Two senators raised concerns on Tuesday about a new Pentagon policy that could bar defense personnel and military commanders from communicating with lawmakers without prior approval.
The mid-October memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would “throttle” communication between the committee and the Pentagon, said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces panel.
“I’m concerned about the October 15 memo from the secretary, which basically throttles communication between people working at the Pentagon and Congress, including this committee. And I hope that’s something to discuss and consider,” King said during a hearing to consider nominees for several senior Defense Department roles. “Because sitting here, these kinds of communications are important, but also several of the witnesses have mentioned meetings in our offices to discuss policy. That would be prohibited under that October 15 memo. And I think we need to—it’s something we should discuss.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the committee, concurred.
“It has been suggested that that memo was misconstrued, and it may need to be clarified. So, thank you for bringing that up,” Wicker said.
The memo, first reported by Breaking Defense, requires DOD officials to run all interactions with Congress through the Pentagon’s central legislative affairs office. It says that “unauthorized engagements” with lawmakers could “undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives” and heighten tensions between the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have lambasted the policy change, saying the move could ultimately stymie the Pentagon’s legislative goals.
“You’ve got to trust your chain of command. This is too large of an organization to have that kind of a tight clamp on it, particularly when we have members [of Congress] that want specific answers, not going through protocol,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told NBC News last week. “This sort of closing the discussion to the press, limiting how many people connect independently in their capacity, very senior capacities in the DOD, just doesn’t make sense to me. It underlines a lack of trust in the organization that I don’t think is good for senior management to project.”
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