Fox News anchor John Roberts praised journalist Jeffery Goldberg hours after the editor of The Atlantic published a bombshell report revealing he had been accidentally sent secret war plans by top U.S. officials ahead of recent strikes in the Middle East.
“I would think that there are probably worse people that you could text your secret plans to,” Roberts said on Fox on Monday afternoon. “But it appears Goldberg has acted responsibly here in writing this article.”
Goldberg, Roberts noted, “outs a lot of the process” by which he came to see the messages relating to the U.S. government’s plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, but “he did not specifically publish the war plans.”
Goldberg’s report, which sent shockwaves across the political and media worlds on Monday, outlined how he was added to a group message on the encrypted messaging app Signal along with more than a dozen other high ranking U.S. officials by national security adviser Michael Waltz.
“I have never seen a breach quite like this,” Goldberg wrote in his piece. “It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.”
Roberts later said The Atlantic “has not been particularly kind” to President Trump’s administration. Trump last week critized The Atlantic and several of its reporters over its coverage of him.
When Trump was asked about the story on Monday afternoon, the president said he was unaware of the situation.
