The New York Times sued the Defense Department on Monday for the second time in five months, arguing that a requirement that journalists be escorted while on Pentagon grounds violates the First Amendment.
The escort policy is “an unconstitutional attempt by the Pentagon to prevent independent reporting on military affairs,” a Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, said in an email to The Associated Press.
“As we have said before: Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars.”
I’m not American, but isn’t the Pentagon home to a bunch of top secret information?
I would’ve assumed it’s not open to the public at all, and that anyone that doesn’t have clearance would need an escort, regardless of profession.
The top secret information is held in Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facilities (SCIFs), within the pentagon and elsewhere. The security standards for the SCIFs are comprehensive. It is nigh impossible to accidentally end up in one.
The Pentagon itself is ginormous. It controls an upcoming defense budget of 1,500 billion dollars, far more than what can reasonably be kept secret or top secret. 24,000 people work there. And it has its own dedicated metro station. So most of it is not, in fact, classified.