As backlash brewed over new restrictions on press access, the Pentagon made a second, quieter move—one that sent another troubling signal about how far it’s willing to go to create a safe space for Pete Hegseth.
On Friday afternoon, just before the holiday weekend was set to begin, word began to spread among Pentagon reporters: new, even more restrictive press limitations were imminent. Shortly after, the Pentagon Press Association was informed just how sweeping they would be. Pete Hegseth, the embattled Secretary of Defense, announced he would revoke journalists’ long-held ability to navigate the Pentagon’s unclassified hallways freely, cutting off access that has been permitted across Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.
Hegseth cloaked the decision in the language of national security. In a memo that he publicized via tweet, Hegseth claimed the restrictions were necessary to safeguard “sensitive information—the unauthorized disclosure of which could put the lives of U.S. Service members in danger.” But to many reporters, the rationale felt hollow—especially coming from a figure at the center of Signalgate, the scandal involving Hegseth’s own use of an insecure messaging app to conduct sensitive military business. The notion that hallway access for credentialed reporters posed more of a security threat than his own sloppy use of an encrypted messaging app struck many as absurd, to say the least.
https://www.status.news/p/pete-hegseth-pentagon-press-access
