WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has quietly ended a long-standing practice of sharing information about sailors’ service histories with the public, marking one of the most significant restrictions on press access the branch has implemented in recent memory.
For decades, the Navy freely provided details about service members when asked. That is no longer the case. Officials say the change is being driven by growing security threats and concerns about harassment, but the move is also part of a wider pattern of media restrictions largely pushed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Those broader restrictions — including a requirement that journalists be accompanied by an official escort while on Pentagon grounds — are unfolding against a backdrop of growing friction between President Donald Trump and news organizations whose reporting or practices have drawn his criticism.
The policy took shape last Thursday when the Navy’s top spokesman, Rear Admiral John Robinson, issued a directive requiring the removal of all publicly available information about commanding officers. Capt. Candice Thresh, a spokeswoman for the Chief of Naval Personnel, said the office then decided to go further, extending the restriction to cover any sailor’s service records — a move she framed as a matter of fairness.
Thresh told the Associated Press that the Navy would still confirm whether a person is an active sailor, but only when it determines the request is “of high public interest.” No additional details would be shared until what she described as an undefined threat has subsided.
The type of information now being withheld — such as unit assignments and military awards — has long been considered essential for journalists covering stories involving service members. It is also information that multiple federal laws and Pentagon policies have historically required to be made available upon request.
In fact, the Pentagon’s own privacy program guidelines categorize details like a service member’s rank, duty assignments, awards, and service status as information “that is normally releasable” and that “may be disclosed without a clearly unwarranted invasion of their personal privacy.”
Despite that, Thresh said in an emailed statement that the Navy will now only share those details if the sailor is “a public figure or extenuating circumstances exist” — terms the Navy itself gets to define. Early signs suggest the branch is not planning to apply those exceptions broadly.
First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams warned that the new policy could seriously hamper reporting on sailors who are wounded or injured. “That effort at suppression of speech is flatly inconsistent with the First Amendment,” Abrams said.
He added that the policy appeared to be “an obvious effort to limit information, however newsworthy, that might lead to questions about public policy decisions,” saying there was “no reason to think that this is anything less than an effort to prevent ‘bad’ press about the conduct of the administration with respect to our service people.”
The policy was first invoked last week when the AP requested the biography of a pilot with the Blue Angels, the Navy’s flight demonstration team, after the pilot performed a controversial maneuver over a crowded beach. Robinson’s office refused to hand over the biography — even though the pilot’s name, photo, and other service details were already posted on the official Blue Angels website. Thresh later provided a copy of the biography after the AP began asking questions about the policy itself.
Robinson’s office did not respond to questions about why the Chief of Naval Personnel’s office had expanded the original policy.
This latest move is part of a string of actions the military has taken to limit access to information. Last month, military officials asked Congress to grant the Pentagon authority to withhold certain unclassified records from the public.
That legislative proposal, first reported by CBS, would carve out a new section of federal law allowing the defense secretary to shield certain “controlled unclassified information,” known as CUI, from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
Transparency advocates and even the Pentagon’s own internal watchdog have described the CUI label as inconsistently applied and overused. Critics argue it is sometimes used arbitrarily to keep embarrassing information out of public view.
Last year, the Pentagon attempted to impose sweeping restrictions on journalists working inside the building. Most news outlets responded by turning in their access badges and walking out rather than agreeing to the new rules. That policy is now being challenged in federal court.
More recently, the Pentagon went even further, declaring its press office a classified space that journalists can no longer enter.
