Official Guidance From Defense Secretary, Pentagon Characterizes Protestors and Journalists as ‘Adversaries’
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New training guidance from the Pentagon, including a memo from Defense Secretary Mark Esper, aimed at stopping leaks and improving operational security in the military refers to protestors and journalists as “adversaries.”
According to Politico, the Defense Department’s “2020 DoD Operations Security Campaign” includes four courses on keeping better control of classified and sensitive materials. In the public training materials, the Pentagon lumps protestors and journalists into the same broad category as foreign military threats.
“Unfortunately, poor OPSEC practices within DoD in the past have resulted in the unauthorized disclosure or ‘leaks,'” Esper said in the memo introducing the training campaign. “The Department of Defense (DoD) remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust. [However] unauthorized disclosures jeopardize our DoD personnel, operations, strategies and policies to the benefit of our adversaries.”
Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the media during his presidency as “the enemy of the people” and has endorsed the idea that the demonstrators protesting racial injustice in Washington, D.C. were “terrorists.”
When Politico pressed the Pentagon on the catch-all use of the incendiary term “adversaries” to described Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, it got this response:
“An adversary—a common generic term for a person or group that opposes ones tactical goals—is acting counter to our information security objectives and therefore personnel must understand that threat,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. “Attempting to read more into the use of the term obfuscates the clear purpose of the training: to prevent information from falling into unauthorized hands regardless of its potential use.”
