wicker had said on Wednesday that he and Reed planned a letter after critics said US troops could have died if the information in the chat had fallen into the wrong hands.
Wicker and Reed also asked for an assessment of Defense Department classification and declassification policies, and how the policies of the White House, Pentagon and intelligence and other agencies differ, if at all, as well as “An assessment of whether any individuals transferred classified information, including operational details, from classified systems to unclassified systems, and if so, how.”
In the March 15 chat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted about plans to kill a Houthi leader in Yemen two hours before a military operation meant to be shrouded in secrecy, according to screenshots released by The Atlantic on Wednesday.
