Alex Horton, Tara Copp, and Ellen Nakashima report for the Washington Post in a 1 October 2025 article titled, “Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks.” Excerpt:
The Pentagon plans to impose strict nondisclosure agreements andrandom polygraph testing for scores of people in its headquarters, including many top officials, according to two people familiar with the proposal and documents obtained by The Washington Post, escalating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on leakers and internal dissent.
All military service members, civilian employees and contract workers within the Office of the Defense Secretary and the Joint Staff, estimated to be more than 5,000 personnel, would be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement that “prohibits the release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process,” according to a draft memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg.
A separate document also from Feinberg would establish a program to randomly polygraph those officials. The documents do not prescribe a limit on who would be subjected to these agreements and tests, suggesting it could include everyone from four-star generals to administrative assistants.
The efforts are part of a wider strategy by the Trump administration and the Pentagon to ferret out officials deemed insufficiently loyal or who provide information to reporters.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell declined to answer questions about the new planned directives, saying in an email that The Post’s reporting is “untrue and irresponsible.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Earlier this year, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s then chief of staff Joe Kasper announced an investigation into “unauthorized disclosures” directing that “The use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation will be in accordance with applicable law and policy,” the memorandum was published on the DoD website, where it remains.
It seems likely that any ultimate directive by the Deputy Defense Secretary on polygraph policy would similarly be made public. Indeed, any deterrent effect of random polygraph screening depends on everyone knowing that they might be subject to it.
But any potential journalistic sources working at the Pentagon should not have any irrational fear of the polygraph: it’s junk science and it cannot read your mind. Importantly, there is no documented instance of the polygraph ever solving a federal leak investigation.
Pentagon staffers facing random polygraphs about unauthorized disclosures may benefit from AntiPolygraph.org’s free book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, which provides a thorough debunking of polygraphy and explains how to protect oneself against the random error associated with this invalid procedure.
I am more concerned about Pete Hegseth’s alcoholism and his reckless behavior, much more so than using the pseudoscience polygraph to try to find leakers. The federal government should have learned after the Aldrich Ames clown show that polygraphy doesn’t work.