Pentagon secrecy deepens as Iran war drags on

Dear Friend of Press Freedom, I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to The Classifieds. Read on to learn about the week’s top secrecy news. Pentagon deflates Iran war casualties In what appears to be its latest effort to obfuscate the human costs of the ongoing Iran war, the Pentagon has stopped adding casualties that occurred on or after July 7, 2026, to its “ Operation Epic Fury ” casualty database — adding them instead to a new database ambiguously titled “ Overseas Operations .” The numbers reported in the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System came under scrutiny in July when four service member deaths were abruptly removed from the Epic Fury tally. Despite initially attributing the removal…