Pete Hegseth, then the nominee for defense secretary, appears during a Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 14 in Washington, D.C.

Loose lips sink ships, which is why the Pentagon slaps a classification on almost everything.

I’ve seen an officer put a SECRET stamp across a newspaper clipping. As a sergeant in military intelligence during the Cold War, I asked the officer why. He explained that because he had read the clip and used it in a report, it counted as “sources and methods.”

If I’d discussed his report outside a sensitive compartmented information facility, known as a SCIF, the government could imprison me for up to 10 years under U.S. Code Title 18, Chapter 37, known as the Espionage Act.

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In 2003, Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III summoned me and other journalists embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division for a briefing on his Iraq invasion plan.

Blount could help us understand what we would soon experience because reporters had agreed to protect classified information as a condition for embedding. The briefing was marked secret, and we respected that because our lives were also at risk.

Later, FOX News correspondent Geraldo Rivera laid out the 101st Airborne Division’s position and attack........

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