These days, the Pentagon is a battleground, where, for the first time in decades, the cadre of reporters embedded in the building faces a civilian leadership that is openly hostile to their traditional role as watchdogs on behalf of the public.

Since his arrival in January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been waging an all-out war against the so-called “legacy media,” which, as he makes clear in his 2024 book The War on Warriors, he believe are rife with “nepotism and mediocrity” and dishonestly portray soldiers as “thoughtless, order-following grunts.”

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It’s a purification campaign without precedent to marginalize and punish reporters and news organizations deemed unfriendly to Hegseth’s agenda and to intimidate all the holders of Pentagon press passes to think twice about reporting anything that might trigger a rebuke or retribution from the notoriously thin-skinned neophyte defense secretary.

Hegseth’s opening salvo was to evict NBC News, NPR, Politico, and the New York Times from the dedicated workspaces they have occupied for decades in the “Correspondents’ Corridor.”

Shocked bureau chiefs from all the news organizations with personnel based at the Pentagon requested a meeting with Hegseth’s staff, and afterward, they thought maybe their concerns were heard and that Hegseth might rescind the eviction order.

Instead, in a move right out of the authoritarian’s playbook, Hegseth doubled down, punishing the whiners by adding four more mainstream outlets — CNN, the Washington Post, the Hill, and the War Zone — to the enemies list of the banished media. Though still allowed in the building, they just had no place to work or, in the case of NBC and CNN, had no booth from which to broadcast.

The New York Times’s Helene Cooper said in a recent podcast promo that she now works and files her stories from her car in the Pentagon parking lot.

NBC’s booth was given to One America News Network, and CNN’s to Newsmax, both right-leaning news networks, deemed supportive of President Donald Trump.

It seemed to Pentagon reporters that NBC was targeted in retribution for its aggressive reporting on Hegseth’s marital infidelities, drinking problems, and $50,000 payment made to settle a sexual assault lawsuit, which he argued was a “nuisance claim.”

Adding CNN seemed to be designed to send a message to any future complainers that they could be next.

The tone was set for what was to come.

Only friendly conservative networks would be invited to travel with the secretary, and traditional weekly press briefings would be replaced by short, canned videos in which Hegseth can hold forth without the irritation of reporters’ questions.

To understand how this has destroyed the mutual respect that the military and the media enjoyed at the Pentagon for decades, one needs to take a step back to consider the history of the five-sided building.

Built in 16 months in the midst of World War II for $63 million, and renovated in the 1990s and 2000s for $3 billion, the Pentagon is both impressive and unassuming.

Unlike many federal buildings, there are no marble columns or grandiose architectural flourishes.

It’s a solid, working building with a population worthy of a small town, more than 25,000 military and civilian employees.

Its 3.7 million square feet once made it the world’s largest office building, but with modern skyscrapers, it’s now relegated to being the world’s largest government office building.

More than 17 miles of corridor run through five rings and five floors, with the outermost E-ring being almost a mile around.

But the Pentagon’s unique design means a person can walk from any one spot to another in less than seven minutes, assuming you know where you’re going.

And there’s another thing that makes the Pentagon unique.

It’s the only major military headquarters in the world that allows reporters to have offices in the building, enjoy 24/7 access and are free to walk almost all of the 17 miles, except classified or sensitive areas, such as offices of senior leaders or the super-secure National Military Command Center, which is in the sub, sub-basement.

That openness has been a point of pride, a tangible symbol of transparency that no defense secretary has ever considered taking away.

Until now.

Hegseth is paranoid about embarrassing leaks, such as when his planned secret China briefing with Elon Musk had to be aborted once it was disclosed and Trump found out, or the awkward revelations about his second unclassified Signal chat.

Hegseth fired two top staffers for suspected leaking, based on questionable evidence, and even at one point accused the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of leaking to reporters.

So now, he’s decided to confine Pentagon reporters to parts of the building where there will be fewer opportunities for what he referred to as “in-person inadvertent and unauthorized disclosures.”

In other words, “bumping into someone in the hall,” which, at the Pentagon, is a primary source of unvarnished information.

Under his May 23 memorandum, reporters will be issued new badges with a large “PRESS” emblazoned on them, so anyone trespassing in the banned areas can be spotted and disciplined.

In addition, as a condition of building access, reporters will have to sign a form promising not to disclose not just classified information but any “sensitive, unclassified information” — essentially anything the Pentagon does not want made public.

“Failure to comply,” the memo chillingly warns, “will result in further restrictions and possibly revocation of press credentials.”

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell insists the new rules are designed to protect national security, not to impede legitimate journalism.

“Up until now, the press could wander all around the Pentagon with no oversight,” Parnell said on X. “Even outside of sensitive/classified areas. So moving forward, they’ll need an escort to access those areas. They still have access to the entire defense press office, the press secretary & my office, as well as much of the rest of the building. These are pragmatic changes to protect operational security & ultimately brings the Pentagon in line with other government buildings.”

It’s true that other government office buildings, including the White House and State Department, don’t allow the same freedom of movement for reporters, but the Pentagon has always been an exception, in part because of the recognition of professionalism of its press corps.

The Pentagon is a beat that reporters tend to stay on for years, even decades, developing the expertise and sources to do the kind of nuanced reporting that only comes with extensive experience.

And the Pentagon press corps has developed a well-earned reputation for not compromising the operational security of military operations.

“I strongly believe that our republic and our military are well served by the depth of knowledge, skill, and experience resident within this press corps,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary under former President Joe Biden, said at his last press briefing in January.

“The reporters covering the building are professionals who would never put American service members at risk,” Jim Garamone, a longtime reporter for the Defense Department’s internal news service, said in a Facebook post. “The new restrictions placed on the Pentagon press is nothing but censorship. Hegseth — the man who discussed classified operations on Signal — is putting these restrictions on simply to restrict press access to information Americans need to fairly judge decisions he and Trump make.”

“There is no way to sugarcoat it,” the Pentagon Press Association said in a statement. “[The] memo by Secretary Hegseth appears to be a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing.”

“The decision is purportedly based on concerns about operational security,” the PPA said. “But the Pentagon Press Corps has had access to non-secured, unclassified spaces in the Pentagon for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations, including in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, without any concern about OP-SEC from DoD leadership.”

“Ideally, the press corps could work out these issues through fair, respectful dialogue instead of through fiat,” said Military Reporters and Editors, another advocacy group. “Many of the reporters impacted by this decree have embedded with U.S. forces around the globe — covering conflicts and sensitive operations — and deeply understand the importance of operational security.”

The decision, while decried by media groups as an overreach, received a lot of support on social media, where many conservatives agree with Trump that much of the so-called legacy media is “fake news.”

“A number of critics who are cheering this media crackdown also breathlessly amplified details about the fall of Afghanistan that were first reported by the Pentagon press corps,” Washington Post Pentagon reporter Dan Lamothe noted on X. “The difference: Those leaks were politically beneficial to their side.”

The latest attack on Pentagon reporters came just before Hegseth departed for official travel to Singapore, when his office tried to get CNN producer Haley Britzky bumped from the trip because of a social media post in which she invited possible sources to contact her privately using the encrypted messaging app Signal.

“Any reporters that are encouraging DoD employees to bypass DoD Public Affairs and violate their terms of their employment with the government should be permanently banned from the Pentagon,” Trump adviser Arthur Schwartz posted on X. “Start with this one,” he said, referring to Britzky.

When CNN refused to replace Britzky, she remained on the trip, but the message was sent: Be careful what you do to find out what’s going on behind the scenes.

Schwartz, whom Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) blamed for almost tanking the Hegseth’s nomination when it was hanging by a thread in the Senate, also named three other reporters who he said should be permanently banned from the Pentagon: Courtney Kube of NBC, Natasha Bertrand of CNN, and James LaPorta of CBS.

“This isn’t meant to protect the republic; it is designed to impose a chill,” MRE said in its statement. “And it is a disservice to the American public, troops, veterans and families who rely on a dedicated free press to shine the light on matters of vital interest.”

There was a time, not very long ago, when talk of banning reporters, pulling their press credentials, refusing to even hold routine briefings would have been rejected out of hand.

“The press, in my view, [is] a critically important guarantor of our freedom,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a speech at the Naval Academy in 2007. “When it identifies a problem … the response of senior leaders should be to find out if the allegations are true … and if so, say so, and then act to remedy the problem. If untrue, then be able to document that fact.”

“The press is not the enemy,” Gates argued, “and to treat it as such is self-defeating.”

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At his first and only briefing in March, Parnell promised that, under Hegseth, the Defense Department would be “the most transparent in history.”

Instead, it’s well on its way to being the most opaque.