Washington:
The Pentagon inspector general’s office will investigate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss airstrikes on Yemen, according to a memo released on Thursday.
President Donald Trump’s administration is embroiled in a scandal following the accidental leak of a group chat involving senior security officials discussing the strikes. The airstrikes targeted Yemen’s Houthi rebels in an effort to curb their attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
The investigation will assess “the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other Department of Defense (DoD) personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” stated the memo from acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins.
“Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” the memo added. It noted that the investigation was initiated in response to a request from the top two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one Republican and one Democrat.
Last week, The Atlantic magazine revealed that its editor—a prominent U.S. journalist—was inadvertently included in the Signal chat. In the chat, officials, including Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Hegseth, discussed details about the timing of airstrikes and related intelligence.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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