White House touts fewer leaks as civil groups warn tactics set ‘dangerous precedent’

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President Donald Trump‘s second administration is proud of its crackdown on leaks, as civil rights groups contend it is not good for the government.

Leaks undermined Trump’s first administration, as aides competed for political influence or disagreed with the president’s policy agenda.

But the most politically damaging leak of Trump’s second administration so far has been inadvertent: former national security adviser Mike Waltz‘s addition of an editor to a Signal groupchat regarding plans to attack Houthis in Yemen.

When there has been a leak — for example, regarding prospective illegal immigration enforcement raids or an intelligence report concerning last month’s strikes against Iran — the Trump administration has been strident in its response, from using polygraph tests to identify sources to personally criticizing reporters who write stories about them.

“President Trump and the entire administration take operational security seriously – and that commitment was crucial to the success of operations like Midnight Hammer, which totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “The mainstream media hates that their leakers no longer have information to leak, but this president and the entire administration will continue to prioritize protecting our national security.”

The White House also underscored the importance of operational security, citing its significance to the Department of Homeland Security‘s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran.

To that end, the Trump administration has increasingly relied on polygraph tests at the Department of Defense, DHS, the FBI, and even FEMA, after details regarding a meeting attended by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem became public.

“Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS is unapologetic about its efforts to root out leakers that undermine national security,” a DHS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment, or status as a career civil servant; we will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”

A Pentagon spokesman did not comment to the Washington Examiner when asked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s reliance on lie detector tests after reports of a second Signal chat with his wife, brother, and lawyer, as well as allegations from former political appointees regarding mismanagement, including his wife accompanying him to meetings with foreign dignitaries.

“We take the classification of information, very important. It’s very significant to us that we safeguard it,” Hegseth told Fox News in April. “And so, when we had leaks, which we’ve had here, we did a serious leak investigation. And through that leak investigation, unfortunately, we found some folks that we believe were, were not holding to the protocols that we hold dear here at the Defense Department. Through that investigation, they have been moved on and that investigation continues.”

The secretary added, “I don’t have time for leakers. I don’t have time for the hoax press that peddles old stories from disgruntled employees. We should be talking about the decimation of the Houthis, how we’re pushing back the Chinese, how we have a new defense area at the southern border … The leakers know who they are, and we know over time the truth will be told, and we stand firm behind that. Leaking is not okay in national security policy, and we will stand behind that every day of the week.”

The White House deployed a similar media strategy when CNN reported last month that the Defense Intelligence Agency’s preliminary assessment of the Iran strikes, provided to Congress, found they may not have, by Trump’s description, “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt singled out one of the three reporters on the CNN story, Natasha Bertrand, as Trump, more broadly, threatens to sue any news outlet and journalist who publishes or broadcasts content he is against, from CBS’s interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris and Iowa pollster Ann Seltzer’s pre-election survey to the recent Wall Street Journal‘s Jeffrey Epstein article.

“This is a reporter who has been, unfortunately, used by people who dislike Donald Trump in this government to push fake and false narratives,” Leavitt said during a briefing. “She should be ashamed of herself.”

In a conversation with the Washington Examiner, a White House official underlined the Trump administration’s success in preventing leaks after a series of reports of career staffers, from the National Security Council to the Department of Energy, being kept in the dark about information to protect it.

Politico reported this month that NSC staff have not been read into specific issues amid fewer meetings. This decision was made by acting national security adviser Secretary of State Marco Rubio, considering Trump’s mistrust of the organization after some members testified before Congress during his first impeachment hearings regarding alleged pressure he put on Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden.

The same news outlet reported last month that DOE political appointees have avoided delegating work to their career counterparts for similar reasons.

A White House official told the outlet that changes to the Trump administration’s decision-making process were designed to implement the president’s agenda.

“The White House, and the president, has more visibility now into what the NSC is working on than ever,” the official said.

Simultaneously, Trump signed an executive order this week creating another category of federal government workers to help the president employ people less critical of his agenda, as opposed to being a member of the so-called Deep State.

More generally, Trump has strived for loyalty in the federal government through other executive actions, reintroducing merit-based hiring practices, the White House Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Government Efficiency. For instance, aides have asked career staffers about their personal politics, including their perspectives on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and whether the 2020 election was stolen.

However, as the White House promotes its success regarding leaks, critics express concerns related to government oversight, especially after Trump fired most of the administration’s impartial inspector generals.

“As the old saying goes, where you stand depends on where you sit,” according to Claremont McKenna College politics professor John Pitney.

[Former President Barack] Obama came to office promising transparency, but once he settled into office, his administration took aggressive action against leakers,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner. “Before he became president, Trump was a big fan of leaks. ‘I love WikiLeaks,’ he said over and over. It is appropriate to guard against leaks of national security information, such as the timing of airstrikes. But using polygraphs to measure political loyalty is abusive.”

Jennifer Gibson, cofounder and legal director of Psst.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit body that assists people to disclose “public-interest information,” continued, “both Democratic and Republican administrations have, at times, targeted whistleblowers, often under the banner of national security.”

“But what we’re witnessing from this administration is something markedly different, and measurably more aggressive,” Gibson told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a dangerous precedent. We want public servants to speak up when they see illegality or misconduct. That’s not leaking. It’s a time-honored tradition that has helped safeguard our democracy for generations. Silencing those voices doesn’t protect government; it erodes accountability.”

Trump’s first administration encountered countless leaks, including during the first month of his presidency, regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn‘s telephone call with Russia‘s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

Trump’s description of African countries, Haiti, and El Salvador as “shithole” nations, likely leaked by a lawmaker in a White House meeting, the president’s phone calls with former leaders of Mexico and Australia, and his dinner with then-FBI Director James Comey during which he implored the director of the country’s top law enforcement agency to “let go” of its investigation into Flynn were among the leaks during his first administration.

But Trump’s administrations are not the only ones that have grappled with leaks. Obama’s administration experienced a leak in 2012 shortly after his reelection regarding his authorization of a cyberattack on Iran, supplementing Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning‘s headline-making disclosures.

Snowden, a former National Security Agency intelligence contractor, leaked thousands of classified documents in 2013 regarding, in part, global surveillance programs. Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, earlier in 2010 leaked 750,000 classified and sensitive documents, including what has become known as the “Iraq War Logs” and “Afghan War Diary.”

But during Trump’s second administration, the biggest leak has been Waltz’s accidental inclusion in March of Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal messaging group discussing Operation Rough Rider in Yemen, including targets, weapons, strike sequencing, and the name of an undercover CIA operative. Waltz added Goldberg under the belief he was NSC spokesman Brian Hughes.

Waltz was not immediately fired for his mistake, but was later nominated to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in May after Trump’s first 100 days in office.

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