JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth is on the hot seat again. Yesterday, he faced scrutiny over his role in a U.S. military strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. And now a new report says Hegseth risked a U.S. bombing mission in Yemen. You might recall, back in March, it was discovered that he shared extremely sensitive attack plans on Signal, which is a publicly available messaging app. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre has been covering this and is here now. And before we get started, a note that NPR's CEO, Katherine Maher, is the chair of the board for the Signal Foundation. Hi, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Greg, just tell us about this new report. Where's it coming from?
MYRE: Yeah, it's coming from the Pentagon's inspector general, Steven Stebbins. The report is expected to be released as early as tomorrow. And NPR hasn't seen it, but we have spoken to people who have. A source told NPR that the inspector general concluded that Hegseth shared information clearly labeled secret. And this could've placed American forces in harm's way if an adversary had been able to see what he was sharing. And he was writing about a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen just as it was about to begin in March. The report said Hegseth violated Pentagon policies by using a personal phone for office business. All this is coming from the source, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
SUMMERS: And how should they be handling a secretive mission like the one we're talking about here?
MYRE: Yeah, Hegseth and other top national security officials have offices at work and at home where they can communicate securely on government systems known as SCIFs - Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities. Signal, meanwhile, is a publicly available app. Anyone can download it. It does encrypt messages and is considered quite good but not impenetrable. And government officials are still required to use government systems for sensitive information. Now, and remember, all this became public because the officials organizing the Signal chat inadvertently included a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, who was seeing all these messages in real time. And he refrained from reporting on them as they were appearing, but he eventually did so days later after the U.S. bombing campaign was well underway in Yemen.
SUMMERS: And this was all a while ago. So if you could, just remind us what Hegseth's messages said about the Yemen campaign.
MYRE: Yeah. He was sending messages in the hours and minutes, even, leading up to the U.S. start of the bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. He provided the exact times that the U.S. was launching F-18 warplanes, as well as drones and Tomahawk missiles. He also laid out the timeline when these weapons would begin to strike, information that's obviously very closely held when an operation is getting underway. And this operation against the Houthis lasted for weeks. It ultimately ended when the Houthi attacks diminished against those commercial ships in the Red Sea.
SUMMERS: Greg, did Hegseth cooperate with this report?
MYRE: Well, Hegseth would not sit for an interview with the investigators, though he did provide a written response. He provided only a few of his Signal messages. The inspector general had to rely mostly on screenshots that the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic. Hegseth denied any of the information he shared was classified. He said he was also able to declassify information, which is true. He can do that, but there was no indication that he did so before sharing the information. And Hegseth also told the investigators he believed it was a political investigations and that - you know, we should note, many inspector generals are at government agencies, and they pride themselves in nonpartisan investigations.
SUMMERS: Greg, last thing here. Are there likely to be any consequences for Hegseth here?
MYRE: Well, the White House issued a statement saying this review affirms what the administration has said at the beginning - no classified information was leaked. So as long as President Trump wants to keep Hegseth as the Pentagon chief, he can stay in that role.
SUMMERS: NPR's Greg Myre, thanks as always.
MYRE: Sure thing, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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