Waltz suggested that he may have kept the journalist number on his phone, thinking he belonged to someone else
Mike Waltz, National Security Counselor of United States President Donald Trump, who created the group on the Signal Social Network to discuss military plans and included a journalist, took responsibility on Tuesday.
“I take full responsibility. I created this group,” Mike Waltz admitted to Fox News station in his first interview since the revelations.
Waltz suggested that he may have kept the journalist’s number on his phone, thinking he belonged to someone else.
The chief of writing of the prestigious magazine The Atlantic published a long article in which he detailed the impressions between the high-federal responsible of the United States about a Military Attack plan to the Huthis rebels in Yemen in a group of the digital sign messaging service to which it was added by mistake.
A huge security failure for the United States, widely criticized in Democratic circles. The White House confirmed the authenticity of the message chain, but also stated that no confidential information had not been revealed.
The director of CIA (Central Information Agency), the leading US external service agency, confirmed, for its part, the presence in this circle, but defended what it designated as the “authorized and legal” use of Signal application.
Already Donald Trump minimized on Tuesday the exchange of text messages in a group of chat with sensitive plans for a military attack against the Huthis do Yemen, considering that it is “a small failure”.
Trump stressed that this was “the only two-month fault” of his presidency, while Democrats criticized US administration for dealing with highly sensitive information carefully.
Speaking to NBC News, Trump said the lapse “was not serious” and expressed continuous support to the National Security Counselor Mike Waltz.
The president of the United States also seemed to point out the guilt to an unidentified Waltz advisor because Goldberg was added to the jail.
But the use of the application of sign messages to discuss a sensitive operation exposed the presidency to fierce criticism by Democratic legislators, who expressed indignation from the insistence of the White House and the high administration officials that no confidential information was shared.
Administration officials have been striving to explain why the application available to the public was used to discuss such a delicate subject.
However, in the Senate, US secret services officials denied, in a heated Senate discussion, that sensitive data were shared in a signal chat where Goldberg was and coordinating the military attack in Yemen.
The vice president of the United States House of Representatives Intelligence Commission, Democratic Senator Mark Warner, classified the episode as an example of “negligent, careless and reckless behavior” who put US lives at risk and directly asked the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in the chat.
Gabbard replied that “he will not go into details”, because what happened “is being analyzed”, and insisted that nothing that was exchanged in the conversation was protected information, underlining the difference between malicious and accidental escapes.
