Waging War in Secret
What we don’t know can hurt us
BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY
We live in an age of amazing advancements in communication. Technology has given journalists the ability to report from anywhere in the world with a phone and cell signal.
That is why it is so ironic that a war being fought in 2026, a war that is costing American lives, untold billions of dollars, and large chunks of the country’s reputation, is happening in such secrecy. And that’s just the way Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth want it.
That dynamic duo of disinformation doesn’t want you to know what’s going on with the thousands of U.S. military members stationed in the Iran theater. Nor do they want you to know the damage inflicted by Iran’s retaliatory attacks.
Their madness is succeeding. Six months in, and we know little about what’s really going on. We hear secondhand accounts from parents of sailors and Marines on an aircraft carrier lacking food and basic necessities. Months after the fact, we are getting bare-bones reports of the destruction of American bases in the Middle East.
The secretary of defense and the equally thin-skinned president live to lie and distort, and their reign of disinformation includes punishing those who are trying to find and report the news. Their get-the-reporter playbook has three main options, all of which we have seen this week: belittle and discredit; threaten and sue (we will get back to those in a minute); and, perhaps the most troublesome, block access.
Blocking access can mean physically barring reporters from briefings as Trump has done at the White House and Hegseth at the Pentagon. It can also mean not disclosing information the public has the right to know.
We know of no reporters who are embedded with U.S. forces anywhere in the region. Quite the contrast from Iraq, Afghanistan, and every conflict going back to the Civil War. What is provided are Pentagon-produced propaganda videos and AI-generated slop from the president.
Having correspondents on the front lines and in other key positions is essential for the American public to understand what is happening. While the U.S. leadership has often taken issue with reports from embedded journalists in the past, they understood the value and need for independent information.
The latest example of this information vacuum came over the weekend when Trump suddenly launched a new attack on Iran. Why? Someone knows, but it’s not the American people. Iran retaliated and reportedly hit a U.S. base in Jordan. Damage? We have no way of knowing the full extent of the destruction. Are we running low on weapons? The Pentagon says no. Defense officials, speaking off the record, say the situation is “critical.”
Hegseth, a man notoriously obsessed with leaks, appears to have been especially incensed on Sunday when he learned that The Washington Post had published a story about a classified Pentagon assessment advising him that prolonged operations in Iran could weaken the U.S.’s ability to respond to future threats. By the way, this is not groundbreaking news.
The Defense Secretary sicced his internet dogs on the Post. DOD spokesperson Sean Parnell took to social media to chastise the paper. “Publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary’s orders book is a crime.”
“Fact check: Independent journalism is not a crime. It’s also especially important at a time when government officials are withholding key details and concerns about a war being fought on behalf of the American people with their taxpayer dollars,” Dan Lomothe, the Post’s military affairs reporter, wrote.
Several far-right social media accounts defended Hegseth, including something called DataRepublican, run by Jennica Pounds. “This is one of the most serious leaks I have ever seen, and you are using this to score partisan points against Hegseth,” she posted.
Pounds isn’t just doing this out of the goodness of her heart. It was recently revealed by the Post that she is a civilian employee of the Defense Department. Pounds is getting paid to attack detractors and amplify Hegseth to her nearly 1 million followers. She is not the only one. Several other pro-Trump and Hegseth accounts are also in the employ of the DOD, though details about the nature of that employment, like compensation, are being kept quiet.
So Hegseth has purged the Pentagon of real reporters, replacing them with far-right hacks, who “cover” the occasional press briefings. He is paying influencers to boost his ridiculous ideas, like mandatory testosterone screening for every soldier, sailor, and Marine over 30, all while telling the American people virtually nothing about the war in Iran.
Reporters are still trying to report on the war, relying on information coming from Iran, which is challenging to verify, as well as with technology-like satellite imagery; however, journalists accompanying fighting forces are the best way to get anything close to the real story of any war.
Trump’s own cowardly schemes to intimidate the press are especially deplorable.
He likes to belittle and discredit in person, with cameras rolling — think his “quiet piggy” admonition of a female reporter on Air Force One. But if that’s not possible, he will take to social media as he recently did. Last Thursday, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times wrote a piece saying that the president was skipping the ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks in part because he would not be allowed to give a speech.
Haberman, who has been in Trump’s crosshairs for years, was lambasted in a vile post we will not repeat here. That line of attack usually just brings more attention to the story and rarely has long-term effects for the journalist.
When internet bullying doesn’t work, Trump resorts to personal threats. On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker said that Trump-endorsed candidates during the 2026 primary season had “mixed results.” Which is true. Though many won, several high-profile candidates lost, most notably five people running to become Republican candidates for governor.
The president took issue with Welker’s accurate characterization, posting, “she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.” The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks the authority to penalize individual journalists. But Trump has had luck bringing largely toothless suits against media companies, some of which have been settled for millions and cast a pall of intimidation on corporate-owned journalistic enterprises.
With a nod to investigative journalist Bob Woodward, democracy does indeed die in the dark. The press is called the “Fourth Estate” because it is the unofficial yet vital “fourth branch of government.” In the United States, it ranks right up there just behind the three official branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.
The Fourth Estate is essential to holding the powerful accountable, especially during Trump’s reign. He has gotten rid of or weakened most internal checks on power, like inspectors general and ethics offices, while ignoring norms, rules, and court orders.
To those who think the press is too powerful in our democracy, it needs to be said that what we’re going through now is the price we pay when the press is under sustained attack by a president and his party.
We the people are not being given nearly enough details about this war that is being conducted in our name. We are without vital information on a war our sons and daughters are being asked to fight and upon which a large part of our country’s future depends. Except for the ballot box, we are without the power to change that.
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No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading.
Stay Steady,
Dan
NYA Thanks Dan Rather and Team Steady!