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Pentagon Launched 'Unprecedented' Polygraph Spree After Leaks Revealed Disastrous Truth About Iran War: NYT
Dozens of officers were grilled on whether they leaked classified information about the Iran War leaving the US with critical shortages in key munitions, The New York Times reported.
Sep 05, 2026
The US Department of Defense last month forced roughly 50 members of the military's Joint Staff to undergo polygraph exams as part of an effort to discover who leaked damaging information about President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, The New York Times reported on Friday.
According to the Times' sources, dozens of officers were strapped into polygraph machines and grilled on whether they leaked classified information about the war leaving the US with critical shortages in key munitions, including long-range missiles and Patriot interceptors.
The polygraph campaign "appeared aimed at not just ferreting out anyone who may have shared information, but intimidating others who might do so in the future," the Times reported.
The Times reported that the hunt for leakers has "intensified an atmosphere of deep distrust and paranoia inside the Pentagon" under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has purged multiple top military officials during his tenure leading the department.
Ret. Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter told the Times that he has "never seen polygraphs employed this broadly or at this seniority level," adding that "in my experience, it’s unprecedented."
In a separate report published Friday, the Times revealed that a recent US intelligence assessment has determined that Iran is digging in for a long conflict with the American military, as it feels confident it can "exacerbate President Trump’s political problems ahead of the US midterm elections."
In fact, the intelligence indicates that Iran could be planning to escalate its campaign against the US in the coming weeks by attacking American bases in the Middle East and targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump unlawfully attacked Iran more than six months ago without any authorization from the US Congress. The war sent energy prices surging after Iran shut down shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply travels.
High gas prices have become a major political headache for Trump, and a recent analysis estimated that Americans have paid $71.5 billion more to fill up their cars thanks to the president’s war.
The cost of diesel fuel has also spiked since the start of the war, and data published by the American Automobile Association on Saturday showed the average price for diesel in the US now stands at a record $5.88 per gallon.
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Vance Says US 'Never Targets Civilians'—But Data From First Phase of Iran War Tells a Different Story
During the war's first 40 days, 77% of US attacks involved damage to civilian infrastructure or harm to civilians.
Sep 04, 2026
Following the US bombing of a wedding party in Iran earlier this week that killed at least five people—including two children—and left dozens more wounded, Trump administration officials repeated the mantra that the US military "never targets civilians."
In the days since the strike in the small southern town of Kuhestak, an analysis by Reuters found that the bombing was likely a direct hit by a US munition.
During a White House press briefing on Thursday following the report, Vice President JD Vance said the US was investigating the attack: “We’re investigating it because obviously we care," he said. "We want to know."
But, questioned about US responsibility, he reiterated: "What I can say with 100% confidence is that unlike the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], the United States never targets civilians in combat. We never will do that. We never have done that. And unfortunately, obviously, sometimes things happen."
He added: "And if we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran. When our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them. So we’re investigating it very fully.”
The comments raised eyebrows immediately: The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has documented that between February 28, when President Donald Trump launched the war, and April 7, when a ceasefire agreement was reached, at least 1,701 civilians were killed, including at least 307 children, and 714 more people have been killed who could not be classified as either military or civilians.
The first phase of the war brought several examples of mass civilian casualty events, including the double-tap bombing of an elementary school in Minab on the war's first day, which killed at least 150 children and teachers, and precision missile strikes on a sports hall and surrounding residential areas in Lamerd, which killed at least 21 civilians, including at least seven children.
Trump administration officials have brushed these attacks off as unfortunate mistakes and denied allegations that civilians were being targeted.
In the case of Minab, the administration has still never formally accepted responsibility, although an internal Pentagon assessment concluded that US forces were "likely" responsible, and several independent investigations have presented evidence demonstrating US responsibility.
But while intent remains an open question about these specific incidents, data from the first phase of the war show that the overwhelming bulk of incidents involved the targeting of nonmilitary infrastructure.
A May investigation by HRANA found that over the war's first 40 days, 77% of the 6,324 verified incidents it documented involved either civilian harm or damage to civilian objects. This included:
- 108 educational facilities;
- 50 healthcare facilities;
- 122 cultural and religious sites;
- 381 industrial and commercial facilities;
- 173 electricity generation and distribution sites; and
- 191 judicial and law enforcement facilities.
The group pointed to "several patterns that raise serious concerns under international humanitarian law," including "apparent failures in target verification, use of artificial intelligence with minimal human oversight, inadequate and inaccessible warnings, the use of large explosive weapons in populated areas, repeated or 'double-tap' strikes, [and] attacks targeting widespread civilian infrastructure."
During that same period, Iranian attacks across Israel and US-allied nations in the Middle East killed at least 36 civilians, according to a country-by-country tally from Reuters on April 7, with additional fatalities in Gulf countries whose civilian or military status is not always specified.
Trump has regularly made threats to rain down mass destruction upon Iran, including threatening that "a whole civilization will die" while promising to destroy "every" bridge and power plant in the country.
Wes J. Bryant, who served as the Pentagon’s chief of civilian harm assessments and now works as a war crimes analyst, rejected the Trump administration's contention that civilian casualties in the war have been the result of mere mistakes, saying they were instead the result of US forces "recklessly and negligently endangering and killing civilians."
"Is the US intentionally targeting civilians in Iran?" Bryant told Al Jazeera. "It is."
"I can tell you from experience, every single target location is recorded at multiple levels throughout the chain of command," he said, adding that in this week's wedding attack and others like the attack on the Minab school, the military would have been able “to report within hours” if a school or wedding was struck.
The anti-war activist group CodePink noted that the bombing of weddings by US forces long predates this week's attack, citing at least 10 other cases since 2001 in which wedding parties have been bombed, leading to dozens of casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
Pointing out that the wedding attack used three Boeing-produced missiles that the company markets as the "most accurate" in the US Navy's arsenal, Danaka Katovich, the national codirector of CodePink, said, "The Trump administration did not do this by accident."
"Even if they say they're 'investigating that'... like they did with the Minab school bombing, they are in a desperate situation," she said. "They are not winning the war, and they are running out of munitions, and they have no public support. They are resorting to tactics that attempt to inflict mass civilian harm."
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Iran War Has Cost the Average American More Than $1,200 Over Six Months, Economist Estimates
One columnist said it’s impossible to know the true extent to which the war has hit Americans’ pocketbooks, but “this figure should be understood as a rough sketch that conveys the magnitude of Trump’s folly.”
Sep 01, 2026
As President Donald Trump's war with Iran crosses the six-month mark without an end in sight, a new analysis calculates that it has cost the average American household at least $1,200 more than they would have paid if it had never started.
That is according to Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who was quoted by New Yorker columnist John Cassidy on Monday as he sought to look beyond military costs to determine the true extent to which the war has impacted Americans' pocketbooks.
Cassidy wrote that the task of reaching a solid number is "far from straightforward," especially since, in his assessment, the Pentagon has been "less than forthright about many aspects of the conflict," including the cost.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee in July that the conflict had cost roughly $37.5 billion.
But prior to that, NBC News reported on internal Pentagon estimates that put the cost of the conflict between $80 billion and $100 billion when accounting for the cost to repair damage to US military bases, which has occurred on a level that, according to former Marine Col. Mark Cancian, has not been seen since World War II.
These costs do not include the additional $73 billion that House Republicans have approved for defense and intelligence related to the war, which will come up for a Senate vote in September.
"Whatever the true figure is, it’s a considerable sum that comes on top of the bloated trillion-dollar Pentagon budget that has already been approved for 2026, and it is money that could, in theory, be used for other purposes," Cassidy wrote.
He cited a recent analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP), which found that the $73 billion could “provide full Medicaid coverage for 5 million more people, with $33 billion left over."
Some of those remaining funds could be used to provide free school lunch for every child in America, provide free childcare for 1 million children, or extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that Republicans allowed to expire last year, which would reduce premiums for around 20 million Americans.
Trump has explicitly emphasized that funding the war is coming at the expense of other priorities.
“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too,” he said in April. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”
Just taking the lower-bound $80 billion cost estimate would mean the average household has been forced to pay about $300 more as a result of the war, using the same methodology that the National Priorities Project used to estimate the cost to taxpayers in April. But this is only a fraction of the overall cost.
Average gasoline prices have shot up by more than $1 since the war began, while the price of diesel has risen by roughly half. Citing an energy-cost tracker maintained by the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, Cassidy said these combined price hikes have cost Americans an additional $93 billion—more than an extra $700 per household.
Oil and fertilizer prices have also shot up, rippling through the economy and contributing to higher food prices. The overall rate of inflation has climbed to 3.4%, up from 2.4% in February. Cassidy notes that inflation has also hiked market interest rates, "raising the costs of mortgages, car loans, and other types of consumer credit."
Combining all these added costs, Zandi estimated that the average household had paid roughly an extra $1,200 in the six months since the war started, but emphasized that this was only a conservative estimate.
"Rather than being taken as a precise number," Cassidy added, "this figure should be understood as a rough sketch that conveys the magnitude of Trump’s folly."
As the midterms approach, Trump's approval rating has hit an all-time low of just 33% according to a poll out Monday from Reuters/Ipsos, which also found just 36% approval for the war.
Meanwhile, 71% of Americans, including 4 in 10 Republicans, said they disapprove of how Trump is handling the cost of living. This has caused the longstanding Republican advantage in the economy to evaporate, with 36% of registered voters saying in a poll last week they believe Democrats are better prepared to tackle the cost of living compared with 28% of Republicans.
"Absent a break in the war’s current stalemate between now and the November midterms," Cassidy said, "the president and his party may end up paying a higher political price. But the economic costs of the conflict can’t be reversed."
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After Months of Denials, Pentagon Says US Killed and Wounded Hundreds of Civilians in 2025 Yemen Airstrikes
The US Department of Defense had initially denied that any civilians were killed in its operations in Yemen.
Aug 11, 2026
An internal review conducted by the US Department of Defense found that US airstrikes in Yemen last year killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.
As reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, the Pentagon review estimated that US strikes killed more than 150 Yemeni civilians while wounding nearly 250 others.
The strikes were carried out as part of an operation authorized by President Donald Trump targeting Houthi rebels, who were suspected of launching attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The body count from US strikes in Yemen could be even larger than the Pentagon's current estimates, which only cover three attacks that were determined to have "more likely than not" harmed civilians. An additional 15 incidents are still being reviewed by the DOD.
The deadliest operation carried out by US forces was a strike on Ras Issa Port in the city Hodeidah, which the DOD estimates killed 80 people and wounded 171 others.
As noted by NBC News, the DOD initially said the Yemen strikes did not cause any civilian deaths, and the Pentagon "has yet to publicly acknowledge the casualties or share a full account with Congress."
Stanford University historian Robert Crews remarked that the internal DOD report shows that there is "no end in sight for America’s brutal colonial wars" and "still no substantive domestic anti-colonial movement in the US."
Human rights groups have long been critical of US operations in Yemen, and Human Rights Watch last year described the attack on Ras Issa Port as "an apparent war crime."
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Hegseth: Honor Lindsey Graham by Giving Pentagon $1.5 Trillion
"Lindsey himself said to me, in his office, 'This is the best military budget I've seen since I've been in Congress,'" the Pentagon chief claimed.
Aug 10, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "can't persuade Republicans to back his big budget," but that didn't stop him from pushing the $1.5 trillion proposal during a Monday event to rename Joint Base Charleston after the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
When Graham, who served in the Air Force, unexpectedly died last month, critics remembered the South Carolina Republican as someone who "never met a war he didn't want to send your kids to," as well as "a bloodthirsty bastard who cheered the killing of Muslims and sold his soul to the fascists."
On Monday, Hegseth—who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq—fondly recalled meeting with Graham while part of the group Vets for Freedom. Joined at the base by the senator's replacement, his sister Darline Graham, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is from South Carolina, the Pentagon chief declared that "it falls to us to complete the work that Lindsey Graham began and advocated for for decades."
"As we gather here today, the War Department is seeking a historic, generational investment of $1.5 trillion for America's warriors, and Lindsey himself said to me, in his office, 'This is the best military budget I've seen since I've been in Congress,'" Hegseth claimed, using President Donald Trump's preferred name for the Department of Defense.
"This department pays tribute to Lindsey Graham in the naming of this base, but there could be no greater tribute than for Congress to give and invest in our warriors for the full $1.5 trillion," he added.
The GOP narrowly controls both chambers of Congress, but as Politico reported just hours before the event, "Hegseth hasn't persuaded Republicans to steamroll Democrats and advance the record-breaking plan, despite regularly trekking to the Hill in recent weeks and hobnobbing with lawmakers. Instead, an increasingly vocal group of GOP lawmakers argue the administration hasn't explained why Republicans should burn valuable political capital in pursuit of Trump's vision—especially with the midterms just months away."
"Several top Republicans are skeptical about the Trump administration's two-track approach to clinching $1.5 trillion. This relies on the GOP using the partisan reconciliation process—which allows the majority to bypass Democrats entirely—to provide $350 billion, the bulk of the increase," the outlet detailed. The Republican majority "has—mostly—had Hegseth's back" since the battle to confirm him, despite widely condemned bombings of boats allegedly trafficking drugs on the high seas and the ongoing war on Iran.
Hegseth on Monday shared some supposed details from his last meeting with Graham, who chaired the Senate Budget Committee.
"Mr. Secretary, what do you need for a reconciliation?" Graham said, according to Hegseth. "I said: 'Well, in total, sir, we're going to need $350 billion for our military. That's what we believe gets us to $1.5 trillion—$115 [billion] in the base budget, $350 [billion] in reconciliation, and we'll be ready.'"
"He looked at me and said, 'How's $355 [billion] sound to you?' He wanted to give even more than $350 [billion]," Hegseth continued. "I saw firsthand as a young first lieutenant, as a captain in a combat zone, and as a secretary, the unwavering commitment of Lindsey Graham."
Hegseth's recounting of their meeting isn't the first time Graham's pro-war ideology has been highlighted since he died. As Common Dreams reported late last month, footage filmed for a documentary that was in the works shows the then-senator joyfully reacting to Trump's Iran War. He said: "I almost cried. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this?"
Responding to the release of that footage, Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, said that "the warmonger got his wish and the result has been a catastrophe."
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More Civilian Attacks Feared as Pentagon Shifts Boat Strike Campaign to Countries Across Latin America
The US military's partnership with Ecuador has already been associated with unexplained drone strikes and torture of people wrongfully accused of drug trafficking.
Aug 05, 2026
The US and Ecuadorian joint attacks that occurred in March at a rural dairy farm where officials insisted drug traffickers were operating "could replicate over the rest of 2026" across Latin America, said one expert after the Pentagon announced that its boat bombing campaign would be expanded to "defeat all threats" within countries across the region.
US Southern Command, which has overseen the boat bombings—up to now known as Operation Southern Spear—and the killings of at least 221 people, announced Tuesday that the operation will now be known as Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, with the US military "taking the fight to the enemy."
The "fight" the military referred to is largely against drug cartels operating in Latin America, with which President Donald Trump has claimed the US is in an "armed conflict."
But the US Congress has not authorized the attacks the US military has carried out as it's claimed to be fighting "narco-terrorists," including at least 66 boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean—an operation that has cost $820 million so far.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have introduced war powers resolutions aimed at stopping the Trump administration from continuing the boat bombings, but the efforts have failed, even as families have filed legal complaints alleging that their loved ones were wrongfully killed in the attacks.
The Drug Enforcement Agency's own data recently showed that the bombing of boats suspected of carrying drugs has done little-to-nothing to stop illegal substances from entering the US, while international law experts have emphasized that even if the US has been accurately targeting drug traffickers, the killings could constitute war crimes or mass murder.
Now, releasing a promotional video that resembled an action movie trailer, US Southern Command on Tuesday pledged to "synchronize US military operations with allies and partners to counter threats, strengthen regional security, and respond rapidly to crises across the Western Hemisphere."
JTF-WHEM is taking the fight to the enemy.
“Along with our Americas Counter Cartel Coalition partners, we will locate, close with, and destroy the enemies that threaten our hemisphere.” — #SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan@DeptofWar @SecWar @The24MEU @USMC @USNavy… pic.twitter.com/k60WWBWOcf
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) August 4, 2026
"Along with our America's Counter Cartel Coalition partners, we will locate, close with, and destroy the enemies that threaten our hemisphere," said Commander Francis Donovan of US Southern Command.
Donovan noted that 18 countries have backed the United States' stated mission of halting drug trafficking out of Latin America.
As Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, pointed out, leaders in Colombia and Peru have both expressed interest in hosting joint military operations with the US on their own soil.
President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella of Colombia has said he plans to join Trump's Shield of the Americas alliance, a group right-wing government across the hemisphere that have pledged to join in the fight against drug cartels—but which the civil society group Justice for Colombia warned may ultimately "impose US strategic interests on the region and could target left-wing activists and other opponents."
"Colombian communities have long opposed purely military solutions to the existence of armed groups," said the group last month. "Many welcomed peace talks under the [President Gustavo] Petro government, while highlighting that more needed to be done to protect social activists and deal with root causes of conflict. Many now fear that they will be targeted in a renewed emphasis on conflict."
Newly inaugurated Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori has also signaled a willingness to join the alliance after having campaigned on fighting crime rates in the South American country.
The Trump administration has also pushed Guatemalan and Honduran leaders to approve joint strikes against suspected drug gangs inside their borders.
With Joint Task Force dWestern Hemisphere, said New York Times reporter Maria Abi-Habib, the Pentagon is "standing up a task force that will see Latin American countries accept joint US strikes inside their borders. It moves the boat strikes from international waters to sovereign inland territories across the region."
US Southern Command spoke approvingly of a raid Guatemala conducted on an alleged drug lab earlier this year, saying in a social media post that the operation showed a "commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists in their country."
Two people familiar with the push in Guatemala told the Times that the administration was advocating for joint strikes in the country to ultimately pressure Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum has rejected similar requests.
Ecuador's partnership with Trump has brought allegations of torture, arbitrary detention, and unexplained drone strikes on at least three Ecuadorian fishing boats. In June, the prosecutor investigating the boat attacks was killed in an apparent assassination.
"Ecuador has been the proving ground" for Trump's so-called "Donroe Doctrine," said Drop Site News reporter Camila Lourdes Galarza, adding that the "media silence" regarding the US military's expansion in the region "has severely compromised all analysis."
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Congress Urged to Reject Pentagon Effort to 'Hide Unclassified Information From the Public'
Rights groups warned that giving Secretary Pete Hegseth near-total control of what is released under the Freedom of Information Act "will naturally favor politicization and avoiding embarrassment over public transparency."
Aug 05, 2026
Press freedom organizations are urging Congress to reject a proposal that they warn could allow the Pentagon to withhold massive amounts of unclassified information from the public.
As part of its recent budget package, the Department of Defense submitted a proposal to Congress in late June that would create a new exception to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), allowing the defense secretary to bar certain "controlled unclassified information" (CUI) from public disclosure if the military determines that the national security risk outweighs the public interest.
CUI is a broad category of information that is not classified but that the government considers sensitive enough to be distributed only to specific people. But under current law, the government can only refuse to release information requested through FOIA if it meets certain exemptions, such as properly classified national security material, protected personal information, privileged internal communications, or records whose release could compromise law enforcement.
The new law would change this, allowing the defense secretary to declare almost any unclassified Pentagon record as both CUI and “national security information" to prevent it from being released. This could affect access to countless documents of significant public importance—from reports on investigations into military action, to internal records about the military's rules of engagement, to audit and oversight records.
"The CUI standard is already so broad that were it to be incorporated as a FOIA exemption for the Defense Department, massive amounts of important information would be yanked from the public," wrote Adam A. Marshall, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "That would be disastrous, especially when the Defense Department is at the forefront of so many stories the public needs to know about, from the United States’ war with Iran to the targeted destruction of boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific."
Clayton Weimers, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders North America, argued that the proposed rule change was unnecessary.
"The Pentagon already has extensive authority to protect genuine national security secrets. What it is asking Congress for now is something entirely different: the power to hide unclassified information from the public," he said. "At a time when the Department of Defense controls nearly one trillion dollars in taxpayer funding and makes decisions that can shape war and peace, the public deserves more transparency, not more secrecy."
Under Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has attempted to dramatically clamp down on the flow of public information. It has held far fewer press briefings than previous administrations, issued requirements that reporters pledge not to release "unauthorized" information, and booted credentialed press from Pentagon offices in favor of administration-friendly outlets and influencers.
Secrecy has grown amid President Donald Trump's war against Iran, with the Pentagon withholding information about hundreds of US military injuries from the public and altering publicly available death counts to exclude the names of four US personnel recently slain in the region.
Last week, a coalition of more than 40 press freedom, civil rights, and watchdog organizations, led by Reporters Without Borders, sent a letter to members of the House Oversight Committee, arguing that giving the defense secretary final say over what information is made public would be especially dangerous and "will naturally favor politicization and avoiding embarrassment over public transparency."
Under the Trump administration, the Pentagon has already been much less willing to comply with FOIA requests than under the Biden administration. Pentagon data show that it took more than 30% longer, on average, to respond to complex FOIA requests in 2025 than in 2024, and that it granted only 17% of FOIA requests in full.
"The Pentagon is already too secretive, and the last thing it needs is a rubber stamp to hide unclassified records under the guise of national security," said Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “We don’t need the Pentagon hiding more information from FOIA. We need it to actually respond to public records requests, we need it to stop harassing journalists for doing their job, and we need it to be transparent and accountable to the public, service members, and their families.”
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'Tell Us Where That Money Is Going': Sanders Bill Would Penalize Pentagon for Failing Audits
"We have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only major federal agency that has never passed an independent audit."
Jul 30, 2026
Bipartisan legislation reintroduced Thursday by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley would impose budgetary penalties on the US Department of Defense for failing to pass a complete and independent audit.
If enacted, the Audit the Pentagon Act would withhold 2% of the budget of any Defense Department office that fails to achieve a clean audit, and the funds would be returned to the US Treasury.
The Pentagon has failed eight consecutive audits without any consequences, as lawmakers from both parties continue to approve massive budget increases each year. For fiscal year 2027, the Trump administration is seeking $1.5 trillion in total military spending as it wages war against Iran with no end in sight.
“The Pentagon has been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud and financial mismanagement for decades,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Thursday. “Year after year, the Pentagon fails an audit, and year after year, Congress hands it another blank check."
"At a moment when the administration has dragged us into an unconstitutional war with Iran and is demanding the largest military budget in our history to pay for it, the Pentagon still cannot tell us where trillions of dollars have gone," Sanders added. "We have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only major federal agency that has never passed an independent audit.”
The Audit the Pentagon Act has 10 Senate co-sponsors so far: Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
The latest version of the bill, which was first introduced in 2021, comes as the Trump administration is seeking tens of billions of dollars in funding for the Iran war, which Congress never authorized. Experts have warned for months that the Pentagon is not being transparent about the war's financial cost, which is likely to be far higher than the department's official estimate of $37.5 billion.
“You have the largest agency in terms of discretionary spending for eight years in a row unable to explain and defend the funding that they have, and we have seen enormous examples of waste and fraud,” Sanders told NBC News in an interview. “Tell us where that money is going, period.”
In a press release, Sanders' office highlighted several examples of what it described as "waste and fraud" at the Pentagon:
- Almost $141 billion spent on a Northrop Grumman ballistic missile project that was supposed to cost $77 billion, and which is seven years behind schedule;
- More than $126 billion spent on a General Dynamics submarine program which has run $17 billion over cost. The per-sub cost has nearly doubled since 2019;
- More than $12 billion spent on one missile battery from Leidos and Dynetics that the Pentagon can’t even confirm works; and
- More than $6 billion spent over 16 years on a Raytheon project to build a GPS system. The Pentagon cancelled the project in April due to “insurmountable” problems with its product.
Earlier this month, a version of the Audit the Pentagon Act was attached to the House's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Senate Democratic caucus blocked the upper chamber's version of the NDAA earlier this month over President Donald Trump's illegal Iran war.
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Five Months After US Bombing of Iranian Elementary School, Pentagon Still Hasn't Released Its Findings
"The White House and Pentagon have so far refused any accountability or transparency," said CNN host Jake Tapper.
Jul 28, 2026
Tuesday marks five months since the US carried out a deadly attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in the city of Minab, Iran, which killed more than 150 schoolchildren along with over a dozen teachers.
The US Department of Defense (DOD), however, has yet to release the results of the investigation it said it was conducting on the strike.
In a Tuesday social media post, CNN host Jake Tapper highlighted the DOD's silence about the school attack, noting that "the White House and Pentagon have so far refused any accountability or transparency."
Tapper then posted a timeline of accumulated evidence that the US was responsible for the deadly strike, while also including a quote from Rachel VanLandingham, a retired official from the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG), who said "it's atrocious that we haven't had an acknowledgement, an explanation, and an apology yet" from the Pentagon.
Earlier this month, CNN reported that the investigation into the school bombing was essentially complete, and it found that US military commanders "bypassed warnings" indicating that their database of strike targets inside Iran was badly out of date shortly before authorizing the attack on the building.
Two of CNN’s sources said senior commanders ignored the warnings out of “expediency,” as they did not want to significantly delay providing target lists during the outset of the war, which Trump illegally launched in February without authorization from the US Congress.
A group of experts at the United Nations last week renewed calls for the US to release the findings of its probe into the school bombing, noting that the US has "obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law."
“Five months following the school bombing in Minab, the US and Israel have not made any findings public, raising valid questions regarding the impartiality, effectiveness and transparency of any investigation that may be underway,” they said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Two weeks ago, a group of 25 Democratic US senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pressing him to release the results of the Pentagon investigation and to submit to Congress a "prevention and remediation plan that identifies the specific corrective actions the Department will take to ensure this does not happen again."
"The United States military has a legal and moral obligation to take all feasible precautions to prevent civilian harm," the senators wrote. "When a U.S. strike kills civilians, the Department owes Congress, the American people, and the victims’ families a clear accounting of what happened and a credible plan to prevent future failures."
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Trump and Hegseth's Boat Strike Murder Spree Hasn't Slowed Cocaine Trafficking: DEA Analysis
"'Bombing boats' to stop drugs isn't just cruel and illegal—it's futile," said one expert.
Jul 27, 2026
An internal government analysis has revealed that President Donald Trump's campaign of strikes against alleged drug boats off the coasts of Latin America hasn't achieved its purported goal of diminishing the amount of cocaine being trafficked into the US.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) analysis has concluded that the boat-bombing campaign, which many legal experts and human rights groups consider acts of murder, has not "reduced the amount of cocaine entering" the country.
"DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States," reported the Post, "and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where US forces are less likely to open fire."
The Post added that US Department of Defense (DOD) officials last month gave a closed-door briefing toe members of Congress where they acknowledged the strikes had not reduced the purity of cocaine entering the US from Latin America.
In an interview with the Post, a DEA official said that drug cartels had several options in addition to smuggling contraband by boats and simply switched tactics to avoid being hit by US strikes, which so far have killed at least 221 people.
"When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side," the official said. "They always find the weak spots and exploit them."
Journalist Alex Horton, one of the authors of the Post report, described the boat-bombing campaign as what happens "when you merge the failures of the war on terror and the failures of the war on drugs."
The Post's report on the effectiveness of boat strikes came days after the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) released a lengthy report that similarly found that the boat strikes' "impact on the trafficking of cocaine, the main drug flowing from South America, has been slight to non-existent."
Adam Isaacson, director of the Defense Oversight program at WOLA, explained the pointlessness of the boat-bombing spree in a Saturday social media post.
"All cocaine produced in a year could fit on just over 1% of a single container ship," Isaacson wrote. "Imagine that scattered worldwide across innumerable boats, planes, vehicles, and people. 'Bombing boats' to stop drugs isn't just cruel and illegal—it's futile."
Georgetown University Law School professor Marty Lederman noted in a Monday social media post that the boat-bombing spree would be unjustified even if it were successful at reducing the flow of cocaine into the US.
"Another reminder, since no one in Congress appears to care," wrote Lederman. "These strikes are a campaign of unlawful murders, and the administration hasn't offered any plausible argument to the contrary."
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