A series of emails obtained by the non-profit Center to Advance Security in America confirms that officials at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point deliberately withheld evidence that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had been accepted for admission, effectively colluding with the far-left website ProPublica’s smear against the incoming Secretary of Defense.
We first became aware that the story was about to break on December 11, when Pete Hegseth used X to get ahead of it.
It was only after Hegseth released his letter of acceptance that ProPublica killed the story. The editor’s comments raised a lot of eyebrows.
As loathsome as ProPublica is, this account was detailed enough to investigate.
Based on the newly released tranche of redacted emails, we can see how an attempt by the USMA public affairs office to avoid going on record as having made a mistake came to look like a conscious decision to attempt to sandbag a freshly named Secretary of Defense.
ProPublica first contacted the USMA public affairs office on December 6.
Hello
I’m a reporter with ProPublica. Have a question I was hoping you could provide comment on.
Was Pete Hegseth offered admission to West Point? This would have been for the class starting in 1999.
Thank you.
The public affairs office contacted ProPublica on December 9 and told them, “Like I mentioned on the phone, we do not have a database that shows who applied or was offered admission we can only confirm that he never attended the academy. We have sent your request to our admissions office to see if they are able to provide more details about application/offers etc.” A redacted person writing to Theresa Brinkerhoff, chief of media relations, demonstrates the attitude by those searching for the records: “I honestly dont care if he says he was offered or not. Ultimately it looks like he declined and went to Princeton, so what is the problem?”
The breakpoint came on December 9, when Brinkerhoff gave an on-the-record statement to ProPublica, saying, “According to the admissions office, Hegseth had not applied for admission to the U.S. Military Academy.”
ProPublica took the USMA statement to Hegseth’s team in a “gotcha” state of mind, and hilarity ensued. Shortly after 2 p.m. on December 10, ProPublica sent a panicked email saying that Hegseth’s team had a copy of his admission letter, but they were refusing to share it with ProPublica, and they were making noises about violations of the Privacy Act by USMA’s release of any information on Hegseth.
Around 2:15 p.m., Brinkerhoff receives a more definitive answer from the admissions office, which appears that the records of the disposition of all applicants to USMA are stored in an archived database. The admissions department informed someone in the public affairs office (my guesses on the email chain, as it is heavily redacted):
Hes in there. Its in an old archived table. {(b) (6)} you can run the following in dw_wrk:SELECT * FROM applicants_all_clean_udw WHERE name_last = ‘Hegseth’The record shows that he declined the offer.
And Brinkerhoff was sent the affirmative response, “This is what got back from the really smart data folks. “
By 3:36 p.m., the USMA media relations shop had proof of Hegseth’s admission and decided to sit on it.
I would not recommend that we confirm or deny this with any media. Ive included [(b) (6)] and [(b) (6)], we have become SUPER careful of releasing names for any reasons unless we get clearance from SJA [(b) (6)].
The “[(b) (6)]” refers to the FOIA exemption that prohibits releasing personal information. SJA is an abbreviation for Staff Judge Advocate, or the legal counsel for USMA. What is unclear, due to redactions, is who came up with the idea of not walking back the USMA statement on Hegseth unless a lawyer instructed them to do so.
Compounding the problem is that the decision not to respond without the approval of lawyers was made over an hour after the USMA communications director told ProPublica that Hegseth had been admitted. This email is from 1:48 p.m., about the time word was reaching the communications shop informing them of the archived database.
Following up from our call so you have my contact information. We will send our on the record comment ASAP. Again, my sincere apologies for the incorrect information; it was inadvertent.
So, to review the state of play: ProPublica has a story ready to go with West Point saying, on the record, that Pete Hegseth never applied. West Point has found that Hegseth was accepted and declined the appointment, and the communications chief has notified ProPublica. However, West Point has also decided not to publicly acknowledge that Hegseth was accepted without the lawyers’ approval. Hegseth and his team know the story is pending, but they don’t know USMA now has proof he was admitted. ProPublica is frantically trying to get USMA on record with the correct information.
The crap hit the fan on the morning of December 11. At 7:54 a.m., the communications chief decides the story isn’t going away and that further delays are creating a completely different story.
I believe we need to correct the record asap, regardless of propriety. The reporter is waiting to hear back from us with official word. Confirming Hegseth’s claim probably kills any interest Propublica has in the story but the longer we delay response, the more likely that becomes a story.
Response:
A review of our records indicates Pete Hegseth was offered admission in 1999 but did not attend Weat Point.
We may need to explain the error; I don’t want to, but if the reporter demands an on the record explanation, we need to be ready:
The records in question are more than 25 years old. When asked about Mr. Hegseths admission offer, an employee was initially unable to find the applicable records. A subsequent search found another out-of-use database that contained the records. The error was unintentional and immediately corrected.
Before the plan could be put into action, Hegseth released his acceptance letter, and damage control was the name of the game. For two hours, USMA left ProPublica dangling in the wind; finally releasing its “mea culpa” letter at 10:46 a.m.
(Many thanks to @AndrewKerrNC of Washington Free Beacon for doing the heavy lifting in threading the relevant emails. All 151 pages of the emails released under FOIA can be found here.)
RedState covered this story in detail as it was breaking.
BACKGROUND:
More Juicy Details Emerge About ProPublica’s Disastrous Effort to Slander Pete Hegseth – RedState
Hanlon’s Razor states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” My initial assessment of the event attributed many things to malice that now seem to be explainable by indifference and reluctance to take responsibility. The records search was haphazard, which led to the release of an official statement that was in error. Once the error was discovered, instead of doing the right thing, a decision seemed to have been made to dummy up and let the story die on its own due to contradictory information. Giving ProPublica an off-the-record contradiction to the on-the-record statement was a chef’s kiss in the whole fiasco. What they hadn’t counted on was Pete Hegseth being in a very combative mode after his bruising confirmation hearing and having retained his acceptance letter from 25 years ago. When Hegseth launched his defense, the ProPublica story died and the USMA communications shop came away looking dishonest.
That said, this was not a harmless incident. Imagine how different the story would have been if Hegseth had not had his personal letter. He would still be under a cloud of suspicion about lying about his admission to West Point.
Few things are harder than turning around a failing, but complacent and self-satisfied organization. That is the challenge facing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The military services have been hollowed out through DEI and dysfunctional leadership. The industrial base is dead in the water. Follow RedState for some of the most informed coverage on his efforts to recreate a force in crisis. Join RedState VIP and help continue that coverage. Use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
