Bulwark Takes - Hegseth’s Takeover of Military Newspaper (w/ Jacqueline Smith) | Command Post

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

The Pentagon is under fire after the Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for Stars and Stripes, says she was dismissed for raising concerns about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. What does this mean for press independence inside the military?Read more from Jacqueline's op-ed: https://www.stripes.com/opinion/2026-04-23/stripes-former-ombudsman-pentagon-trying-to-silence-21465037.htmlFor a limited time, listeners can get an exclusive $25 off AuraFrame's best-selling Carver Matframe at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES with code BULWARKTAKES.Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego and Los Angeles in May: https://thebulwark.com/events

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and the faster you'll get back to a good night's sleep. The Credit Counseling Society. When debt's got you, you've got us. Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bullwork. Welcome to Command Post on the Bullwork Takes Feed. I'm joined as always by Broadwater Contributor, retired lieutenant general Mark Hurtling. General, I'll argue me this morning. Thank you, Ben.

I'm great this morning. And we have a very special guest, which I'll allow you to introduce in just a second. But before we do, I've got to give you a shout out if I can't. People don't know this, but Ben is my editor for all the works we put out. and he takes choppy sentences and turns them into prose, number one. But secondly, he's also a fine journalist and reporter himself and a real smart guy because yesterday he actually broke a story that had to do with the president putting his picture on passports. And Ben, you were the first guy to break that story, even though the White House thwarted you

and gave the story to Fox when they told you to wait for a while. So congratulations on that huge scoop. It was very well done. And a great article, too. You should read it in the Bullwark. Thank you so much. Yeah, that was a group effort by a lot of us here at the Bulwark. A lot of people contributed to that.

And, you know, it's the importance of independent media. We're trying to actually report the news, even when the White House wants to give away our best stuff. Okay, I will say right before I introduce our guest, we are aware that right now, Defense Secretary Pete Hegsef is testifying before Congress. We have people watching it. our great producer, Matt, other people are keeping an eye on it. If something crazy happens, we will talk about it immediately. So stay here.

Something breaks. But we have a really important conversation to get to. So I'm very happy to introduce Jacqueline Smith, who up until yesterday was the ombudsman for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that is supposed to be independent. It is the military's own newspaper. Jacqueline, thanks for joining us. I want to ask you a bunch of background questions for people who may not have heard of Stars and Stripes before. So start us off.

What exactly is it? The Stars and Stripes is the newspaper for the daily newspaper for the military community. And its roots go all the way back to the Civil War. Actually, the first publication, the first printing was in 1861 in Missouri. And right now, yeah, there's a museum actually on the site where, that the paper was printed. It's very interesting, Bloomfield, Missouri. It didn't publish again until World War I. During World War II, it began publishing daily. It's been daily since then. This newspaper reports on all things, all things military, and also other information that the troops

might need from home, if they're overseas particularly. So there is news about what's going on in different states and in Washington that they need to know. But primarily it's about what's going on in the military. Yeah. And Ben, if I can jump in real quick, first of all, a shout out to Missouri. I was just there this weekend in St. Louis. And I've actually been to the Stars and Strides Museum in Bloomfield. And it is a wonderful history of a newspaper that really has been dedicated to soldiers.

But the other thing we were taught, well, all military personnel. The other thing we were talking about before the show started was when you're overseas, when you're deployed on a ship or on the ground or in the air, you read the Stars and Stripes because it's usually the only English newspaper in the area which you're in. And it gives you not only hometown news, but military news that some hometown papers don't cover. So it's really an interesting mix of not only reporters that work directly for the Stars and Stripes, but also the Stripes takes in, you know, other articles from outlets like AP or UPI, even the New York Times or some of the bigger newspapers.

And what I'll tell you, Ben, is from a soldier's perspective, it is the first thing you want to see in the morning. Not only just to scan the headlines, but also, like I always used to do, is read the box scores from the night before the game that you couldn't watch or look at the cartoons that are in the paper. And it's everywhere. And as you started out by introducing Jacqueline, you know, 99% of the American public have never served. So they don't know about the value of the stars and stripes. And it was the newspaper I read for my total of 15 years in deployments and stationed overseas. So that's just a shout out from a personal perspective.

I'm going to give you a shout out now, General, and just say that you wrote a great little article in our Morning Shots newsletter, which is free and everyone can and should subscribe to about your experience overseas with Stars and Stripes that I highly recommend people check out. That's in today's Morning Shots newsletter from the Bullwork. So, Jackie, you were the Ombudsman. What did the Ombudsman, does the Ombudsman, may not in the future of the Ombudsman do for Stars and Stripes? Well, you know what? I'll answer that question, Ben, but if I may, respond to the general's remarks.

Yeah, sure. So you mentioned about the troops being able to get. news from the wire services, AP, New York Times and so forth, the comics. Well, this is one area that the Pentagon has decided stripes cannot do anymore. It was in a March 9th memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense, Steve Feinberg that stripes would be, and this word is in quotes, prohibited from using wire services. That alarm me because I see that is censorship. And also it means that they're controlling what the military, what the troops can read. You know, this is news. Now, you can't have a stripes reporter everywhere, so of course they have to rely to some extent for

national, mainly national news, you know, on the wire service. If I can reinforce that too, Ben, because when my last deployment in Iraq in 2007 and eight, we had AP reporters, New York Times reporters, post reporters, all embedded with us. And the stories they would write about our units would not only appear in their newspaper, but the stripes would pull those, the stars and stripes would pull those from, you know, whatever newspaper they appeared in and put it in the stripes so soldiers could read about their own actions as reported by the embedded people. And, you know, it was a good way to get information out and to show the troops that other people were paying attention to what they were doing. So this gets to what the ombudsman did, right? I mean, this is sort of your

bailiwick. That's right. So the ombudsman position was created. back in 1991 with the National Defense Authorization Act. And that was in response to the military trying to suppress information about Iran-Contra affair and other areas. So Congress created the position to oversee and try to protect the editorial independence of stars and stripes from such occurrences happening again. I'm the 13th ombudsman. It's a three-year term, and so I try to monitor what's going on, and required to report to Congress direct about any threats to the independence or also what's happening with stars and stripes in general.

The good work reporters are doing, the staff is doing as well. Then there's other functions that you might know go with being an ombudsman, and that is responding to readers' questions, such as, you know, I think this coverage was unbalanced and then I investigated that sort of thing. Very interesting job. It sounds really interesting. It sounds really important if the military is going to have real journalism for the people who are serving.

And that was your job up until yesterday. So you wrote a really interesting column, four stars and stripes of what was happening during your last days on the job. The Pentagon is trying to silence me. There it is. People can read that at Stars and Stripes website. So what exactly happened over the last week with you and your job and your role? Well, good question. I don't know. It happened very suddenly and undramatically, I guess you might say. So since January 5th, little background, since January 15th, when Sean Parnell, he's the assistant to the Secretary of Defense,

for Public Affairs, put a post on X calling for a refocus of stars and stripes. So that was really alarming. And since then, I've been speaking out about various aspects of it. Coming up. Then going to March 9th with that memo saying that stripes was prohibited from using syndicated material. I wrote a column. So now it's two weeks ago, I guess, with the lead, the beginning.

of it saying Pete Hick said doesn't want you to see the Sunday color comics and stripes anymore, something like that. I have a feeling that's what got me in trouble because the next week, here's what happened. It was a week ago Tuesday. Max Lederer, the publisher of Stars and Stripes, call an email and said, can we talk? I said, yeah, sure. You know, wondering what's going on. And he gave me the news.

He had just received from partner's office a form with really basic form about that I would be off the payroll, effective on the 28th. So just a big slip, basically. Just like, okay, you're gone, no explanation, nothing. No explanation, no warning. I would have thought if they were unhappy with my columns or my speaking out to Congress, whatever I was doing, there would have been some communication. You know, when you work somewhere, it's always if management is not happy with you, they call you in and they say, okay, you need to work on this. We don't like that. Why are you doing this? Nothing. I had no indication that this was coming, except, you know, I know when you speak out, you're pretty your neck out there, which is okay, because I had to be defending stripes in the First Amendment. So let me just say that I think it was done suddenly because that form removing me from the payroll. had my wrong birth date. And most people wouldn't mind being decades younger and also my wrong salary. So I think it was done in haste. That's so interesting. I mean, it sounds like you were fired essentially

for doing your job and we will get into a lot of the broader implications and what this says about the relationship of the Pentagon to the media, the relationship of the Pentagon leadership to the people in uniform who they're supposed to have their best interest at heart. But first, stay with us for just a second, we're going to take a very short break so that our colleague Sam Stein can tell you about our sponsors. Buller takes a sponsored by ORAFrams. Look, Mother's Day is coming up and this is the last holiday where you want to get caught flat-footed. Trust me, I've been there. It got ugly. Thankfully, ORAFrams, digital picture frames are a complete layup of a gift because you can give your mom more of her favorite thing. And what is that? It's you and your grandkids in pixel form.

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support the show by mentioning us at checkout. In terms and conditions do apply. Okay, while we're showing here real quick, I'm going to take a gap for just another second. Someone asked me recently why I wear the same sweatshirt every time we record this show. You can buy this sweatshirt. This is a bulwark sweatshirt. It comes in many colors.

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which says the bulwark on it. If my letting grow better, you can see that. Okay. So let's get into the nitty gritty. First of all, it doesn't sound like, well, let me ask you this, Jackie. Is there any plan that you have heard of or heard rumors of to appoint a new ombudsman? Or they're just figuring we'll leave that position. empty and then no one will do this job. There are plans to appoint a new one.

Mr. Parnell had asked the publisher to submit three names within 30 days for Parnell to approve. It's a really fast track. Really, that does it give any time for someone to apply because it'd be through the USA job site, which takes a long time. It took me about four months from the time I applied in a series of interviews, you know, as they made the field smaller. So it's pretty fast track, but I believe they intend to fill the position. They didn't eliminate the position.

I think Congress would have a lot to say about that since it was Congress who created the position. Okay. So it sounds like they're going to try maybe to sort of handpick who ends up being the ombudsman. And they've said that they can't run outside news sources. And they said they have to refocus on basically the things that the, that the Pentagon leadership cares about.

It sounds like this is more or less a sort of slow motion takeover of what is supposed to be an independent outlet. Is that right? That's the way I see it, yes. Yeah. So, General, I'd ask you, you know, as you said, you read this, the United Stars and Stripes for years when you were abroad, and you saw not only what you saw in the paper,

but also what the troops serving under you appreciated about it. So what does all this mean to you? How do you reflect on it? Well, it is the newspaper of choice to anyone that's overseas and on military basis. The way I see it is exactly the way Jacqueline sees it. We are talking about the difference between reporting and journalism versus messaging. And there are a lot of things that the command can message. You know, there's certainly things that as a commander, I would tell my soldiers, my family members,

here's what's going on. But the Stripes was a free-thinking approach, and it was fun, too, as Jacqueline mentioned, you know, it had the comics, it had the sports pages. It had letters to the editors from soldiers. And truthfully, as a commander, you know, sometimes I'd read those and just go, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen next on this one? But it's an open forum for free speech and freedom of the press. This is not a messaging tool.

It is not an influence operation. It is truthfully reporting in journalism, which is very different. They're there to shed sunlight on the kinds of things that the military does or that the military is interested in. And it also gives the people who read it a worldview. I mean, these are articles that are coming from, sometimes from international organizations talking about what the U.S. is doing, sometimes from within the United States. But they are investigative journalism. It isn't just messaging on what we want the troops to hear.

And the one thing I said in the article that we published this morning, Ben, is soldiers are smarter than most people think they are. And it's interesting, they are going to be able to tell the difference between a newspaper that is just voicing what the command wants them to hear, what the civilian leadership wants them to hear, or in fact some biases that need to be passed versus no kid in news. And when that happens, they're going to turn to other sources. And the other sources now are going to be the Internet and conspiracy theories and those kind of things. You know, what I tell you is a lot of people ask me even today, what do you read to stay informed?

And I list of several outlets that I take a look at to try and get the best balance of the news. I actually think, Ben, that the Stars and Stripes gives a damn good balance. of the news because they are nonpartisan. It is a military newspaper. And they select outside journalists to provide articles because they are balanced articles. They're not trying to push an agenda. They want soldiers in form. So I think it's going to harm the morale. I also think it's going to harm the flow of information within the ranks. General, I think you are so right. In response to my columns I've heard from a lot of readers and they're saying, okay, we may not always agree with the news out there, but just give us the truth. We're big boys and girls, you know, we can deal with it.

We need to rely on stars and stripes to tell us the truth and not what is being filtered. Yeah, I have an anecdote and I have a war story if you'd like to hear it. So when I was a brand, when I was a brand new Brigadier General, I just had come back from Iraq after a 15 month tour and I had a new assignment at the training area in Graffendier. And, you know, we were being, as a commander, I was being asked by the local Germans, hey, we haven't been allowed on the post since 9-11. Can we have a beer fest in your yard? And my yard or my house, the quarters I had were one of the best general officer quarters in the army. It used to be an old German administration building. It was really cool. It looked like, anyway, I'm getting too far down the weeds. But it was also the symbol of

the town. They had it on their plates. They had it on pictures. There was always a German flag out front. So we had a beer fest in my front yard. And didn't the Stars and Stripes reporter take a picture of me and the mayor drinking these big beer bottles? And it was plastered on the front page of the Stars and Stripes. I thought it was funny when I saw it, but when I got a call from my four-star boss saying, hey, you know, we're in the middle of a war. I don't think people want to see a general drinking beer on the front page of stars and stripes. Okay, I made a mistake, but it caused a lot of churn within the ranks saying, hey, all the troops were saying, hey, it's great. The General Hartling's bringing folks into Graffin beer to have a beer fest, whereas my boss was saying, not so fast, but it's

freedom of the press. So I avoided drinking beer within a view of any reporters after that or anyone with a camera for that matter. That does get to the heart of the matter of who is the newspaper for. and traditionally it's been for the enlisted folks. And that goes back to, you know, there's a story from World War II, probably you've heard about it. General Patton was unhappy with the cartoons by Bill Malden. And Bill had these fictional characters, Willie and Joe, they're beloved now. But they were unshaven, unkept, a little disrespectful, but always on mission. So Patton goes to then General Eisenhower saying, you know, this is, I don't like that.

this is not good. This is not depict how the soldiers should be. And Eisenhower said, this is the soldier's paper. Let them have it. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I'd reinforce that, you know, one of the great reporters of World War II that's talked about in the museum is a guy named Ernie Pyle. And Ernie Pyle has a journalism school named after him at my alma mater, or my grad school alma mater, Indiana University. So these are the kinds of historical features that come out of a great organization like stars and stripes. And when you see the current Department of Defense trying to quash those kind of things, it's dangerous for the institution of not only the military, but for the press. Yeah, I want to get into it a little bit the how this fits into

the broader pattern of how this, how this Paddyod Leadership deals with the press. But I think Jackie made exactly the right point, which is, you know, just the other day, Secretary of Defense was in front of the media. It was in the briefing room in the Pentagon. And he said, the legacy media are the Pharisees and they are so focused on nitpicking, they can't see all the good that's going on. And they're so, what he said was interesting. He said, they're so focused on hating Trump that they can't see all the good that the men and women in uniform are doing, which is yet another example of sort of substituting the supreme command level of leadership

with supporting the men and women in uniform and yet at the same time they're saying to the men and women in uniform you can't have your sports page, you can't have your comics, you can't have actual news reported from the newspapers back home that you may be missing and you may want to know what's going on back home

if you're thousands of miles away on a deployment for 15 months it seems like you know you can't have it both ways. Either you feel as the Secretary of Defense like you are representing the troops or you're not and you don't have their best interest at heart. Well, I see what's going on with Stripes as part of the overall campaign with restrictions against the media. And that began probably last summer with restrictions on where the mainstream media could go within the Pentagon.

And I think you all saw it getting tighter and tighter where in the fall there was a requirement that journalists sign a form, basically saying what the news they would gather had to be cleared by the Pentagon first, and no reputable journalists would sign that. So, as you know, what may be about 40, 36, 40 of them walked, you know, left reporting from the Pentagon. So the way, what they're doing to starts the stripes is not isolated or unusual. I do see it within that bigger permission to control the message. It doesn't. make it right? No, absolutely not. And you know, I'd like both of your

perspectives on this because it seems like it's not only sort of contrary to the values of A, trusting the people who are in the force, who are all volunteers, who are highly trained, who, you know, if we can trust them to make decisions of life or death, we can trust them with what to read, right?

And B, general American values of freedom of the press, it also strikes me that it's probably not smart policy. I mean, General Hurtling, you've written about this sort of dysfunctional marriage dynamic between the military leadership and the press. But it strikes me that, you know, if the Pentagon is upset about the kind of coverage they're getting, this probably isn't the way to make it better. And, you know, I know before Jackie, you were at the Ombudsman, for the officer,

and you also had a long career as a journalist. So, General, I'd like to get your perspective on that first, and then Jackie yours as well. Yeah, well, one of the lessons I learned, Ben, over my career is if you want to generate the kind of trust that you need between the military and the press, the onus really is on the military to do that. They have to reach out. They have to build the trust. They have to figure out what reporters they can talk to, what they can give information to. Because, you know, what you referred to, Jacqueline probably doesn't know, but Tom Shanker, the New York. York Times and I a long time ago wrote an article entitled, The Military Media Dysfunctional Marriage,

we stay together for the kids. And the effort was to say, hey, my kids are the soldiers, and they're the sons and daughters of American citizens. So I have to help them understand that when they talk to the press, they're informing their mothers and fathers of what they're doing, You know, that, you know, the media can sometimes bend what they say or maybe not do exactly, get the quote exactly right. But, you know, that's part of the requirement of building trust and making sure that your language is precise and your information is clear when you talk to journalists. And what I see is, you know, if the Pentagon right now is pointing at the press and calling them Pharisees and Sadducees or whatever, Hegsa said the other day. My dad once taught me when you're pointing one finger out, you got three fingers pointing back at you. And maybe they ought to take a look at how they're

interacting with the media by throwing them out of the Pentagon, by making them signed statements, by calling them names, by accusing them of being fake news. Hey, if you don't like all those things, what are you doing to try and fix it? Because truthfully, journalists are part of a profession. I've always believed that. They have professional ethos. They have ethics and values. They're disciplined if they do something wrong. They go through training to help them be a journalist.

And that's why podcasters like us or maybe me, not you, but podcasters like me or people that write blogs aren't truly professional journalists. They haven't gone to school to understand how they get edited and how the wrong information is fixed by someone that's over watching them. So all of those things are a combination of the professionalism, which is in the military, and the professionalism, which is in the media or journalists, and it's being intercepted by those who are in civilian positions right now saying, we don't want that. We want our reports to go out, not anybody else's. And I just think that's dangerous. And not only that, Ben, I'd add one more thing. We raise our hand to support and defend

the Constitution. The press is one of the few institutions that is specifically named in our Constitution, and their freedom is guaranteed. So when things like this happen to people like Jacqueline, it really is bigger than it appears to be, in my view, because it's a violation of our Constitution. Thank you. From a journalism point of view, I have to say that journalists are required to be objective, not pro this, anti-that. And with Sturgeon's tribes, there's the extra layer of the military. They are all DOD employees and therefore have to be nonpolitical. There's no agenda going after Trump or trying to promote President Trump.

They're simply, well, not so simply, but portraying the news as accurately and fairly and balanced as they can. And you make a distinction between civilian people at the Pentagon and Defense Department and the others in uniform. And I have to say that there is a distinction. As an budsman, I'm in Germany and also in Japan. I met with many public affairs officers. And we talked about there is a little bit of an overlap and that we both have the mission of informing the military community. But there's also a difference on how to inform that message and how it gets told.

So there's an understanding, and so journalists also have ethics that they follow, and that leads to being objective. Let me just say, that was one thing that also bothered me about this March 9th memo, which is about having a new policy for stars and stripes. Nowhere didn't mention ethics,

which is very important for journalists. Yeah. Yeah, and Ben, I'll say one more thing. I just want to include this in case anybody gets any of this wrong of what we've been saying. You know, you brought up the comment that Secretary Hegseth mentioned that the journalists aren't covering the military and the great job they're doing and they're all, you know, best military in the world. They're all that. None of that is true.

I mean, journalists have never said anything about the operation not being first rate or effective or efficient. The question is not what the military is doing. It's what the government is doing and using the military, as you said before, to shield them from any kind of criticism of the strategy or the overall planning for what's going on in Iran or even Venezuela. The military is executed like they always execute. They do their job and they do it very well. No one is questioning that. The question is what is the president and the administration doing overall to inform the American people about, what's going on. And we can see that in the polling. And it has nothing to do with what journalists are saying. It's what the American people see. Totally agree with that. Jackie, before we go, I wanted to ask you one final question. These are the last couple sentences of that column you wrote in Stars and Stripes.

You wrote, this newspaper has a long history of commitment to the military community and to journalistic values. Please don't let it be controlled by Pentagon Brass. How do we do that? How do we save Stars and Stripes? we as either members of the military community, we as civilians in my case, what do we do to try to save stars and stripes for the people that need it and use it and like it? I think you have to speak to your congressional representatives and senators. They are the ones who could step in and make something happen. They can protect Sargent Stripes editorial independence through legislation. And that is, I think, the avenue to go.

I would encourage everyone to contact their congressmen, their senators, and ask for this type of protection. And as you said earlier in the show, Ben, Secretary Heggseth is testifying right now before Congress, and he testifies tomorrow before the Senate. And it's mostly about the budget and how they're executing it. But certainly this is one of many questions that he should be asked about. and our congressional representatives should hold the feet to the fire in terms of what exactly is going on. Why are you doing this and what effects do you think it will have? And, you know, again, if you fire someone without cause in the civilian environment, it causes a real ruckus in the private sector in any kind of corporation.

And from what I can see, unless there's some facts, we don't know, Jacqueline has not been fired for cause. There's something more to this, and it's, in my view, very dangerous. Couldn't agree more. Jacqueline Smith, I hope you are enjoying your new life and whatever comes next, freed from the ombudsman job. Actually, we didn't mention this, but just shortly before your tenure is due to expire anyway. So thank you for everything you've done for stars and stripes.

Thank you for joining us today. And you can watch more bulwark takes on this feed about a whole. whole range of news. So make sure to like the video, follow the feed, and we will be back next week with another command post. Thanks so much.