Bigger scandal in Signal leak: US war crimes in Yemen

They resembled a bunch of fatuous, juvenile randos celebrating an action sequence and the devastation caused in some Pentagon-funded Hollywood war thriller on the Signal messaging app on March 15.

Some members used abbreviated names like MAR, TG and SM—typical of teenage friends randomly discussing bullshit in a chat group. The others used full names like JD Vance, Pete Hegseth or Michael Waltz.

Were they impersonating Donald Trump’s national security team, top spies and senior officials?

The chat group, “Houthi PC small group” was for real—“PC” stands for “Principals Committee”, a term for senior US national security officials.

So were the members. MAR was secretary of state Marco Antonio Rubio, TG was DNI Tulsi Gabbard and SM was US Homeland Security advisor and White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller. And so were vice-president Vance, defence secretary Hegseth and national security advisor Waltz.

The chat group had, at least, 18 users, including CIA director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, National Security Council member Brian McCormack, Mideast envoy Russia-Ukraine negotiator Steve Witkoff and treasury secretary Scott Bessent.

The members weren’t bullshitting. They discussed the operational details of an impending massive airstrike by the Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group on Houthi terrorists in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons deployed and attack sequencing, and celebrated the resulting destruction.

Here are all the screenshots of the signal chat released by the Atlantic

I will post in the thread below, 4 pictures per post. There are 15 images released.

Now, it's weird because the previously released screenshots were clipped differently. Not sure why that is.

Thanks… pic.twitter.com/CVqH37SvbV

— Kaecey🇺🇸 (@AmericanVsGov) March 26, 2025

F/A-18E/F multirole fighter jets were taking off the Harry S Truman. Tomahawk cruise missiles were being launched from the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg. MQ-9 Reaper drones were taking off from the Chabelley military strip, Djibouti. The targets were Houthi radars, air defence and missile and drone systems.

There was another member with the abbreviated name JG, who strangely never interacted with the rest.

That was a shocker.

JG was Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, added to the group by Waltz—accidentally or knowingly—on March 11.

It was a massive security breach. Goldberg was privy to the biggest airstrike in West Asia in Trump 2.0 so far.

US national security officials are supposed to transfer and communicate classified information on secure systems, like the Secret Internet Protocol Router and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, not an insecure chat app like Signal.

Unaware of the leak, the Pentagon warned its employees on March 18 that Russian hacking groups could exploit Signal’s vulnerability. In February, the National Security Agency had warned that Russian hacking groups could access Signal’s encrypted conversations via phishing.

Media ignored Signalgate’s real picture

Two Atlantic articles made the leak and the chat public—straight from the horse’s mouth.

Following Goldberg’s two articles, the media condemned the leak and the national security team’s cavalier attitude, which endangered the lives of the Super Hornet pilots and the whole mission.

On March 25, the American conservative, pro-Trump daily tabloid New York Post (NYP) carried a picture of a laughing Vance, Hegseth and Waltz seated on a sofa at the White House on the front page with the headline “Operation Overshare”. The “O” in “Overshare” was replaced with an emoji representing embarrassment referring to the nauseating use of fist bump and fire emojis in the chat.

🇺🇸 Operation Overshare

▫Trump national security team messaged plans for Yemen strikes to Atlantic editor in chief in stunning breach
▫@SChamberlainNYP @thatkingthing @stevennelson10 @DianaGlebova
▫https://t.co/bHUCJSbuYC#frontpagestoday #USA @nypost 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/pj2gXJF88F

— 𝙵𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚝 𝙿𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜 𝚃𝚘𝚍𝚊𝚢 📰 (@ukpapers) March 25, 2025

On March 26, the NYP carried a picture of Waltz shrugging and raising his hands on the front page with the headline “A Real Houthi Dunnit” and his quote, “I don’t know him [Goldberg]… it wasn’t classified”.

Both the NYP reports and other media outlets, including TV news channels, highlighted the leak, the danger it posed and the lies of the members at Congressional hearings.

However, there was something more reprehensible about the chat group members than their idiocy, recklessness, and sickening display of bravado.

At least, 53 civilians, including children, were killed as the Super Hornets bombed the Houthis 47 times on the nights of March 15 and 16 with 32 killed in the first wave of airstrikes. The media never highlighted this moral repugnancy.

One particular screenshot of the chat exposed Team Trump’s callousness and celebration of the bombing of a residential building in Sanaa. Abdul Khaliq Badruddin Al-Houthi, the de facto commander of the Houthi Strategic Missile Force, was meeting his girlfriend inside the building, according to US intelligence.

😅Some more correspondence from the Trump team's chat room discussing strikes against the Houthis

Аnd this was all read by the head of The Atlantic...

Waltz: VP. building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.

JD Vance: What?

Waltz: Typing… pic.twitter.com/3aqVJjfbGo

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 26, 2025

An ecstatic Waltz informed the group members, especially Vance, and praised Hegseth, CENTCOM General Commander Michael “Erik” Kurilla and the intelligence community (IC) for their “amazing job” in destroying the building. “VP. Building collapsed. Had multiple positive IDs. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.”

When a clueless Vance asked, “What?”, Waltz replied: “Typing too fast. The first target—their top missile guy—we had a positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”

Regardless of the obvious civilian casualties, the members engaged in a series of cringe-worthy praises for obliterating the building with some of them using emojis.

pic.twitter.com/CpI8eA6SRw

— Kaecey🇺🇸 (@AmericanVsGov) March 26, 2025

From “excellent”, “good job Pete” and “kudos” to fist bumps, flexed biceps and fire emojis, the members revelled in the destruction caused. Gabbard was the worst. “Great work and effects!” she messaged—as if it was some fireworks display.

The Signal leak was typical of American indifference towards civilian casualties—whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or airstrikes in Yemen or Somalia.

Al-Houthi’s targeting was a prime example of US barbarism. It’s unclear whether a Super Hornet, Tomahawk or an MQ-9 flattened the building. The US always had the option of using the RQ-9’s AGM-114 Hellfire R9X missile, which has a non-explosive (kinetic) warhead with six pop-out blades that cut the target into pieces.

The R9X, nicknamed the “ninja bomb” and “the flying Ginsu”, causes almost no collateral damage. It was used to eliminate Ahmad Hasan Abu Khayr al-Masri, al Qaeda’s No. 2, in Syria’s Idlib Province in February 2017 and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organisation’s leader, in Kabul in July 2022.

However, the US decided to flatten the whole building to target Al-Houthi. The worst is that the US military hasn’t confirmed whether he was killed in the strike.

US war crimes in Yemen

The Houthis started hitting commercial vessels and warships using missiles and drones in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in October 2023 to oppose Israel’s Gaza offensive.

According to the Pentagon, the Iran-backed Houthis have attacked commercial vessels 145 times and American warships 174 times since 2023. The group claims to have shot down more than 20 Reaper drones.

Red Sea cargo shipments had tanked by 70 per cent in volume and ships were forced to take the longer and expensive route around the southern tip of Africa.

The Houthi attacks on commercial vessels and warships expose Iran’s role. Though part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance along with Hezbollah and Hamas, Houthis weren’t attacked by Israel when a Saudi Arabia-led coalition comprising Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan and the UAE launched Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthis in March 2015.

A UN-brokered truce in April 2022 had been holding on until Iran asked the Houthis to attack commercial vessels and warships in October 2023.

In January 2024, the US and the UK, supported by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand, launched Operation Poseidon Archer, hitting the Houthis with cruise missiles and airstrikes.

The Houthis stopped the attacks after the January Gaza ceasefire only to resume them on March 11 after Israel blocked aid trucks from going to the war-torn enclave.

On the first day of the strike, Trump, in his golf outfit (a Trump-branded t-shirt and black trousers) and a MAGA self-autographed hat, watched the attacks from an undisclosed location in Florida.

JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇾🇪 President Trump watches US military strikes on Yemen's Houthis while wearing his golf outfit and a MAGA hat autographed by himself. pic.twitter.com/reabQi26Ow

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) March 16, 2025

Trump’s casual attitude and his national security team’s celebration of the strikes highlight America’s utter disregard for human rights and life. While it lectures other nations on human rights, the US has committed war crimes in several nations by waging foreign wars in the name of combating terrorism and restoration of democracy.

Since March 15, the US has bombed north Yemen around 200 times. More than 60 people, including women and children, have been killed and around 140 wounded.

The air campaign continued with Trump threatening the Houthis on April 1, “Stop shooting at US ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran,” he posted on Truth Social.

Trump’s campaign is bigger, wider and more lethal than Biden’s. According to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), an independent non-profit organisation, the strikes in urban areas such as the al-Jiraf neighbourhood, north of Sanaa, show “heightened lethality”. The death toll (53) in the March 15 and 16 airstrikes  surpassed the 34 fatalities “recorded in all previous US and UK attacks combined”.

There are signs that Trump will escalate the Houthi mission, which could also include striking Iran if it doesn’t sign  a new nuclear deal.

In a highly unusual move, at least, six B-2 Spirit nuclear-capable stealth bombers—one-third of the fleet—have been deployed to the joint British-American base of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.

Satellite images analyzed Wednesday by @AP show the deployment of at least six B-2 bombers at Diego Garcia. Nearly a third of all the B-2s America has in its arsenal now at base, report says. pic.twitter.com/BBdCAqOouZ

— Apex (@Apex_WW) April 2, 2025

There could be more B-2s inside the shelters. Satellite images also show tankers and cargo aircraft.

The B-2s have a payload of 23,000 kg, which includes Mk-82 and Mk-84 general purpose bombs, GBU-38 and GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack munition, GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, GBU-72/B bunker-buster bomb, AGM-15 joint standoff weapon, AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and B61 and B83 nuclear bombs.

The GBU-57 and GBU-72/B can penetrate deep, fortified underground targets like Iran’s underground nuclear and weapons storage facilities and Houthi tunnels converted into military sites and warehouses and factories for assembling and manufacturing ballistic missiles and drones, explosives and sea mines. Some of the factories are 50 feet underground.

In January, the CENTCOM conducted multiple precision strikes against two Houthi underground advanced conventional weapon storage facilities. Last October, B-2s conducted precision strikes against five hardened underground weapon facilities.

The US was involved indirectly in the Saudi coalition strikes against the Houthis. Besides, the UK, Canada, Germany and France were involved. America provided intelligence and aerial refuelling and trained Saudi F-15 pilots.

The US sold weapons worth billions to Riyadh and the UAE that were used to target the Houthis and killed thousands of Yemenis. For example, an Mk-82 hit a school bus in August 2018, killing 51 people, including 40 children. According to SIPRI, 73 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s arms imports in 2015-19 were from the US.

In 2016, Barack Obama proposed an arms deal worth $115 billion, including warships and helicopters, to Riyadh but decided to review it after Saudi jets killed more than 140 civilians in Sanna.

In his first term, Trump okayed an immediate arms package worth $110 billion to Saudi Arabia and another one worth $350 billion over 10 years. In April 2019, he vetoed a bipartisan resolution calling for ending American military involvement in Yemen. In July of the same year, he vetoed three bills intended to block the sale of weapons, including precision-guided missiles, worth billions to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

In February 2021, Biden ended American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen” and banned the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia for three years. However, he approved the sale of Patriot missiles worth $3 billion and $2.2 billion to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in August 2022. In August 2024, the administration partially lifted the three-year ban. In October, the US approved the sale of Hellfire and Sidewinder missiles, artillery, tank and machine gun ammunition to Saudi Arabia in a deal valued at $1 billion-plus.

More than 160,000 people have been killed in Yemen, according to ACLED, and 19,200 civilians, including more than 2,300 children, have been killed or maimed due to coalition airstrikes alone.

The killing or maiming of civilians in wars is prohibited and firmly enshrined in international humanitarian law (IHL), international human rights law and international jurisprudence. “The prohibition of violence against civilians, including children, in particular murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture is a principle of customary international law with universal applicability in all situations of armed conflict,” according to the UN.

Direct attacks against civilians while aware of their civilian status are war crimes. “It is thus an imperative duty for an attacker to identify and distinguish non-combatants from combatants in every situation.”

According to Article 51(2) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions: “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited.”

According to UNHCR, an estimated 4.5 million people (14 per cent of the population, including 80 per cent women and children) have been displaced, 18.2 million are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, tens of thousands are living in famine-like conditions, 5 million more are acutely food insecure and 1.4 million pregnant or breastfeeding women suffer from malnutrition. More than 80 per cent of Yemen’s population is below the poverty line.

The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.