By Mike Nelson
Friday, September 4, 2026
The current leadership in the Pentagon is quite fond of
saying it is “the most transparent Department of Defense in history.” Now,
bald-faced misrepresentations by government officials are never healthy in a
functioning republic, but one almost has to admire the chutzpah of blatantly
lying about being honest. In fact, the Pentagon has endeavored to control, limit, and mislead when it comes to
public information about the department, its operations, and facts affecting
service members in the United States military.
This effort takes multiple forms above and beyond lying
to the public—firing officials based on insecure fears of unflattering
whispers, putting onerous restrictions on the legacy Pentagon press corps, and,
most recently, hiring a roster of propaganda artists.
The tone for the DOD’s paranoid propaganda effort was set
from the beginning of the second Trump administration, and it comes from the
top. One can see the roots of it in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s previous
life as a Fox News host. He blurred the lines between news, opinion, and
outright advocacy when he worked to rehabilitate the reputations of three
convicted or accused war criminals. He reported and opined on the cases of Navy
SEAL Eddie Gallagher, former Special Forces officer Matt Golsteyn, and former
paratrooper Clint Lorance on air, and he also privately lobbied President Trump
to pardon or commute their sentences, something Trump did over the objections
of his own Defense Department and military advisers. It’s not surprising,
perhaps, that a man who viewed the boundary between news and policy as a porous
one when he was on the news side of that equation views the separation of the
two the same now that he is in government.
In the early days of the second Trump administration,
there was extensive reporting about how easily Hegseth was irritated by
unflattering stories and the lengths he would go to prevent them. Unlike the
typical MAGA rhetoric about shadowy deep staters, Hegseth’s paranoia was
omnidirectional, causing him to lash out and purge Trump loyalists and recent
appointees who had been selected by his own team. Senior adviser Dan Caldwell,
deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the
deputy secretary of defense, were all fired in April 2025—just three months
into the new administration—on suspicion of having been sources of unflattering
stories that embarrassed Hegseth. John Ullyot, former spokesman and senior
adviser to Hegseth, resigned that same month over dysfunction, distrust, and
paranoia from the secretary. All are MAGA loyalists and true believers. As of
yet, there has been no evidence or confirmation that any of these individuals
were the source of the stories that so offended Hegseth.
Were the leaked stories matters of national security, in
which defense secrets and sensitive decisions were revealed? No. Quite the
contrary. In fact, often they were stories that revealed how sloppy Hegseth and
his team were being regarding national security. The New York Times reported in March 2025 that Elon Musk, despite significant
conflicts of interest based on business interests in China, would be receiving
a classified briefing from the Pentagon, potentially including contingency
planning for a conflict with the Asian rival. Hegseth’s chief spokesman, Sean
Parnell, mustering all the bluster and pearl-clutching he could, said the story
was “100% Fake News” (posted on X.com), that it was “completely
fake” (to Fox & Friends), and that Musk was “just visiting” the
Pentagon (to ABC News). In fact, as was corroborated by several other reports, Musk’s visit had been planned just as the New
York Times reported it. Only after that plan had been made public was the
briefing changed to a less substantive, less China-focused unclassified
briefing—to retroactively align with Parnell’s denials and, most importantly,
after the president himself weighed in, calling into question Hegseth’s
judgment on the matter in the first place. The incident and the coverage it
received were embarrassments for Hegseth, further triggering his anger over his
inability to strictly sculpt the narrative and persona he wished to portray.
The incident would also pave the way for a standard
playbook the department would use in attempting to shape narratives—flat
denials and blatant lying about clearly observable matters. The month after
reporting about Musk’s planned visit to the Pentagon, when Hegseth dropped
classified material into an unclassified group chat, both Hegseth and Parnell denied any such thing happened. In November 2025 when the Washington
Post broke the story that two survivors of an initial strike as
part of Operation Southern Spear were targeted and killed in a follow-up attack
despite law of armed conflict concerns
regarding shipwreck survivors, Parnell said the “entire narrative is completely
false.” When CBS News reported that service members killed in an Iranian missile
attack had been in what they described as a “makeshift office space,” Parnell
said the “‘reporting’ from CBS is not true.” When the Washington Post first started reporting on depleted Tomahawk supplies from
the war in March, and later when the Center for Strategic and International
Studies demonstrated the numbers of THAAD and Patriot missiles that
had been expended, Parnell again issued a flat denial, stating that the American military “has everything it
needs” and later stating,
“Claims of U.S. munitions shortages are false.”
A charitable interpretation of this pattern is that
Parnell takes issue with some small portion of the reported facts, or of the
characterization of those facts, and then pushes back against all of them. But
his maximalist denials, and the associated language (“entire,” “completely,”
the placing of “reporting” in ironic scare quotes) seem designed to dismiss the
inconvenient truths that are in the reporting, hoping to move past stories the
department would rather not address. His choice to flatly deny reports that
later turn out to be largely or completely true, or to use a dispute over
phrasing to flatly deny the underlying truth of a story suggest, at a minimum,
that the DOD spokesman is far too comfortable lying by commission or omission.
Attempting to shape narratives with lies and misleading
statements isn’t the only way the Pentagon attempts to exert control over
reporting on the department. The Defense Department tried to rid itself of the
established Pentagon press corps by demanding to screen and approve press
reports before publication and attempting to prohibit the publishing of
unauthorized information.
When the majority of the press corps refused to agree
with DOD prior approval, the Pentagon replaced them with “new media” outlets
that were more favorable to Hegseth and the administration. This new media
press corps is a veritable island of misfit toys, including conspiracy-peddling
influencers, Twitter personalities who often get the basics of their dramatic
claims wrong, and failed politicians who themselves had been considered for
administration roles.
But neither is the new media immune from Hegseth’s thin
skin and expectations of favorable treatment. Gabrelle Cuccia, a
self-proclaimed “MAGA girl” and previously pro-Trump One America News Network’s
defense correspondent, says she was fired from her job in retaliation for a
Substack post that had been critical of Hegseth’s constraints on the press as
well as his unwillingness to conduct regular press conferences. While OANN
declined comment on her firing, Cuccia said her employer told her it was
because the Substack piece had been “put on their radar.”
Within the last week, the Pentagon has continued its
attempt to shape media coverage, firing
three senior leaders from Stars and Stripes, the newspaper intended
to bring news to service members deployed around the globe. The primary
complaint seemed to be that the journalists viewed their role as covering news
relevant to the military members who make up their audience rather than as a propaganda
arm to promote defense leadership. Stars and Stripes is intended to be a
reputable news source available to U.S. troops, not the Pentagon’s Pravda.
The Pentagon's cozy and shadowy relationship with
right-wing online influencers spilled out into public view after a meltdown
last month by Jennica Pounds, better known on X as @DataRepublican. Pounds
gained attention early in the second Trump administration by posting grand
claims of having uncovered shadowy USAID and deep state plots—they were
amateurish and played to an audience predisposed to believe that there was a
vast network laundering tax dollars in efforts to subvert American democracy.
Despite the hyperbolic and very wrong analysis she often put together, Pounds
garnered a massive audience, and her work was used by Elon Musk to justify his
wild DOGE cuts. Pounds announced that she had been credentialed as a member of
the Pentagon press corps in April, part of the “new media.” However, due to a comedy of errors brought about by Pounds’ own ignorance (or,
as her own mother described it, her not being “inherently cunning”), the
Pentagon was forced to reveal that Pounds is, in fact, an employee
of the Defense Department, something neither she nor the DOD had disclosed as
she wrote articles about the department that were, not surprisingly, favorable
to Hegseth’s efforts. Both Pounds and the Pentagon now claim that her press
credential expired in June and she then started working for the department the
next month, so, no conflict, right? Based on the department’s truthfulness to
date, I take this timeline with a grain of salt. Further, this doesn’t explain
her writing a piece, just within the last two weeks, claiming to demonstrate (she doesn’t) a conspiracy among
the members of Congress Hegseth had targeted as enemies after they reminded
service members of their duty to refuse illegal orders. The whole setup isn’t
just misleading and unethical, it’s laughably bush league.
Pounds didn’t just out herself in the aftermath, but also
drew attention to three other prominent online trolls who the Pentagon admitted
had been serving as special government employees. Kurt Schlichter, Rob Maness,
and Tom Anderson—all retired military officers turned Trump-aligned
pseudo-pundits—had been brought on board to serve on the Defense Department’s
task force reviewing senior service colleges—intended to purge the war colleges
of the perceived scourge of wokeness and bring them into alignment with
Hegseth’s worldview. It’s not clear what specific qualifications these three
had for the task, besides a willingness to exhibit the same rabid cultural
beliefs as the secretary himself.
Regardless of the specific tasks for which they were
hired by the DOD or their suitability (or lack thereof) for them, these four
influencers failed to disclose the clear conflict of interest while continuing
to publish and post talking points praising Hegseth and targeting his political
adversaries.
The last 18 months of deceit, dishonesty, obfuscation,
and obliquity have not helped the Pentagon, nor been what the taxpayers
deserve. The department has tried to play cute accounting games by manipulating
what is intended to be publicly available data. It has consistently
underreported or delayed reporting the number of wounded from the war in Iran,
and most recently dishonestly did not include the three service members killed
in Jordan and Iraq in July in the casualties of Epic Fury because they occurred
after the MOU-imposed ceasefire.
Initial reports of shortages and limited working hygiene
facilities onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln were dismissed by the Pentagon when
they were first reported in April. However, when Adm. Brad Cooper visited the
Lincoln in August, he wrote that the supply issues were largely solved but
acknowledged there had been problems earlier in the ship’s deployment, despite
the department’s denials in the spring. The reason the story of the Lincoln’s
woes picked up so much steam in August, after the conditions reported seem to
have been alleviated, is because the DOD has demonstrated such
untrustworthiness.
There are obvious examples of bad behavior, spin, and a
lack of forthrightness from previous administrations’ defense officials. Lloyd
Austin famously concealed his health issues, both from the American people and
his higher political leadership, and simply went incommunicado for days. John
Kirby, when he was still in uniform as a Pentagon spokesman, would often
present political talking points in defense of the Obama administration,
something inappropriate for a uniformed military officer to do. But the Hegseth
DOD takes prevarication and pressure to a new level. It’s not enough to merely
offer the administration’s narrative of events, but officials try to dictate
who is even allowed to report the news, to control those who do, to punish
those who divert from its preferred characterization, and blatantly lie to the
American public.
They do not seem to view the role of communicating to the
press as a necessary way of informing the American public; rather, they view
the exercise as though the desired end is public relations and image
protection. The business of the DOD is not only (quite literally) deadly
serious, it is also the function of the government that can be most unfamiliar
to the American people. As such, the DOD has a requirement to better inform the
taxpayers as to what is being done on their behalf, not to play on that lack of
familiarity in order to lie to and manipulate the public all to protect the
secretary of defense from embarrassing stories.
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