Buried in an unassuming Department of Defense memo this month was a chilling new threat to reporters covering the Pentagon: Journalists assigned to the building could maintain access only if they agreed in advance to limit what they report. Publishing material deemed classified or even unclassified but otherwise sensitive, according to the document, would be grounds for revoking a Pentagon press badge.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth later praised the new rules on social media. “The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do,” he wrote.
Mr. Hegseth and his team have correctly identified a longstanding problem — the proliferation of sensitive national security leaks — but they have arrived at precisely the wrong solution. I say that not as an activist for radical transparency but as someone who has served in top national security positions, including as a spokesman at the C.I.A., the National Security Council and the State Department.
What the secretary proposes won’t safeguard our national security; it will only further erode our democracy.
For more than 50 years, journalists have enjoyed privileged access to the Pentagon, including badges that allow them into certain areas and a dedicated work space. The same has been true at the White House and State Department, among other executive branch facilities. Successive administrations have upheld that tradition on two primary grounds.
First, in a democracy like ours, a free press is indispensable to an informed citizenry and the public’s right to know, even when government officials dislike what is reported. Second, administrations less enamored with pesky reporters and their First Amendment rights have nevertheless concluded that keeping a cadre of journalists close, including in the physical sense, ensures coverage of the actions and initiatives they want highlighted for audiences at home and abroad.
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The post The Pentagon Should Retract Its Secrecy Pledge appeared first on New York Times.
