Only Murders in the Building (2021-present) Dirty Birds (S05E04)

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, has been at the center of a national story after he was “inadvertently” included in a group Signal chat with administration officials as they planned a deadly bombing in Yemen. Much of the coverage has focused on the mishandling of military secrets, rather than the impact of the bombings themselves, targeting the poorest country in the Middle East, which the United States has helped bomb and blockade for over a decade. Goldberg is not just an observer: He is contributing to this disregard for Yemeni lives, and his dismissiveness sheds light on why he was an administration media contact to begin with.

In an interview that aired on March 26, Deepa Fernandes, one of the hosts of NPR's “Here and Now,” interviewed Goldberg about the “group chat heard 'round the world” that included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Vice President JD Vance. During one portion of the interview, Fernandes did something few other journalists are doing. She asked Goldberg about the Yemeni people who were killed in the bombing, which took place on March 15.

Deepa Fernandes: There's little talk of the fact that this attack killed 53 people, as we mentioned, including women and children. The civilian toll of these American strikes. Are we burying the lede here?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, those, unfortunately, those aren't confirmed numbers. Those are provided by the Houthis and the Houthi health ministry, I guess. So we don't know that for sure. Yeah, I mean, obviously we're, well, I don't know if we're burying the lede, because obviously huge breaches in national security and safety of information, that's a very, very important story, obviously. And one of the reasons, you know, it's a very important story is that the Republicans themselves consider that to be an important story, when it's Hillary Clinton doing the deed, right? So that's obviously hugely important.

But yeah, I think that covering what's going on in Yemen, the Arab and Iran backed terrorist organization, the Houthis, that are that are firing missiles at Israel and disrupting global shipping and occupy half of Yemen, and all kinds of other things in the US, you know, and the Trump administration criticizing the Biden's response and Europe wants Trump to do more. I mean, yeah, there's, there's a huge story in Yemen. But Yemen is, as you know, is one of the more inaccessible places for Western journalists. So maybe this becomes like a substitute for a discussion of Yemen. I don't know.

Goldberg not only seems unconcerned about the death toll and eager to cast doubt on its veracity, but he also appears unprepared for the question. It’s as though it didn’t occur to him that the substance of the Signal exchange itself—the bombing—might be a legitimate topic of conversation, and he seems eager to move on.

This is despite the fact that there is evidence in the exchange itself that the United States hit a civilian site in the bombing. Waltz wrote in the Signal chat that the US military had bombed a residential building. “The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz wrote in the chat, to which JD Vance replied: “Excellent.”

Yet, as Nick Turse noted for The Intercept, “So far, however, there has been little focus on the specifics of the attack, much less discussion of the fact that one of the targets of the March 15 strike was a civilian residence.”

The story of US belligerence in Yemen should be a huge one. Since 2015, the US-Saudi coalition has used American manufactured bombs to hit wedding parties, factories, a school bus, and a center for the blind. It’s difficult to know the exact death toll, but around three years ago, the death toll from direct and indirect consequence of war surpassed 377,000. Direct bombings by both the Biden and Trump administrations threaten a wider war, and have occurred in lockstep with US support for Israel as it has ruthlessly bombed and attacked Gaza since October 7.

Goldberg, of course, was included in that group chat because he was a contact of someone on the administration’s thread, and his history of laundering the US military’s mass atrocities is a good indicator of why. In the lead-up to the US-led war on Iraq, Goldberg was central to peddling the disproven conspiracy theory that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda, a key lie of the George W. Bush administration, used to justify the invasion. One month before the US started the war, he went on NPR to discuss “Possible Links Between Iraq and al Qaeda and Evidence That the Iraqis May be Trying to Evade Weapons Inspectors.”

Goldberg has a long career of uplifting the media narratives of the United States and its allies, including a big piece in 2010 where he floated justifications for a possible Israeli war on Iran. Like many of the Iraq War pushers, Goldberg’s lies about Iraq did not harm his career, but marked its ascent. Under his tenure, the Atlantic has shut out Palestinian voices and stories, as the US has helped Israel wage genocide in Gaza.

Goldberg’s dismissal of Yemeni deaths is not a small detail of this blockbuster story, but a central component. One way to get on the speed dials of high-level officials is to have a proven career of doing their bidding.