White House chief of staff Denis McDonough accidentally revealed the previously unknown first name of an American woman being held hostage by the Islamic State.
McDonough had been speaking about the terrorist organization's recent Japanese hostage situation during an interview with "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos over the weekend when the female name - which isn't publicly known - made it past the 45-year-old's lips, Politico reported. However the White House refused to deem McDonough's actions as a mistake.
"We do not believe it helps" for the names to go public, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said at a briefing to reporters on Monday, adding that government policy dictates for hostage names not to be made public.
"We don't have anything to add, other than to request again that you not use the name of the individual," National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan told Politico.
The 26-year-old aid worker, who was taken in August 2013, is believed to be ISIS's last American hostage. After her abduction, the White House had instructed news organizations to refrain from publicly identifying her.
But when Stephanopoulos asked about potential rescue missions on Sunday, McDonough slipped up, saying, "As it relates to our hostages, we are obviously continuing to work those matters very, very aggressively. We are sparing no expense and sparing no effort, both in trying to make sure that we know where they are and make sure that we're prepared to do anything we must to try to get them home," McDonough said. "But [redacted] family knows how strongly the president feels about this, and we will continue to work this."
Although Rhodes declined to speak for McDonough, he stated that making the names of hostages' public can cause problems, according to TheBlaze.
"It's fair to say that we do not believe it helps for the names of individual hostages to be released in public," Rhodes said. "We're being very forthright in saying we don't believe it's constructive in securing their release."
Meanwhile, Rhodes reiterated that the hostages are regularly on the minds of people in the White House.
"Sometimes, people have a personal interest in those issues and that, I think, informs how they're thinking about them at any given time," Rhodes said.
