As the "National Security Group Chat Gate" incident continues to spread, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview on Wednesday (March 3) that including journalists in the high-level national security communication group was a "serious mistake" and stressed that the government will carry out reforms to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
'AFP” reported that Rubio responded to the incident at a press conference in Jamaica, pointing out that “obviously someone made a mistake and added a reporter to the group.” He clarified that he had nothing against journalists, but they should not be involved in discussions of national security secrets.
He added that the incident showed that adjustments were needed within the government, and revealed that he had only participated in two conversations in the group, one when he attended the discussion on behalf of the government and the other after the United States announced its military operation against Yemen.
Earlier, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, publicly stated on Monday (24th) that he was accidentally pulled into a group on the encrypted communication application Signal, and witnessed the decision-making process of senior national security officials in Washington discussing launching an attack on the Yemeni radical organization "Youth Movement" (Houthi, also known as the Houthi armed forces).
Afterwards, Goldberg wrote a report in the first person, describing in detail the entire process from being mistakenly added to the group to personally witnessing the decision-making of Trump 2.0's national security team. He admitted that he initially thought it was just a prank and did not expect that the confidential affairs of the US government would be handled so carelessly. Once the report was published, it immediately attracted attention at home and abroad, and the White House also confirmed that the conversations revealed in the article were true.
In an exclusive interview with NBC, President Donald Trump responded that Goldberg's mistaken entry into the confidential group "did not cause any impact" and would not affect the US military's military operations against the Yemeni Shiite armed group "Youth Movement". He stressed that he remains confident in the professionalism and decision-making ability of the national security team.
