The documents we obtained show that avoiding the film and its findings seemed to be the priority for the Navy.

For this article, I posed a range of questions to the Navy, both to the service’s top public-affairs office at the Pentagon––the U.S. Navy Office of Information––and to the office that handles press for aviation in Norfolk. Some of my questions were directed to people who I believed wrote some of the redacted emails. I wanted to know about the Navy’s policy for deciding whether or not to participate in stories; sought clarity on specific emails that we received, which are included below; and asked for reactions to comments put forward by others. The Navy gave one response to cover all the questions.

“Per the Department of Defense’s principles of information, Navy Public Affairs is committed to the accurate and timely public release of information,” Commander Dave Hecht, the public-affairs officer for Naval Air Force Atlantic, said in an email. He added that according to the Navy’s public-affairs policy, “information is not withheld to protect the government from criticism or embarrassment. The Navy routinely supports a wide range of externally-produced media productions, including documentaries within guidelines set in Dept. of Defense (DoD) Instruction 5410.16. Unfortunately, the Navy cannot support every production request which does not meet those expressed requirements. Each is evaluated on a number of factors to put forth the best and most accurate image of the U.S. military.”

I reached out to the Office of Information to see if it had anything to add. In an email, it said it did not.

On my final reporting trip for the documentary, in late 2017, I asked my main public-affairs contact again whether Van Dorn’s squadron would be willing to participate in the film. He declined and gave me the usual rap, that it’s Navy policy not to work with filmmakers who don’t have a distribution deal in place. Instead, he said he’d send me some updated data that reflected how the Sea Dragon’s performance had improved.

The emails we obtained show that he got in touch with the Naval Safety Center, the office that tracks safety data. “What I’m looking to do is showcase how procedural changes instituted since 2014 have resulted in a decrease in mishaps and a much safer airframe. Thanks for helping me tell this story,” he wrote.

The reply, we discovered, was grim. While the aircraft didn’t have a major accident from early 2014 to 2017 (apart from Van Dorn’s), it still had a crash record about three times higher than the overall naval helicopter fleet during the same period.

The official never shared that information with me.

While many military reporters were understandably reluctant to discuss with me their treatment by public-affairs officers—they want to keep doing their job—some have clearly encountered the same treatment. The Navy’s attitude is also reflective of the overall direction at the Pentagon, where there hasn’t been a televised briefing in nearly a year.