Washington — The U.S. Navy is taking a major step to restrict press access to information about service members by no longer releasing information about any sailor’s service history – information that has been freely offered by the service for decades.
The move, which officials say is being driven by increased security threats and harassment concerns, comes amid a host of other restrictions on press access largely driven by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The restrictions, which include a policy that reporters must be accompanied by an official escort on Pentagon grounds, are themselves playing out against a backdrop of escalating tension between President Trump and media outlets whose content or reporting practices anger him.
Last Thursday, the Navy’s top spokesman, Rear Admiral John Robinson, released a policy that mandated the sea service remove all public-facing information about its commanding officers. Capt. Candice Thresh, a spokeswoman for the Chief of Naval Personnel, said the office had decided to expand the policy to deny access to any sailor’s service information, in the interest of equality.
Thresh told The Associated Press that the Navy would still confirm whether someone is a sailor, but only if it deems the request “of high public interest,” and no other details would be offered until the undefined threat has passed.
Information about sailors’ service history, such as units they’ve been assigned to and awards they’ve earned – information the Navy says it will now withhold – is critical in providing information and context when service members are involved in major news events. It is also information that a constellation of federal laws and Pentagon policies say should be made available on request.
The Pentagon’s governing document on its privacy program notes that information like a service member’s rank, duty assignments, awards, and service status is categorized as information “that is normally releasable” and “may be disclosed without a clearly unwarranted invasion of their personal privacy.”
However, Thresh, in an emailed statement, said they will now only release these details if the sailor is “a public figure or extenuating circumstances exist.” These are terms that the Navy can define for itself, and early indications suggest the sea service is not inclined to use these exemptions.
First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams noted that the Navy’s new policy could make reporting on wounded or injured sailors much more challenging. “That effort at suppression of speech is flatly inconsistent with the First Amendment,” Abrams said.
He said the policy seemed “an obvious effort to limit information, however newsworthy, that might lead to questions about public policy decisions. … There is no reason to think that this is anything less than an effort to prevent ‘bad’ press about the conduct of the administration with respect to our service people.”
The Navy cited the new policy last week after the AP requested the biography of a pilot with the Blue Angels, the Navy’s demonstration squadron, following a controversial maneuver over a crowded beach. Robinson’s office refused to provide the pilot’s biography despite the fact that his name, photo, and other service details were posted on the official Blue Angels website. Thresh did provide a copy of the biography personally after the AP began inquiring about the policy.
Robinson’s office didn’t respond to questions about the Chief of Naval Personnel’s broadening of his policy.
The restrictions are just the latest in a series of moves that the military has taken to restrict access to information. Last month, the military asked Congress for the ability to withhold certain types of unclassified records from the public.
The legislative proposal, first reported by CBS News, would create a new section of federal law that would allow the defense secretary to exempt certain “controlled unclassified information,” or CUI, from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
Transparency advocates, and even the Pentagon’s own internal watchdog, have described the term CUI as inconsistently applied and overused. Critics have argued that it is arbitrarily used to keep embarrassing information from being made public.
Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel with American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy, told CBS News in an email that for decades, there has been “a massive overclassification problem throughout the executive branch.”
“The last thing the government needs is a new power to withhold information under the FOIA,” Kaufman wrote.
Last year, the Pentagon attempted to impose major restrictions on journalists working inside the Pentagon which, in turn, led most news outlets to turn in their access badges and walk out rather than agree to the new rules. The policy is now being litigated in federal court.
This summer, the Pentagon went a step further and declared that its press office was now a classified space inaccessible to journalists.
