Fired Pentagon paper watchdog sounds alarm on CNN: 'Very real threat'

The ombudsman of the Pentagon's paper of record warned that her sudden firing doesn't bode well for the publication's future independence.

"There's a very real threat," Jaqueline Smith, the Stars and Stripes ombudsman who was fired on Wednesday, said on "Erin Burnett OutFront" on Friday about the attack on the editorial independence of the military newspaper. "The Pentagon is taking steps to try and control the message through various ways."

Smith said that could include the Pentagon deciding "to remove the requirement that the publisher is a civilian" and putting a member of the military in charge of Stars and Stripes. The top brass are even "prohibiting use of syndicated material," like articles published in other outlets, "which affects what readers can get," Smith said.

Smith explained in an April 8 article for the Stars and Stripes that the newspaper had to stop printing comic strips due to the ban on syndicated material and because War Secretary Pete Hegseth "doesn’t want you to see cartoons here," she wrote. "Wow. Readers were angry" with Hegseth in response to the article, Smith said on CNN on Friday.

"It's my job to inform when I think that there are threats to the editorial independence," Smith said. "I was doing my job, speaking out about it, letting people hear about it, and they could decide whether it's acceptable, especially Congress."

In a column on Thursday, Smith wrote that "The Pentagon is trying to silence me" and detailed her firing.

"Apparently, the Pentagon also doesn’t want you to hear from me anymore about threats to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes," Smith wrote in the column. "They fired me."

"OutFront" fill-in host Kate Bolduan described Smith's firing as "controversial" and "with little explanation," comparable to the ouster of former Navy Secretary John Phelan.