If once is a mistake, is twice a choice?
Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence, is once again under scrutiny after reports that he shared details of air strikes in Yemen in a second group chat on the Signal messaging app.
The first chat, reported about a month ago, caused a major scandal in Donald Trump’s administration. It also horrified US intelligence officials and their NATO counterparts.
The criticism was that Signal – a commercially-available app that sends encrypted messages – was not secure enough to discuss the plans for US military action, in this case a wave of airstrikes on Houthi rebels.
The revelation of a second chat, reported first by The New York Times then by other US outlets, threatens to reignite the row.
One factor that makes this breach look worse is the list of people who received the war plans.
The first chat, which was created by national security Mike Waltz, included senior Trump officials, like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had a strong interest in keeping up to speed with the plans.
The fatal exception was Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of US magazine The Atlantic, who was seemingly added to the chat by mistake and later published many of the messages.
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Read MoreThe second chat, which was created by Hegseth, included people with no obvious need to know about the strike.
According to reports, the group included Hegseth’s wife, a Fox News employee. There was also his brother and his personal lawyer, who both work at the Pentagon but in roles too junior for sensitive, top-level updates.
All in all, around a dozen people were in the chat, according to the reports – including senior aides whom Hegseth later fired.
Their inclusion prompts renewed concerns about his judgement: not just that he was slapdash in his methods of sharing US secrets, but also who felt it appropriate to share them with.
Even before the revelations about the second Signal chat, it had been a tumultuous week at the Pentagon, the seat of the world’s strongest military with a yearly budget due to surpass $1 trillion under Trump.
On Friday, Hegseth fired three senior staffers, US media reported, and two others quit around the same time.
One of those to quit, John Ullyot, wrote an article for Politico excoriating Hegseth for a “full-blown meltdown” at the Pentagon. He argued that the messy staff purge and his lax approach to secrecy meant Trump should fire him.
The president’s allies have accused the fired officials of being behind the story about the new Signal chat, seeking to damage their former boss.
Anna Kelly, the White House deputy press secretary, said: “”Recently-fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.”
She called the second chat a “non-story.”
A Pentagon spokesman repeated the defence for the first Signal chat – that the information was not secret enough to worry about.
“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story,” wrote Sean Parnell, a senior official. The New York Times reported that he was one of the people in Hegseth’s chat.
Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire who is one of Trump’s key allies, also signalled support for Hegseth. Musk posted an “on target” emoji in response to one of Hegseth’s defences of himself.
When asked about the first Signal scandal, Trump brushed it off. “It’s just something that can happen” he said.
Hegseth is a key Trump ally, and the president fought hard to get him confirmed as Pentagon chief, despite concerns over his experience and allegations of sexual assault, which Hegseth denies.
Sharing secret military plans in one Signal chat wasn’t a firing offence, and a second may prove survivable too.
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