The Pentagon has started giving polygraph tests to about 50 military officers and civilian officials as Pete Hegseth steps up his hunt for leakers inside the building. The screening is unfolding while the Pentagon has already tightened access for reporters and gone weeks without a war briefing from Hegseth.
The move lands now because the leak fight has turned into a public campaign. Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the leakers of treasonous statements are being hunted down and said long term jail sentences will be sought, while the Pentagon itself keeps facing the kind of stories that make leak hunts more likely, including reports about weapons shortages, deteriorating conditions on a US aircraft carrier and the war’s direction.
The scale is what makes this stand out. New York Times reporting said about 50 military officers and civilian officials are being polygraphed, and the testing is described as something never done before in such a widespread way. Hegseth has also restricted reporters’ access at the Pentagon, fired journalists at the military newspaper Stars and Stripes and installed influencers to spread pro-Trump propaganda, all while bad news keeps surfacing from inside the department.
There is also a sharper edge to this campaign than the formal leak hunt suggests. Last year, Hegseth reportedly shouted at Christopher Grady, then the acting joint chiefs chairman, after press leaks about plans to give Elon Musk a Pentagon briefing on China, and told him, “I’ll hook you up to a f---ing polygraph!” That exchange, reported by The, shows how personal the crackdown has become.
But the hardest problem for Hegseth may be the one no polygraph can solve. Organizations led badly tend to leak, especially when the people inside them think information is being hidden, and the Pentagon’s own restrictions have done little to stop the flow. What remains unclear is whether the screening is aimed at one leak, a small circle of leakers or the broader stream of damaging disclosures now surrounding the department.
Hegseth has not held a Pentagon news briefing on the war since early May, and there is no clear sign yet of where the search ends. The tests are under way now, but the next move will tell whether this is a temporary sweep or the beginning of a longer purge inside the Pentagon.
