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.
Mr. Hegseth’s Pentagon team is now calculating that it can maintain that second perk without accepting the risk inherent in upholding the broader privileges previous administrations afforded the free press. Some media outlets, especially those with a partisan bent, may go along with this scheme without protest. But journalists and outlets that are committed to covering the activities of our democratically elected government, warts and all, cannot sign the new pledge and still fulfill the duties of an independent press.
The commitment to journalistic independence in America has repeatedly changed the course of history — from reporting on early skepticism about the Vietnam War in the Pentagon Papers to exposing the post-9/11 excesses of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program and the C.I.A.’s secret effort to render, detain and brutally interrogate people accused of being terrorists. Under the new Pentagon rules, reporters would agree in advance that the potential penalty for publishing such information would be losing their access to the building.
Just as concerning are the directive’s implications for coverage of day-to-day impropriety, like waste, fraud and abuse or the turmoil this year in Mr. Hegseth’s front office, which saw many of his top aides resign or be fired. The American people need that kind of reporting to assess whether our leaders are effective stewards of national security. It also would seem to be the kind of reporting that could trigger expulsion under the new rules.
Having spent my career working in national security, I want to see appropriately classified information protected. But that is not the job of reporters; it is the responsibility of public servants, even if it too often goes unmet. On more occasions than I care to count, reporters came to my colleagues and me in possession of classified or otherwise sensitive information. Rather than threaten their access, we urged them to be judicious in what they reported and, without confirming classified details, gingerly explained why publishing certain elements could place people or programs in jeopardy. In most cases, the resulting articles were nuisances rather than threats to national security. Good reporters know how to maintain the balance between informing their readers and avoiding needless risk.
Similarly, good public servants know how to strike a balance between protecting our national security and defending the rights enumerated and implied in our founding documents, such as a free press and an informed citizenry. There is some indication the Pentagon may come around to this position. Last week, responding to a letter from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote that journalists are constitutionally protected in publishing classified information and that only in “rare, extreme cases” would their accreditation be revoked for doing so. But the department, so far, has not rescinded the requirement for reporters to sign the pledge.
The Pentagon should retract its current memo and make this position clear. Proceeding with this policy would infringe on the transparency and accountability our fellow citizens deserve.
Ned Price most recently served in the Biden administration as the deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and senior adviser to the secretary of state. He previously served as a spokesman for the C.I.A., the National Security Council and the State Department.
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