Military was instructed to search keywords including ‘first' and ‘history' during rushed purge of Pentagon websites
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's February memo ordering all diversity, equity and inclusion-related content to be removed from Pentagon websites was so vague that military units were instructed to simply use keyword searches like 'racism,' 'ethnicity,' 'history' and 'first' when searching for articles and photos to remove, and to interpret the directive 'broadly,' multiple defense officials told CNN.
The implications of Hegseth's memo were overwhelming, since the Defense Department manages over 1,000 public-facing websites and a huge visual media database known as DVIDS – with officials expected to purge everything relevant within two weeks. As a result, the manual work of individual units was supplemented with an algorithm that also used keywords to automate much of the purge, officials explained.
Other keywords officials were instructed to search for included 'firsts' in history, including content about the first female ranger and first Black commanding general, as well as the words 'LGBTQ,' 'historic,' 'accessibility,' 'opportunity,' 'belonging,' 'justice,' 'privilege,' respect' and 'values,' according to a list reviewed by CNN.
A defense official acknowledged that, in hindsight, the strict timeline could have been handled differently and said the search terms were suggestions from an internal defense agency to help units meet the secretary's directive.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to X on Thursday that the effort 'was an arduous – but incredibly important – undertaking,' with an 'aggressive timeline.'
'Every now and then, because of the realities of AI tools and other software, some important content was incorrectly pulled offline to be reviewed,' Parnell said. 'We want to be very, very clear: History is not DEI. When content is either mistakenly removed – or if it is maliciously removed – we continue to work quickly to restore it.'
One defense official said of the removal of 'firsts' in the military, 'That's just history. It's not really DEI – it's literally just history.'
Other keywords to look for included 'gender based violence,' 'cultural observances,' 'cultural awareness,' 'African ethnicity,' 'Asian ethnicity,' 'Caucasian ethnicity' and 'Hispanic ethnicity.'
One defense official said every social media post was being pored over to the most minute detail, particularly for things like military partner training abroad. The people tasked with doing so had to determine if a post about a training event for another country's military that included women, for example, could be tied back to some diversity or inclusion initiative — or if it was simply because the unit in question was largely made up of women.
Multiple units had to ask for extensions on the deadline because of the amount of content they were combing through in a short period of time, three officials said.
One of the officials raised concerns with their superior about potential violations of government record retention laws and asked for an extension to ensure everything was in compliance, but their request was denied, according to emails reviewed by CNN.
Another of the officials said they had to bring in a few other people to their team to help complete it in time, pulling them away from other tasks.
Meanwhile, 'validation teams' are now being dispatched to military bases to ensure that troops are complying with Hegseth's directive, according to one official and a statement from the Air Force. Multiple officials also confirmed to CNN that a lieutenant colonel has been dispatched from the Pentagon to travel to every combatant command around the world, holding meetings with staff and ensuring compliance with the policy.
The lack of guidance and the pressure from above to comply has led to a massive 'overcorrection' and the removal of thousands of articles and images that were either completely unrelated to DEI issues – like Holocaust remembrance, suicide prevention and the Enola Gay aircraft – or that commemorated war heroes like World War II Medal of Honor recipient Pfc. Harold Gonsalves and historically significant service members like Jackie Robinson and the Navajo code-talkers.
And while units made an effort to archive content internally, limitations that exist on various social media platforms made it difficult to do so in the instance officials determined the posts should be brought back. One defense official said Facebook and X, or Twitter, don't have good archiving tools to keep posts, which meant they were left to take screenshots of them and delete them for good.
The department is now scrambling to republish some of the content, officials said. But the confusion reflected the 'move fast and break things' approach the Trump administration has taken across the federal government that has at times gone too far and forced officials to reverse themselves.
The time and resources that have been spent on deleting websites and images has also struck officials as at odds with Hegseth's stated focus on returning the focus of the military to 'lethality' and 'warfighting.'
'Of all the things they could be doing, the places they're putting their focuses on first are really things that just don't matter … This was literally a waste of our time,' a defense official said. 'This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared.'
Another defense official told CNN on Wednesday that the department is now planning on doubling back and going through the content again with 'human beings' to conduct a more thorough review – a process that will take even longer to complete.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, is just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that — the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln to lynchings and violence aimed at Black people in the South to the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. Of course, one of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 'They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.' Ideologies aren't always aligned — or coherent Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 'nihilistic ideations.' But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, who he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. Dallek said Trump has been 'both a victim and an accelerant' of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,' he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, is just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that — the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln to lynchings and violence aimed at Black people in the South to the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. Of course, one of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 'They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded." Ideologies aren't always aligned — or coherent Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 'nihilistic ideations.' But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, who he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle," he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.'
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Accused Minnesota assassin Vance Boelter has ties to Middle East and Africa, runs security company
The Minnesota man being sought in connection with the Saturday morning assassination of a state lawmaker and the shooting of another runs a security company and has ties to the Middle East and Africa, online biographies showed. Vance Luther Boelter lists himself on LinkedIn as the CEO of the Red Lion Group, which is based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also worked with Minnesota Africans United, a statewide organization working with African immigrants in the state, according to a now deleted biography on the group's web site. Advertisement 3 Vance Luther Boelter owns a security company and has ties to the Middle East and Africa, online biographies show. Minnesota Department of Public Safety Boelter, 57, who is believed to have posed as a police officer during the shootings, and his wife, Jenny, appear to head Praetorian Guard Security Services, a Minnesota-based company 'here to set up security options and provide security services right to your doorstep and property to keep what you own safe and secure,' according to its website. Boelter has 'been involved in security situations' in Eastern Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East, 'including the West Bank, Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip,' according to the Praetorian web site. Advertisement 3 Boelbert is being sought in connection with the Saturday morning assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and the shooting of another. Obtained by NY Post Last month, Boelter said he was open to work. Boelter listed food service more than security in his work history. His LinkedIn profile includes jobs at 7-Eleven, where he was a general manager from 2016 to 2021. He also worked at various times as a manager at Del Monte, Johnsonville Sausage and at a company called Greencore, which manufactures convenience foods in the United Kingdom. Advertisement He was twice appointed to Minnesota government by different Democratic governors. In 2016 then-Gov Mark Dayton named Boelter to the Workforce Development Council, and in 2019 Walz to serve a four-year stint on the Workforce Development Board, documents show. Boetler last registered to vote in 2022 as a Republican. In a Nov. 5, 2018 post on his profile, Boetler encouraged others to vote in the upcoming presidential election — and expressed his fears for the outcome. 'I am very big on just telling people to be a part of the process and vote your values and be part of this adventure we are all a part of living in the United States of America,' he wrote. Advertisement 3 In a Nov. 5, 2018 post on his profile, Boetler encouraged others to vote in the upcoming presidential election — and expressed his fears for the outcome. FEVRIER DEVANT TA FACE 'I think the election is going to have more of an impact on the direction of our country than probably any election we have been apart of, or will be apart of for years to come.' Boetler earned his undergraduate degree in international relations at St. Cloud State University, according to his LinkedIn, and later obtained a Masters of Science and Management and Doctorate in Leadership degrees, both from Cardinal Stritch University. Messages for Jenny Boelter, Praetorian and Minnesota Africans United were not immediately returned. Authorities are searching for Boetler, who remains on the loose after cops say he shot Sen. John Hoffman and his wife in their Champlin home early Saturday, leaving them seriously injured before moving on to former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortmon's house, where he is believed to have slaughtered her and her husband, police sources previously told The Post. The suspect allegedly exchanged gunfire with the cops who responded to Hortman's home and briefly cornered him inside — but he got away, and left behind a 'manifesto' listing the names of 70 politicians, including Walz, and a stack of papers stating 'No Kings' in reference to the nationwide anti-Trump protests Saturday, according to cops.
