U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House for Florida, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 20, 2026. REUTERS Nathan Howard
The New York Times reports the Pentagon hit roughly 50 members of the Joint Staff with polygraph tests in an aggressive war on potential leakers.
“U.S. government investigators have taken the extraordinary step of subjecting … members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff to polygraph tests over leaks to journalists, including about how the Iran war has created a shortage of crucial munitions, according to officials briefed on the move,” the Times reports, with investigators asking military officers and civilian employees on if they had ever disclosed classified information to members of the press, and about whether they provided information about diminished U.S. munitions stocks.
According to the Times, the polygraph tests were conducted in August “after a flurry of news reports detailed diminished stocks of crucial munitions, including of long-range missiles and Patriot interceptors.”
Trump himself was reportedly caught off guard by news of the devastated munitions, likely because his staff and lieutenants feed him nothing but good news concerning his unilateral war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth allegedly found himself sidelined after proving himself a useless ‘yes-man’ incapable of delivering more than happy fluff about the U.S. conflict.
“Hegseth, among others in the president's orbit, 'tells Trump what he wants to hear,'” the Daily Mail recently reported, citing an insider, who echoed “concerns about Trump's 'yes-men' military advisors shared by Republicans on Capitol Hill.”
The elevation of Trump’s new “golden boy” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over Hegseth in military matters followed an explosion at a Camp David retreat earlier this month after Trump became furious that all the good news he was getting from flunkies did not live up to the reality of the war. Most notably, the U.S. military's shortage of critical defense munitions, which Trump had been convinced “had been fixed.”
'The environment changed,' a Trump insider said, describing a realization inside the administration that Trump simply “can't bludgeon [Iran] anymore.”
“In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told the Times that the department “does not comment on internal personnel or investigative matters but takes all leaks of classified national security information extremely seriously and investigates accordingly.”