Pentagon Press Fights Back Against Hegseth

They responded to Hegseth's latest edict to suppress press coverage of DOD.

The Pentagon Press Association is fighting back against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s latest attempt to cover up his bumbling incompetence from the American people.

Hegseth is obsessed with rooting out, firing, and prosecuting people at the Department of Defense who talk to the press. The Secretary of Defense for an administration that claims to be “the most transparent in history” is doing everything he possibly can to prevent anyone from telling the truth about what is going on behind the scenes.

This was vividly illustrated with his hair-brained, corrupt scheme to invite Elon Musk to a top secret briefing on our war plans if China were to launch an invasion of Taiwan or one of our allies in Asia. There was no reason for Musk to get such a briefing, especially since the Chinese Communist Party is Elon Musk’s largest and most important business partner and he has a very friendly relationship with President Xi.

Hegseth’s closest aides who had worked with him for years were so outraged about Musk attending the briefing that they told the press. They deny that, but Hegseth is certain it was them. He also claimed they were given polygraph tests, which the aides also deny. Someone is lying here, and Hegseth has established over decades that he is a serial liar. Musk’s attendance at the briefing was quickly canceled, Trump claimed Hegseth and Musk cooked it up without his knowledge, and the aides were fired.

One of the fired aides, long-time Hegseth friend John Ullyot, wrote an OpEd saying that the Pentagon has been in “total chaos” since Hegseth took over. Illyot also said that Hegseth doesn’t get his most important work done in a timely manner (like the DOD budget and the budget for Golden Dome) and spends 50% of his time doing TV interviews, photo ops, and hunting leakers.

Yesterday, Hegseth issued a new edict to try and keep Pentagon employees from talking to the media. Here are some of the new rules:

1. No media is allowed to go anywhere in Secretary’s office spaces on the 3rd floor.

2. No media is allowed to go into the Joint Staff offices on the 2nd floor.

3. No media is allowed to go into rings A-E or the food court without an escort.

4. Any media there to speak with any person in the Pentagon must be escorted to that person’s office by official personnel.

5. No media is allowed in the Pentagon athletic center.

6. Larger, more visible press passes will be issued which must be worn at all times.

Dan Lamonthe, who covers military affairs for the Washington Post: “I would note - the leaks that appear to be a concern do not involve classified information. They involve internal concerns about the defense secretary and his team, including the treatment of senior military leaders.”

The Pentagon Press Association responded with this statement:

There is no way to sugarcoat it. Today’s memo by Secretary Hegseth appears to be a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing. The Pentagon Press Association is extremely concerned by the decision to restrict movement of accredited journalists within the Pentagon through non-secured, unclassified hallways.

The decision is purportedly based on concerns about operational security. But the Pentagon Press Corps has had access to non-secured, unclassified spaces in the Pentagon for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations, including in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, without any concern about OP-SEC from DoD leadership. And this decision does not come in a vacuum: It follows the unprecedented move by the Defense Department this year to evict many of America’s largest news organizations from their dedicated workspaces.

Journalists working from the Pentagon everyday will now have less freedom of movement than officers from foreign countries who are assigned to the U.S. military’s headquarters, as well as maintenance staff and concessions workers scattered throughout one of the world’s largest office buildings. This decision eliminates the media’s freedom to freely access press officers for the military services who are specifically hired to respond to press queries.

We would welcome any serious conversation about operational security in the Pentagon with reporters, many of whom have embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere and who have followed the U.S. military’s ground rules without fail throughout their careers. No such conversation has been offered by Secretary Hegseth or his team, despite regular outreach from PPA that has sought to keep in place a professional working relationship that has persisted for decades.

The PPA is also concerned by the memo’s promises of additional security measures to come that appear set to further limit our ability to cover the Pentagon. Lastly, the PPA is puzzled why the DoD is devoting such attention to restricting Pentagon media instead of engaging with it as senior leaders have long done, including Secretary Hegseth’s failure to brief the press in the briefing room in his first 100 days.

If you missed my last Bulletin on everything that happened in politics yesterday, you can find it here.