Sign up for National Security, a newsletter featuring coverage of rising authoritarianism, military intelligence, and geopolitical conflicts.

I n the 18 years I have been reporting at the Pentagon, military leaders have rarely been delighted to see me. Over the years, I have had heated conversations with generals, spokespeople, and civilian leaders. I have reported news that the department officials didn’t want publicized, as well as information they were eager to share. I have traveled in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, prepared to die in pursuit of informing others, losing colleagues along the way and getting seriously injured myself. To witness the horrors of war means to forever carry scars. And yet, I am one of the lucky ones. I survived.

My job has been to ask questions on behalf of my fellow citizens, seeking information we all have the right to know about national security in the United States. The First Amendment protects my ability to do this work. But one week ago, the Pentagon announced that journalists would no longer be accredited to enter the building unless they sign a new agreement. In the past, reporters were required to sign a one-page agreement with stipulations about locking office doors and wearing badges above the waist. The new restrictions are very different. Although worded somewhat ambiguously, they appear to put sharp limits on news-gathering activities and may impose penalties on people seeking information—including unclassified information—outside of what decision makers want to share. Under the proposed rules, which run to 17 pages, “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.” Anyone who publishes unapproved information could, theoretically, have their accreditation revoked, which would leave them barred from the Pentagon—and maybe from military facilities worldwide. Reporters who refuse to sign will lose the badge that has, until now, given them the right to work in a building that has been available to the press—through wars and national crises, under Democratic a