USA
Who is Jeff Goldberg? The Jewish journalist at the heart of a group chat scandal that rocked Washington
Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a top-secret group chat of US leaders and security officials
March 25, 2025 15:03
Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a top-secret group chat of US leaders and security officials
March 25, 2025 15:03It was the group chat that has sent shockwaves through Washington and the global security establishment – and at its centre was a Jewish journalist.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was mistakenly added to a top-secret chat on the Signal messaging app in which senior US officials were discussing planned airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The chat included figures purporting to be the US vice president, the secretaries of defence and the treasury, and the director of national intelligence, who were exchanging details about military operations in real-time on the commercially available app.
Goldberg found himself in possession of classified information about an impending attack on the Iran-backed terror group two hours before it took place.
It was a spectacular security lapse, with sensitive war plans being discussed in an unsecure setting, far from secret government systems normally used for classified intelligence – and with the inadvertent inclusion of a journalist. Had the details fallen into the wrong hands, American military personnel could have been put at risk.
Goldberg later told CNN: “They were running a war plan on a messaging app and didn’t even know who was invited into the conversations. It is an obvious, ridiculous security breach.”
He added: “He was texting war plans. He was texting attack plans – where targets were going to be hit, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targeted site, when the next sequence of attacks was happening.”
Goldberg refrained from publishing details about the attack sequencing and weapons, saying: “I worry that sharing that kind of information in public could endanger American military personnel.”
For the editor at the centre of this extraordinary breach, the experience has been seemingly surreal. A seasoned Jewish journalist who has led The Atlantic since 2016 and has a history of breaking big stories, Goldberg now finds himself at the heart of one.
Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked in the campus Hillel kitchen before moving to Israel. He served in the Israel Defence Forces during the First Intifada as a prison guard at Ktzi'ot Prison – an experience he later documented in his 2006 book Prisoners: A Muslim & a Jew Across the Middle East Divide.
In Israel, he worked as a columnist for The Jerusalem Post before returning to the US to work as a reporter at The Washington Post. He went on to become the New York bureau chief of The Forward, a contributing editor at New York Magazine, and a writer for The New York Times Magazine. In 2000, he joined The New Yorker.
Among his influential works was a 2010 analysis of the Israel-Iran conflict, in which he concluded that Israel would act militarily if Iran’s nuclear programme was not curtailed. In 2015, he wrote a widely discussed essay for The Atlantic on the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe, posing the question: "Is it time for the Jews to leave Europe?"
His reporting has won multiple accolades, including the Overseas Press Club Award for best human rights reporting and the Abraham Cahan Prize in Journalism.
While serving as editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, the periodical has been named Magazine of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors and has won several Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing. Last year, the publication won the award for general excellence by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
In 2024, it was reported that the magazine had crossed one million subscribers.
Speaking after Goldberg’s explosive story hit the press, US President Donald Trump said: “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic, to me it’s a magazine that is going out of business. I think it's not much of a magazine.”
Following revelations about the security breach, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council added: “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our service members or our national security.”