Journalists have been barred from entering the Pentagon’s press office after it was redesignated as a classified space, in the latest move by the Trump administration to restrict media access to the US Defence Department.
The acting Pentagon press secretary, Jose Valdez, confirmed the change on social media, stating that the office had been reclassified as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). He said speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War, who share the facility, handle classified material, and therefore journalists would no longer be permitted to enter.
The move, first reported by the Washington Post, follows a series of restrictions imposed since September, when the military required journalists to pledge not to gather any unauthorised information, including unclassified documents, on pain of losing their press passes.
In October, after many veteran reporters refused to sign the pledge and surrendered their credentials, the department announced a new “next generation” press corps comprising 60 journalists from far-right outlets. The New York Times sued the Pentagon, winning a federal court ruling in March that the policy was unlawful.
The Pentagon subsequently issued an interim policy requiring journalists to be escorted while visiting the building, which a district judge ruled violated his order. That policy remained in effect after an appeals court stayed part of the ruling. The Times launched a second lawsuit in May, arguing the measures were an unconstitutional attempt to prevent independent reporting on military affairs.
