Mike Waltz admits 'full responsibility' for leaked war plans after journalist accidentally added to group chat
Mike Waltz has admitted ‘full responsibility’ for the baffling case of a journalist accidentally being added to a group chat.
Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed at the start of the week that he had been included in a top-secret chain discussing US military plans.
The blunder has led to much concern and questioning while Donald Trump defends his National Security Adviser.
Goldberg claimed he had been included in a group chat on open-source encrypted messaging service Signal by Waltz, where senior members of the Trump administration discussed military plans about airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
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Various messages from the chat were leaked with the likes of Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said to be in the ‘Houthi PC small group’ chat.
Goldberg said that a user identified as Michael Waltz sent him a connection request on Signal but ‘did not assume that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz’.
And after one anonymous official referred to Waltz as a 'f**king idiot' in a statement to Politico, he has now said he takes ‘full responsibility’ for the error.
“We made a mistake. We’re moving forward,” the former Army Special Forces officer told Fox News.
He said of Goldberg: "I can tell you for 100% I don't know this guy. I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don't text him. He wasn't on my phone. And we're going to figure out how this happened."
Trump had initially claimed to not ‘know anything about it’ when Goldberg’s claims came to light on Monday and has now surprisingly come out in defence of Waltz.
The President called him a ‘good man’ in a statement as he told NBC News: “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.” He didn’t however quite clarify what that lesson is.
Trump went on to describe the incident as a 'glitch', adding that The Atlantic's report had 'no impact at all' on the military operation in Yemen.
"It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there," he added, when asked about how Goldberg may have ended up being added to the chat.
Waltz himself has directly contradicted this, however, admitting it was him who added Waltz, thinking he was someone else.
He said: "A staffer wasn't responsible. You got somebody else's number on someone else's contact. So, of course, I didn't see this loser in the group.
"It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out."
The White House issued a statement confirming the incident as spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, said in a statement to the BBC: “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic.
"We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy co-ordination between senior officials.”
Claiming that the group chat included ‘information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying and attack sequencing’, Goldberg explained that he didn’t think ‘it could be real’ that he’d been added to the chat but ‘then the bombs started falling’.
However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the leak on X, stating that 'no 'war plans' were discussed' as well as 'no classified material' having been sent to the thread.
"As the National Security Council stated, the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread," she added.
Topics: Donald Trump, US News
Jess Battison