Washington:
The Pentagon inspector general’s office has announced an investigation into Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss air strikes on Yemen. The memo released on Thursday stated that President Donald Trump’s administration is embroiled in a scandal following the accidental leak of a group chat by senior security officials regarding the strikes targeting Yemen’s Huthi rebels to deter their attacks on commercial shipping and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
The investigation will assess “the extent to which the Secretary of Defence and other DoD personnel adhered to DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” according to the memo issued by the acting inspector general, Steven Stebbins.
“Furthermore, we will examine compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” the memo added. The investigation was initiated in response to a request from the top two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, representing both a Republican and a Democrat.
Last week, The Atlantic magazine revealed that its editor, a prominent US journalist, was unwittingly included in the Signal chat where officials, including Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Hegseth, discussed the details of air strike timings and intelligence.
(This article has been republished from a syndicated feed without any alterations, except for the headline.)
