WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s top commander in the Pacific accepted full responsibility on Wednesday for a bewildering chain of events this month that mistakenly left the impression that the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was rushing to confront an increasingly belligerent North Korea, when it was not.

“That’s my fault for the confusion,” the officer, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., told the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on security challenges in the region. “I’ll take the hit for it.”

Admiral Harris, the head of the Pacific Command, ordered the Carl Vinson and three other warships this month to cancel a port call to Australia and “sail north” from Singapore into the western Pacific. An ill-timed news release by the Navy’s Third Fleet created the impression that the carrier was headed north immediately, but in reality it was steaming south to join the Australian Navy in a secretive, truncated exercise in the Indian Ocean, 3,500 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula.

“Where I failed was to communicate that adequately to the press and the media,” Admiral Harris said in response to a question from Representative Salud Carbajal, a California Democrat. “That is all on me.”