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A new report has revealed that the Pentagon quietly hired conservative military influencers into undisclosed civilian roles while they continued posting as outside commentators defending Pete Hegseth and attacking his critics.
Getting into it: First reported by the Washington Post in an investigation by Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp, retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness and retired Army Col. Kurt Schlichter both turned up in Pentagon records last week with live government email accounts routed through the office of Anthony Tata, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Those accounts end in “.civ,” which is how the department tags civilians on its rolls rather than troops or contractors. A third, retired Army Col. Thomas Anderson, had the same setup earlier this year but was no longer listed in Pentagon records late last week.
All three put in decades of service and then built second careers as conservative commentators. Maness has more than 135,000 followers on X, ran unsuccessfully for Senate in Louisiana, chairs a PAC focused on draining “the swamp,” and has written about removing “disloyal” employees from the Pentagon. Schlichter has nearly 620,000 followers, writes for Townhall, called Trump a “hero” over the Iran war, and has publicly praised Hegseth. Anderson practices law now, posts under the pen name Cynical Publius, and has more than 323,000 followers.
They are categorized as “special government employees” or “highly qualified experts.” SGEs are capped at 130 days of work in any 365-day period. HQEs face no ceiling on pay and can be brought on either part-time or full-time. Sources told the Post that some of these jobs carry enough weight to move policy.
Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez would not answer questions about the arrangement, including whether any of the three are drawing a taxpayer-funded salary, what the jobs actually involve, or how long they run. What is known is that the trio worked on an internal task force built to hunt down what Hegseth’s team brands “woke” ideology inside the war colleges.
Tata, Maness, Schlichter, and Anderson all declined to comment on the report.
