Staff Reports
The Navy quietly moved this week to scrub public-facing portraits and biographies of many commanders from its websites. Then an even bigger step followed: the personnel shop said it will generally stop giving reporters routine service-history details about sailors — assignments, awards and unit history that used to be public. That is a big change for a service that long treated basic facts about service members as open to the public.
What the Navy actually ordered
The order came from the Navy’s public-affairs channel as a NAVADMIN signed by RDML John A. Robinson, the Navy’s Chief of Information. The memo says commanders and command-triad bios should be pulled from public web pages because, in the Navy’s words, “adversaries increasingly aggregate publicly available data to track, profile, and target our personnel.” That line is short, direct and easy to sell on a morning news show.
Then the policy widened — and reporters noticed
Capt. Candice Tresch in the Chief of Naval Personnel’s office told reporters the change did not stop at photos and bios. The personnel people have broadened the approach and now will generally withhold sailors’ service-history details from routine press requests, only confirming service in “high public interest” cases or for public figures and extenuating circumstances. The immediate spark for the move, officials say, was a media request for a Blue Angels pilot bio after a controversial maneuver — hardly the earth-shattering security breach you might expect, but enough to trigger a blanket rule.
Security is real. So is accountability.
No one argues the Navy should make sailors an easy target for hostile actors. Force protection matters. But the old practice of releasing rank, duty assignment, awards and basic service status was a simple, long-standing way the public and the press fact-checked claims, honored heroes and tracked responsibility when things went wrong. Swinging a broad secrecy hammer because of a few awkward stories — or because reporters pushed for info — hands bureaucrats cover at the precise moment the public needs light, not shade. First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams put it bluntly: the broad withholding “is flatly inconsistent with the First Amendment.” That is not a liberal or conservative point; it is a constitutional one.
What should happen next
The Navy and the Pentagon must spell out clear rules and narrow, well-defined exceptions. If an individual sailor truly faces a unique security threat, protect them. But don’t turn routine service records into classified treasure. Reporters, transparency groups and Congress should insist on specifics: what counts as “high public interest,” who decides, and how families and communities can get information when it matters. Otherwise this well-intended tidy-up could become a long-term block on accountability — and that would be bad for national security and for the people the Navy answers to: the American public.
