Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Wednesday that he took part in the group chat on the Signal app earlier this month among top United States officials ahead of American airstrikes in Yemen and said that someone had made a “big mistake” by adding a journalist to the group.
Mr. Rubio’s remarks were the most candid yet made by a cabinet member — and by a participant in the Signal group — on the presence of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, in the chat. Democratic lawmakers and some Republican ones have said that his addition, as well as the discussion of military operations, including possibly classified information, amounted to a serious failure of national security practices.
“Obviously someone made a mistake,” Mr. Rubio said when asked by an American reporter at a news conference in Kingston, Jamaica, about the possible security failing. “Someone made a big mistake and added a journalist. Nothing against journalists, but you ain’t supposed to be on that thing.”
Mr. Rubio was speaking alongside Prime Minister Andrew Holness of Jamaica, after the two met at lunchtime during Mr. Rubio’s stop on a tour of three nations in the Caribbean.
Mr. Rubio confirmed the substance of his part of the text messages that have been published by Mr. Goldberg. Mr. Rubio said he took part in the chat twice: once to name a point of contact for his office, his chief of staff, Michael Needham; and a second time to congratulate the team on the operation once the American military had carried out lethal strikes against the Houthi forces in Yemen.
“The Pentagon has made it clear that nothing on there would have endangered the lives or the mission,” Mr. Rubio said of the Signal chat texts. “There were no war plans on there.”
Mr. Goldberg has said the chat material included war plans, and on Wednesday The Atlantic published detailed texts of the portion of the chat that Mr. Goldberg witnessed and recorded. That included lines from Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary and former Fox News talk-show host, on weapons systems, weather conditions and the precise movements of human targets.
Mr. Rubio said in Kingston that the chat had been set up for the purposes of “coordinating” among Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy aides so they could inform their counterparts in other countries and other American officials about the strikes when the moment was right to do so.
“When these things happen, I need to call foreign ministers, especially among our close allies,” he said. “We need to notify members of Congress.”
Mr. Rubio said the information was “not intended to be divulged” to the public, and “that was a mistake and that shouldn’t have happened, and the White House is looking at it.”
He added, “I think there will be reforms and changes made.”
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