Photo taken on Oct. 9, 2023 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

　　The incident is a “disaster, as it shows a high level of amateurism,“ Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, told Xinhua. “It is naive to have such important conversations over a non-secure channel. It sends a bad signal to friends and adversaries.“

　　WASHINGTON, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Top U.S. officials are facing a tsunami of criticism after a journalist was accidentally invited to their online discussion over war plans on Houthi forces in Yemen.

　　Lawmakers, media outlets and political analysts have lambasted top officials in President Donald Trump's administration for what they describe as jaw-dropping amateurism for inadvertently adding a journalist to an unsecured group chat on Signal, a commercial messaging app.

　　Members of the chat group included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who discussed plans to strike Yemen.

　　According to the inadvertently invited journalist, The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, Defense Secretary Hegseth posted in the Signal thread operational details about upcoming strikes against Houthis, “including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.“

　　The incident is a “disaster, as it shows a high level of amateurism,“ Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, told Xinhua. “It is naive to have such important conversations over a non-secure channel. It sends a bad signal to friends and adversaries.“