MILES PARKS, HOST:
For nearly 30 years, NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman has covered the U.S. military. When he wasn't talking to officers or soldiers in the field, he regularly did much of his reporting inside the Pentagon itself, roaming the halls of the vast building, attending briefings and speaking with officials both on the record and off the record. This continued until the fall of this year, when his access to the Pentagon was blocked. Defense Minister Pete Hegseth said anyone covering the military would be required to sign a pledge. This is how Tom put it.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: It basically says that if you're a reporter, you can't solicit information from Pentagon officials. Basically, you'll have to wait for them to release the information before you can report it.
PARKS: Like most other media organizations, no one at NPR signed on to that pledge. Tom says he didn't even think about it.
BOWMAN: Basically what this tells us is that you can't be reporters. You must be state media. Those who are now in the Pentagon are conspiracy theorists, far-right media. Many of them aren't even reporters.
PARKS: When we met earlier this week, Tom told me about a very specific moment he had around the time he turned in his press pass.
BOWMAN: I was at a reception and this guy came up to me and introduced himself: he was the Chinese military attaché. And this guy says, tell me about this Pentagon policy. And I explained, as I told you, well, it says we can't ask for information. We'll have to wait for the military to release information. Then we will be allowed to report it. He said: oh, like us.
PARKS: So in this week's Reporter's Notebook, with so much military coverage in the news, I asked Tom if he's missing out on breaking news because of this new policy.
BOWMAN: No, I wouldn't say that. And I think my colleagues handle breaking news even better. And one of the reasons is, and I saw this under Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, that as soon as you try to hide people, whether they're military or civilians or reporters, there are more people willing to talk to you.
PARKS: Right, and it seems like this policy is backfiring in some ways because it's motivating a lot of people who might not have spoken up if there weren't such draconian policies about it.
BOWMAN: And, you know, Hegseth and his friends basically say, oh, you – you know, you go into secret areas. This is completely untrue. We are not allowed into those places. We walk along the corridors, talk to people. And often, Miles, it's just for pointing out. You could go up to a general or an admiral and say, “Hey, listen, I can hear this.” This is true? And he will say: Tom, you're half right. This is not entirely true. So that helps us as reporters. It also helps the military make sure we're telling the right stories.
PARKS: Right.
BOWMAN: And now one guy I talked to at the Pentagon said the problem is, if anyone gets this completely wrong, we won't be able to get to the bottom of this story because you guys aren't in the building. We can't come up to you in the press area and say, “Hey, look, this story is wrong.” Don't repeat what you hear on X, you know…
PARKS: That makes a lot of sense. Access benefits both the source and the media in many ways. fully.
BOWMAN: Absolutely.
PARKS: I want to help people understand. You're someone who's been covering this for a long time. There are now many stories about the army that people are trying to track down and make sense of. The military build-up continues in the Caribbean. There is a buildup of National Guard troops in the nation's capital. I guess what I want to ask you is, the big picture, all these disparate topics – are there broader takeaways, I guess, when you think about covering the second Trump administration and the military that you draw from a number of these stories?
BOWMAN: Well, I think one of the things is obviously that the Trump administration is leaning forward, using the military in ways that haven't been used in the past. I think, you know, putting all these National Guard soldiers on the streets is the job of the police. This is not the job of the National Guard. And I think some people in Washington might say, look, I'm glad the National Guard is in my district, especially in the higher crime areas of the District of Columbia. But a lot of them, you know, walk around the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument. They go through Georgetown. There is not much crime in these areas.
What's happening in the Caribbean still hasn't explained what exactly is happening here. Now, of course, they have removed 21 drug boats, most, if not all, of cocaine. I was told that some of these boats were headed to Europe or Africa, not even the United States. So why are you even doing this? And is this really about fighting drugs and cartels or trying to get rid of President Maduro in Venezuela? No one is getting an explanation—neither Hill nor the American people—about where this is all going.
PARKS: Now that you don't have a Pentagon press pass, how do you get information about these types of strikes happening in international waters? Obviously you're not there. You are not physically in the Pentagon. Can you explain to listeners how you get information about some of these things?
BOWMAN: Right now, we're still talking to military officials, many of them active duty, some of them retired, and keeping in touch with their former colleagues. The people on the Hill that we talk to too. I also reach out to embassies to let them know what's happening in, say, Ukraine or, in some cases, for example, what's happening in the Caribbean. So, you know, I think we need to find workarounds to figure out what's going on. So the information is spreading. We're going to find a way to get information to the American people, period.
PARKS: What important questions do you still have (especially about what's happening in the Caribbean right now) that we don't have answers to?
BOWMAN: I guess what's the general policy? Are you trying to go after cartels? If you try to do this, you will fail by blowing up a couple dozen boats. Are you going to start striking ground targets of the cartels in Venezuela and other countries? And again, if you're going to overthrow the Maduro government, then, you know, the American people need to have an idea of what your plan is, what you're going to do if you're going to overthrow the regime. Now President Trump said he spoke with Maduro. So are you trying to get him to leave on your own? What happens behind the scenes? I mean, these are questions.
PARKS: Well, let me move on to another important story that we're all tracking here, which is the National Guard story, which is the shooting in Washington, D.C., of two National Guard members from West Virginia. Tell me a little about your reporting on this story and the lingering questions you're thinking about.
BOWMAN: Well, I went down to the place. I walked up to the scene of the shooting about an hour and a half after it happened, speaking with two young women, Emma McDonald and Leila Christopher from northern Virginia, who were exiting the subway moments after it happened. Here's Leila.
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LEILA CHRISTOPHER: And then we went outside and the National Guard representative told us to run.
BOWMAN: And they told us they went to the bakery next door. People got very scared and said, you know, they saw the ambulance pull up. Emma said she looked out and saw it.
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EMMA MACDONALD: The National Guard member was covered in blood.
BOWMAN: You know, after that we went back to my people and my sources and tried to figure out what happened. And Kristi Noem…
PARKS: This is Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
BOWMAN: …Basically said that this shooter was radicalized in his community in Bellingham, Washington, in his Afghan community, without offering any evidence that that was the case. And my colleague Brian Mann was talking to an Afghan resettlement volunteer who was working with this guy's family, and he said that his mental health has clearly been deteriorating over the last couple of years. And, you know, he was sitting in his darkened room. He didn't go outside for hours. He traveled across the country, to Illinois, to Arizona. He couldn't keep his job. So it may be more PTSD rather than some kind of radicalization.
I know this particular guy, the alleged shooter, who was working for the CIA in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. I spent a lot of time there around the time he was working with the CIA. He was part of a group called Zero Unit that targeted senior Taliban leaders. They carried out night raids in heavy fighting. And to be fair, Human Rights Watch has said that some of these groups have been involved in unlawful killings and torture. Apparently he was talking to a friend or colleague who said he was really bothered by what he went through in Afghanistan.
PARKS: How long have you been covering military issues, Tom?
BOWMAN: Twenty-eight years.
PARKS: Is this all unprecedented for you or do you have any comparisons in your career?
BOWMAN: No, I think it's unprecedented. And again, you know, in the past we would have briefings, formal briefings, you know, at the Pentagon explaining what they're doing and why they're doing it. But we don't have that anymore.
PARKS: NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman, thanks so much for talking with us.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
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