iPhone glitch behind White House Signal Chat debacle? How Mike Waltz ended up adding journalist to ‘Houthi PC group’

A seemingly harmless mistake by Donald Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz and his iPhone could have been the real reason why a journalist was added to a signal chat that disclosed US plans to strike Yemen.

According to a report by The Guardian quoting three sources, Waltz mistakenly saved the number of The Atlantic Magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg under someone else's name. The official had originally intended to add this person to the group chat named ‘Houthi PC small group’, the report revealed.

An internal investigation by the White House highlighted this as one of the several missteps that went unnoticed until Waltz made the group in March.

Donald Trump initially intended to fire Waltz, more due to the fact that he had Goldberg's number saved on his phone. Later, he decided against the move.

“I don't fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker.

He also said that he had confidence in Mike Waltz, his national security adviser, and Pete Hegseth, his Pentagon chief.

iPhone real culprit?

As per the sources quoted by The Guardian, the story unfolded when last October Goldberg decided to do an article on Donald trump, who was on his election campaign at the time. He had sent an email then-Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who the copy-pasted it as a text message to Waltz's phone.

The message contained all contents of the email, including Jeffrey Goldberg's phone number.

This is when the iPhone drama may have come in.

In an extraordinary twist, Waltz that day may have inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number under Hughes name, thanks to a “contact suggestion update”, Guardian reported.

As per one of the sources quoted by the media outlet, this update is a function where an iPhone algorithm adds an unknown number under the name of an existing contact if it detects that the both are related.

Signal chat leaks: The latest

America's top national security officials last month discussed sensitive attack plans over the publicly available messaging app Signal and mistakenly added a journalist to the chain.

The White House said the information shared through the publicly available Signal app with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, was not classified.

The Trump administration has since been embroiled in a controversy for adding the editor of The Atlantic magazine to a private thread describing an imminent bombing campaign in Yemen.

Afterwards, The Atlantic published an article on the internal exchange, shocking the national security establishment and drawing widespread criticism.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the White House that the administration maintained confidence in National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who has faced criticism for apparently adding the journalist to the chat.

Leavitt said that steps have been taken to prevent a repeat of the incident, saying that the case has been closed.

"As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team and this case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned," she said in late March.