Marco Rubio Admits ‘Someone Made a Big Mistake’ by Adding Journalist to Secret War Plans Chat

Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that “someone made a big mistake” by adding The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal groupchat in which senior Trump administration officials discussed plans to strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen — and distanced himself from the controversy dominating headlines around the world — during a press conference on Wednesday.

After being asked a series of questions by one reporter — including whether Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) was right to say the administration should “own up” to its mistakes and “preserve credibility” — Rubio first dove into the foreign policy inquiries.

When he did get around to addressing “Signalgate,” here’s what he had to say:

RUBIO: On the first question, let me just say on the Signal thing — this thing was set up for purposes of coordinating how everyone was going to call. You know, when these things happen, I need to call foreign ministers, especially of our close allies, we need to notify members of Congress, other members of the team have different people they need to notify as well, and that was the purpose of why it was set up. Obviously, someone made a mistake — someone made a big mistake and added a journalist — nothing against journalists, but you ain’t supposed to be on that thing. So they got on there and this happened. I’ve been, you know, so I can speak to myself or my presence on it. I think my role on it was-, just speaking for my role, I contributed to it twice. I identified my point of contact, which is my chief of staff. And then later on, I think three hours after the White House’s official announcements had been made, I congratulated the members of the team. I’ve been assured by the Pentagon and everyone involved that none of the information that was on there, though not intended to be divulged, obviously, that was a mistake, and that shouldn’t have happened, and the White House is looking at it, but that none the information on there at any point threatened the operation or the lives of our servicemen. And in fact, it was a very successful operation. It is an ongoing operation. But that was the intent behind it. And again, I -,the Pentagon’s made it clear that nothing on there would have endangered the lives or the mission, and the mission’s been very successful.

REPORTER: Was it classified, the information?

RUBIO: Well, the Pentagon says it was not. And not only did they say it was not, they made very clear that it didn’t put in danger anyone’s life or the mission. There was no intelligence information. And understand, when this story first broke, they were sort of alluding to, “Were there war maps? Were there this-” There was no war plans on there. This was a sort of description of what we could inform our counterparts around the world when the time came to do so. Again, look, I think the White House is looking at this entire thing. “How did that journalist get on there? Was this the appropriate-? I think there will be reforms and changes made, so this never, this was not going to happen again. It can’t. But I want everybody to understand why this thing was even set up in the first place, and also understand very clearly the mission was successful and at no point was it endangered, and that’s coming from the highest ranking officials at the agency that was in charge of the actual operation, which is the Pentagon.

Watch above via MSNBC.