The Washington Post spent years lecturing America about journalistic standards.
Now they published a hit piece on three decorated military colonels and misspelled one of their names.
What the Post did next to cover their tracks exposed exactly who they are.
What WaPo Actually Got Wrong
The Washington Post story sounds explosive: "Pentagon secretly installs conservative influencers in civilian roles to push Hegseth agenda."
Three retired colonels – Rob Maness, Kurt Schlichter, and Thomas Anderson – running a secret Pentagon propaganda operation.
Except that is not what happened.
All three served as Special Government Employees on the Department of War's Senior Service College Task Force.
The task force had one job: visit war colleges, review curriculum, and root out the ideology Pete Hegseth has been dismantling since Day One.
They visited campuses.
https://twitter.com/NoVA_Campaigns/status/2094541235453087800?s=20
They interviewed people.
They reviewed course materials.
They wrote a report.
Anderson's task force service ended July 26, 2026.
That is it.
The Smear That Backfired Immediately
Schlichter went straight to Townhall and destroyed the piece line by line – including pointing out that reporter Dan Lamothe could not manage to spell his name correctly.
The Post quietly issued a correction after Schlichter called it out publicly.
Maness called the piece "completely fabricated, categorically false," and accused the Post of publishing illegally obtained personally identifiable information from government databases.
Anderson – writing as Cynical Publius on X – was unambiguous: he has never received government compensation for a single word he has written online.
The Post buried the exculpatory context in the fine print: these men were "special government employees," a legal designation that explicitly permits them to continue their outside work.
SGEs are limited to 130 working days per year.
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2094183386608808428?s=20
They can work with or without compensation.
Their private commentary is their own.
The Post had every one of those facts before they published.
This Is the Regime Media Playbook
They sourced the story from anonymous figures who spoke on condition of anonymity – rather than going to the three men directly.
When Maness and Schlichter did not respond to initial emails – and Anderson declined to comment in a brief phone call – the Post ran with it anyway.
Lamothe's defense when confronted?
The story was "accurate as written" because none of the three had proactively disclosed their task force roles.
That is the new standard at the Post: if you do not publicly announce your temporary advisory seat on a war college review committee, you are a secret government plant.
Under Secretary of War Anthony Tata told a different story on X – that the task force, led by a top-5 West Point graduate named Dr. Maurice Todd, delivered concrete recommendations to strengthen senior service colleges around military history, strategy, and meritocracy.
That was the real story.
The Post chose a different one.
The Washington Post Has a Credibility Problem It Cannot Correct
Jeff Bezos's paper fixed the spelling of Schlichter's name.
https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2094159611951481061?s=20
They will not correct the smear underneath it.
Schlichter put it plainly: the reporters either wrote garbage on purpose or because they are grossly incompetent.
Either way, your contempt for the regime media is well deserved.
The Washington Post went after three men who gave their careers to this country – and all they could produce was a stealth correction on a misspelled name and a reporter insisting the innuendo was accurate.
That is not journalism.
That is what happens when an operation built to protect the establishment watches the establishment lose – and decides three colonels cleaning up woke war colleges are the real threat to democracy.
Sources:
- Lindsay Kornick, "Conservative journalists fire back at Washington Post after report claiming Pentagon 'secretly installed' them," Fox News, September 1, 2026.
- Kurt Schlichter, Townhall column, September 1, 2026.
- Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp, "Pentagon secretly installs military influencers in civilian roles," Washington Post, August 31, 2026.
- Anthony Tata, statement on X, August 31, 2026.