Leo Hohmann – Leo’s Newsletter Sept 22, 2025
The government monstrosity formerly known as the Department of Defense and recently renamed the Department of War is cracking down on media coverage, announcing new rules and restrictions on journalists.
The Secretary of the new Department of War, Pete Hegseth, announced Friday that members of the press operating inside the Pentagon, must submit to significantly tighter rules for access and reporting.
Those who don’t play by the new rules will lose access.
The new rules require all journalists to work through established public-affairs channels, display press credentials at all times, and accept that possession of unauthorized information — even if it’s non-classified information — may result in the loss of press credentials.
The policy, laid out in a memo released Friday, follows restrictions introduced earlier this year.
In May, Hegseth, in the name of national security, directed the Pentagon to impose tighter controls on press activity after a series of leaks he said endangered bombing operations in Yemen.
Hegseth has it backwards. If leaks are happening that compromise national security, then he should be cracking down on his own government employees and contractors who are doing the leaking, not on the press.
Hegseth was a member of the media himself before he took the job of Defense Secretary, but he clearly learned nothing from that experience. He has essentially banned journalism at the Pentagon. The implication of his new rules is that reporters covering his massive bureaucracy are only allowed to repeat what’s said by a government official speaking at an official press conference or regurgitate the contents of a government press release. Sorry but that’s not journalism. That’s stenography.
Sorry Pete, but I’m not with you on this one. You’ve done some good things as head of the Department of Defense, such as eliminating DEI. But this isn’t good. It’s the type of thing that happens when a nation is no longer confident of itself and shuts down transparency.
Any Pentagon correspondent who doesn’t turn in their resignation this week in response to this outragious attack on the First Amendment is no journalist at all. A true journalist couldn’t work under these smothering “rules,” because they provide no space for the actual craft of journalistic investigation and independent analysis.
When you take away the ability of the press to talk to sources of its own choosing, when you take away its ability to assemble facts independently of the government authorities, you strip it of its entire purpose. It becomes the state-run media. The official government organ. Like Pravda was for the old Soviet system.
By the way, the self-proclaimed “Peace President” taking it upon himself to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, explains everything about why Hegseth made the changes he made and is cracking down on press freedoms.
The new name reflects a federal government not interested merely in national defense but one that is positioning itself to be permanently at war. A permanent war state. In a time of war, nations are far less tolerant of dissent, and far less tolerant of inconvenient facts. As the old saying goes, and it really is true, “the first casualty of war is the truth.”
No, it WAS the War Department till Ike and others had delusions of goofiness and called it Department of Defense.
So everything old is new again. And it always made more sense. As the Defense Department, it never defended anything even once.
Trump strikes a blow for honesty == about time.
First of all, at least there is finally some accuracy to the name of that murder machine since they haven’t defended jack-shit other than Jew psychopaths for over 100 years. Those criminally insane maniacs certainly didn’t “defend” the cuntry on 9/11 nor have never actually gone after the real perpetraitors of that mass murder and mass conditioning event. Nor have they done squat to defend what used to be the borders from the hordes of less-than-worthless invading orcs. Nor have they lifted a finger to defend the cuntry from the relentless waves of treason among the feral federal cartel in Washingstein District of Criminals. No, they are and have been part and parcel of it all. That clown car over-stuffed with the criminally insane have only butchered for The. Wrong. F*cking. Side. in just about every conflict since 1860.
While Hegseth’s (who is a completely deranged “Christian zionist”) directive is concerning, the fact is that there weren’t really any actual “journalists” in the press pool anyway. You don’t get press credentials for sewers such as the Pentagram, Blight House, or Cuntgress unless you’re a controlled and compromised stooge.
One of the best things that could happen to the Jewnited States would be if a big asteroid came screaming down and decimated the Pentagram on a day when all of the drooling jackals are present.
yes we are a very long way from the photo that changed the peoples view on the Vietnam War. Now the perpetrators of War complete own the so-called ‘freedom’ of press…..what a joke we’ve become, but wait, it gets much worse.
Yeah right—more phony propaganda that the State & Media aren’t owned/controlled by the same authority (Jewish central banks/rabbis/oligarchs). ‘You see, the MSM and the State are separate.’ lol
It’s meaningless since most if not all those “journalist’ass” are just imbedded agents, employees of one of the other gov agencies. Still, you nailed it , identifying this agency in a permanent state of war.
Shouldn’t the Head on the Eagle be turned to face the Other way at least? so its not just the Name but the View in the symbolic eagle which has shifted?
Or would that make people realize the swastika exists as both a left turning and right turning image? 😛
jewSA/Israhell is a crime syndicate since over 100 years .
without crime you never become rich in jewSA .
@ aClue 3:34 pm —
Not an eagle.
That little deception is Ben Franklin’s little joke. Franklin had a lot of them.
The Eagle has an ancient association with Zeus, king of the primordial European gods. Only Hitler used it as originally intended.
The “American Eagle” is a phoenix in disguise. To muddy waters still further, Ben Franklin even joked he “made it look like a turkey” because a turkey was his first choice. This was a bad joke.
The phoenix is the symbol of wealth and power, and how it originated in Babylon, continued in the Greco-Roman world, and moved again to Amsterdam. Switzerland, and finally, nested in London.
Their last stop was never to be the USA, Canada, Australia, or Patagonia. The Zionist bankers of London have at last created a situation where they are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The cyber tech gave them the ability to keep their funds anywhere, and always moving.
The phoenix is not outdated in any way. Mostly it lusts for China and the mostly untapped wealth of the East. They are sick of the white man. They do not trust the Chinese much.
We’re living in a period of indecision on the part of the bankers who rule the world. They want to dump all white nations, but they are not sure about our replacements. Pity the chosen people in their hour of confusion.
A true ethical dilemma has frozen out financial overlords. That’s why the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and much else are so frustrating — they go on, accomplish nothing. The Oligarchs can’t make up their minds.
Hesgeth is just another professional actor hired to fill a role in govt. He’s a mouthpiece for his bosses, the guys who are seldom in front of the camera.
I expect the govt agencies will all follow suit like falling dominoes. That was the pattern, remember, back when they each started acquiring huge weapons stashes, hundreds of M16’s for the Dept of Education, etc. (Clever idea, claiming to use the agencies for storage of weapons when you don’t want the public to know who you really bought them for. But none of the agencies actually had the space to put them in. Where did they go? Who are they for?)
It’s only half the job to propagandize the mainstream media. The other half is to keep the alt media from finding out any truths. Not that much of the alt media isn’t controlled, too. But at least they give an different take from the official narrative.