At a mid-July news conference at the Pentagon, AP reporter Lolita Baldor asked Gen. Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, about an attack in Afghanistan that had led to the death of an American soldier. But before he could reply, a Defense Department press officer cut in to say that Milley and the three officials flanking him would be answering questions only about the intended topic for the news conference: the announcement of the location of a new command.

The next question went to Jennifer Griffin from Fox News. Over the previous two days, President Donald Trump had roiled the NATO summit in Brussels with verbal shots at the alliance’s members, so Griffin, after opening with a question about the new command, added, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with Lita, we don’t have an opportunity to see you enough. Gen. Milley, have you reached out to your counterparts in Europe after the NATO summit to reassure them that the U.S. forces are staying?”


Again, the press officer cut off the question before Milley could answer.

The incident, which left Pentagon reporters furious, was the latest flash point in what has become an increasingly adversarial relationship between Defense Secretary James Mattis’ Cabinet department and the reporters who cover it. Chief among the complaints, according to defense reporters who spoke to POLITICO, are declining access to Mattis and other military officials, as well as a sense that reporters are not receiving the information they need to keep the public informed about America’s military activities.

Mattis has not briefed reporters on-camera in the Pentagon since April, while his chief spokesperson, Dana White, has not done so since May. Mattis used to regularly pass through the Pentagon press area to conduct gaggles with reporters, but reporters say those have all but dried up in recent weeks. Some briefings with other officials still happen, but people who used to chat or provide background information more informally are no longer engaging, reporters say. Some reporters told POLITICO that fewer of their colleagues are going to the Pentagon these days, finding it increasingly pointless.

“It’s just a waste of time,” one reporter said. “People won’t talk to you.”

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Kevin Baron, the executive editor of Defense One, said Trump’s simultaneous war on the press and hyperfocus on media have combined to fundamentally change interactions inside the Pentagon.

“It’s definitely like no time that I’ve ever seen, and this is my 10th year on the Pentagon beat,” he said. “We used to have the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs side by side in briefing room at least once a month, and if we didn’t get once a month, we complained. We’re so far beyond the way things used to be, and it’s all because of Trump.”

Another reporter agreed, saying, “It’s getting worse and there’s less information. …This idea that a four-star general is only going to speak on the topics that he wants to talk about, absolutely not. You are sending other people’s children into harm’s way. You have to answer for that.”

“We are fighting for information about war,” the reporter added. “This is not a fight for access for access’ sake. We are fighting for the public’s right to know. If you lose that, I don’t know how you get it back.”

As Trump has waged war against the news media, dubbing reporters “the enemy of the people,” relations between reporters and officials have strained across government. But Pentagon reporters have long existed outside the political fray, enjoying unusual levels of access to senior officials. Journalists who work out of the Pentagon’s press center are free to roam most areas of the building, and many have worked there for years, allowing them to build strong relationships, especially with the nonpolitical uniformed staff.

Another veteran Pentagon correspondent said that, in previous administrations, and even early in the Trump administration, reporters received more frequent opportunities to talk to and be briefed by key officials and commanders who could provide updates on conflict zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.

“We’re not getting that information at all, where we used to pretty regularly,” the reporter said. “Shutting that stuff down completely cuts the American people out of the loop about what’s being done in their name across the world.”

The reporter said some in the media were shifting focus to Capitol Hill and the State Department to try to glean information about America’s activities abroad.

White, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, said in a statement: “We have an obligation to the American people to get the facts right the first time and will continue investing our time in journalists who are equally committed to getting it right.”

“We engage with reporters regularly but deliberately,” she added. “Our metric of success is whether the American public is informed with the facts, not whether reporters are always satisfied.”

One former Pentagon spokesperson suggested that Mattis is trying to balance “the dangers of getting crosswise with Trump with the obligation to inform.” The ex-spokesperson added, though, that Mattis appears to be “too far over to the side of safety and preserving White House equities.”

As Baron put it, “The military leaders are doing everything they can to keep the military out of politics, and in trying to do that, they’re keeping themselves out of the press, or they’re being told to stay out of the press.”

White said Mattis simply prefers to keep a low profile. “Secretary Mattis is focused on defending the nation and he has a different mindset which predates this job — it's not about him,” she said.

White declined to address any other matters on the record.

Mattis has not completely disappeared: On Tuesday in Palo Alto, he answered questions at a news conference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as Australian officials with whom they had been meeting.

Still, even that interaction was a source of frustration.

The appearance was not listed on the daily schedule the Defense Department press shop distributes to media — the news came instead from a State Department release. Reporter Missy Ryan of The Washington Post tweeted, “Also, according to the @StateDept, Mattis is taking part today in a US-Australia forum in California, but DOD has not disclosed his participation anywhere that I have seen.”

That same day, a scheduled press gaggle was canceled. The night before, Trump had sent an all-caps tweet threatening Iran. Ryan’s Post colleague Dan Lamothe tweeted, “Ten hours after President Trump threatens Iran in all caps, the Pentagon discloses it will not be holding its Monday media gaggle. Again. Advertised as occurring just about every Monday. Reality is much different, especially when there are hot-button issues to address.”

Lamothe was equally unamused a week earlier when the Defense Department Twitter account tweeted a cutesy message in celebration of World Emoji Day. “Many standard Pentagon interactions with the media — press conferences, gaggles, etc. — have been greatly reduced in recent months. But fear not. We do have Emoji Day, friends,” he tweeted.

Baron pointed out that, in a less fraught setting where information was more readily available, the news conference where reporters’ questions were cut off might have been less of a big deal, especially because Milley expressed an openness to answer the questions later. Officials did eventually answer them, though off camera and invisible to the cable news watcher in chief.

“It feels like that trust has eroded at the top for sure,” Baron said.

A longstanding complaint from reporters has been around travel, as Mattis prefers to take fewer reporters on his plane with him and, during trips, spends less time with reporters than defense secretaries have in the past. Under previous administrations, reporters say, they could count on a defense secretary for at least one interaction per day — sometimes on the record, sometimes off — whereas Mattis has been much more closed off. During Mattis’ recent swing through the NATO summit and Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, he met with reporters on the record just once.

It’s not clear what’s changed over the past several months to cause Mattis to pull back farther. Last August, when reporters complained to him about diminishing access during a gaggle in the Pentagon briefing room, he seemed to threaten even less. “I could make it a lot more rigid, trust me,” he said. Mattis appears to have followed through, as that type of interaction has all but vanished.

Some reporters said that, in some cases, they suspect they aren’t getting information simply because the White House has left the Pentagon in the dark.

On Monday, BuzzFeed published a report using emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which showed the Pentagon was left out of the loop on the night of June 26, 2017, when then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer issued a statement warning Syrian President Bashar Assad that he would “pay a heavy price” if his military carried out another chemical attack.

The story includes emails from White acknowledging she was surprised by the statement. But as outlets started to report that the Pentagon was caught off-guard, White emailed a Breitbart reporter, saying, “DOD knew about the White House statement and provided edits in advance of its release. Anonymous leaks to the contrary are false or misinformed.”

Breitbart used the quote to rebut other outlets’ reports that the Pentagon was surprised.

The publication of that account likely will not increase trust in a press corps that already views the Pentagon press office, and the information it offers, skeptically.

The former Pentagon spokesperson said the effects of the Pentagon’s current approach toward the press could be long-lasting, leading to less information getting to both the American public and the troops.

“I am worried about the ripple effect downstream,” the former spokesperson said. “The lessons that are being learned by military leaders now are going to live with us for many years to come.”