National Defense

Pentagon Reportedly Escalates Hunt For Leakers By Ordering Polygraph Exams

Wikimedia Commons/Public/David B. Gleason from Chicago, Illinois, CC BY SA 2.0

The Department of War is reportedly taking further actions to address sensitive operational leaks.

Federal investigators are requiring around 50 of roughly 2,000 members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff to undergo polygraph exams following recent leaks to the press, The New York Times reported Friday.

“The Department does not comment on internal personnel or investigative matters but takes all leaks of classified national security information extremely seriously and investigates accordingly,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Securing classified information is critical to ensuring the security of the United States and of our troops deployed around the world.”

Among the recent leaks were allegations that the U.S. ran out of crucial munitions during the early months of the Iran War.

The Pentagon announced plans to buy almost 14,000 more Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) components. The move followed the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimating in July that the U.S. depleted approximately two-thirds of its pre-war Patriot and THAAD inventories during the Iran War.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied the alleged shortage.

“For the treasonous SCUM that refuses to accurately report on our Military Operation in Iran, we have virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition,” Trump claimed in a Thursday post to Truth Social.

The president’s statement follows his promise a month earlier that “the ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” an Aug. 6 post to Truth Social reads.

Polygraph machines record an individual’s physical reactions to an interviewer’s asking of a series of questions, including those associated with lying involving pulse, blood pressure, breathing, and perspiration. The same symptoms, however, may appear when a subject is nervous. As a result, the American Psychological Association cautions that “lie detectors” can also provide false positives, contributing to a high error rate.