Meet Jeffrey Goldberg, Journalist Who Knew About US War Plans In Advance

Top Trump administration officials mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, to an encrypted Signal chat discussing military strikes on Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis.

The chat group, titled "Houthi PC small group," included US Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. According to Goldberg, Waltz directed his deputy, Alex Wong, to form a "tiger team" to coordinate strikes.

Mr Goldberg called the incident a "shocking reckless" security blunder.

Who is Jeffery Goldberg?

• Jeffrey Goldberg was born in Brooklyn, New York. Mr Goldberg, a Jew, grew up in Malverne, Long Island. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was editor-in-chief of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He now lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Pamela Reeves. The couple has three children.
• He left college to move to Israel. During the First Intifada, he served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) as a prison guard at Ktzi'ot Prison. There, he met Rafiq Hijazi, a PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) leader, whom he described as the only Palestinian in the prison who understood Zionism.
• In Israel, he worked as a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. After returning to the US, he started as a reporter at The Washington Post. He later became the New York bureau chief of The Forward and a contributing editor at New York Magazine. He also contributed to The New York Times Magazine. In 2000, he joined The New Yorker. 
• In 2001, he was a fellow of the Jerusalem Foundation, and in 2002, he served as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.
• In 2007, David G Bradley convinced him to write for The Atlantic after nearly two years of persuasion. In 2011, he became a columnist at Bloomberg View but left in 2014. In 2016, he became The Atlantic's editor-in-chief. In August 2023, he became the moderator of PBS's Washington Week, which was rebranded as Washington Week with The Atlantic.
• Mr Goldberg has reported from conflict zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and the Palestinian territories. He once lived in a Taliban madrasa for a month and has interviewed leaders of groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. He also covered the Second Persian Gulf War from inside Iraq for The New Yorker.
• Jeffrey Goldberg has received several prestigious journalism awards, including the Overseas Press Club Award for best human-rights reporting and the Abraham Cahan Prize in Journalism.

Jeffrey Goldberg said in a report on Monday that he was unexpectedly invited on March 13 to the encrypted chat group on Signal.

"The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing," he said.