The U.S. Defense Department's acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins said on Thursday he is beginning an "evaluation" of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's use of the Signal messaging app to discuss military operations, according to a memorandum.

The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the defense secretary and other Defense Department personnel complied with the department's policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business, the memorandum said.

"Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements," it continued.

The evaluation is in response to a March 26 letter from the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requesting an inquiry into recent public reports on the defense secretary's use of an "unclassified commercially available messaging application" to discuss information related to military actions in Yemen earlier in March, according to the memorandum.

In an article titled "The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans" published on March 24, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg detailed how senior U.S. national security officials inadvertently shared information with him about a military strike on Houthi forces in Yemen.

Goldberg said that on March 11, he received a connection request on the Signal messaging app from a user named Michael Waltz, which is the name of the U.S. national security advisor. Two days later, Goldberg received a notification that he would be added to a group chat called "Houthi PC Small Group."

Goldberg said that on March 15, the account labeled "Pete Hegseth," matching the name of the defense secretary, sent a message in the chat with operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, scheduled to take place in two hours. The message included information about "targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing."

Goldberg did not release the specific details of Hegseth's message at that time, saying that "information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel."

In another article on March 26, Goldberg and his colleague Shane Harris fully disclosed the details after U.S. President Donald Trump and several high-ranking officials claimed the group chat did not contain classified information. 

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