References to an American WW2 Medal of Honour recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts to be deletion as the Defence Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a database obtained by The Associated Press.
The database, which was confirmed by U.S officials and published by AP, includes 26,000+ images that have been marked for removal across every military branch. But the total might be much higher. One official said the purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion/DEI content. The official said it’s not even clear if the database has been finalised.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military just days to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following Pres. Trump’s executive order ending those programmes across the federal government. Most of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, even notable heroes in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention Commemorative Months eg those for women and for Black and Hispanic people.
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Asked about the database, Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Dept with the directive removing DEI content from all sources. Hegseth declared that DEI is dead and that efforts to put one group ahead of another through DEI programmes threatens mission execution.
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The main page in a post titled Women’s History Month: All-female crew supports war fighters was removed. But note that at least one of its photos, about an all-female C-17 crew, could still be accessed. An Army Corps of Engineers photo called Engineering pioneer remembered during Black History Month was deleted. Other photos flagged in the database but still visible included images of the WW2 Women Air Service Pilots and one of U.S Air Force Col. Jeannie Leavitt, the country’s first female fighter pilot.
Also still visible was an image of Private First Class/PFC Christina Fuentes Montenegro becoming one of the first women to graduate from the Marine Corps’ Infantry Training Battalion and an image of Marine Corps WW2 Medal of Honour recipient PFC Harold Gonsalves. And it was unclear why some other images were removed.
The database of 26,000 images was created to conform with federal archival laws, so if the destroying images was queried in the future, officials could show they were complying with the law. But it may be difficult, because the responsibility was dependent on each unit. Workers might have taken screenshots of the pages marked for removal, but otherwise it would be difficult to restore images.
A Marine Corps official said every one of its images in the database either has been taken down or would be. The Marines were moving on the directive as fast as possible, but as with the rest of the military, very few contractor employees at the Pentagon could perform content removal. In the Marine Corps, one defence civilian had to do the work! He identified 10,000+ images and papers for removal online, and after further review, 3,600 of those were removed. The total excludes 1,600+ social media sites that have not yet been addressed. The Marine official said the service is going through each site and getting new administrative privileges so it can make the changes.
This Feb the Pentagon ordered all the military services to spend countless hours poring over years of website postings, photos, news articles and videos to remove any mentions that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. If they couldn’t do that immediately they were told to temporarily remove from public display all content published during the Biden administration’s four years in office.
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A Defence Department’s website celebrated six Marines photographed hoisting a U.S flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, including famous Pfc Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian. This was an emblem of the contributions and sacrifices Native Americans have made to the U.S in the military etc. But along with many others about Native American, this page has now been erased amid the Trump administration’s wide-ranging crackdown on what it says are “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts in the federal government (The Washington Post). Multiple articles about the Navajo code talkers, critical to America’s victory at Iwo Jima and the wider Pacific theatre, were also removed, along with a profile of a Tonawanda Seneca officer who drafted the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox toward the end of the Civil War.
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The database, which was confirmed by U.S officials and published by AP, includes 26,000+ images that have been marked for removal across every military branch. But the total might be much higher. One official said the purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion/DEI content. The official said it’s not even clear if the database has been finalised.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military just days to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following Pres. Trump’s executive order ending those programmes across the federal government. Most of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, even notable heroes in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention Commemorative Months eg those for women and for Black and Hispanic people.
In 1945, Bob Lewis ferried a modified B-29 to the Utah base where a group was training for its special assignment.
But a review of the database underscores the chaos that swirled among agencies about what to remove re Trump’s order. In some cases, photos seemed to be flagged for removal because their file included the word gay, including service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first WW2 atomic bomb on Hiroshima Japan.
Photos of an Army Corps of Engineers dredging project in California were marked for deletion because a local engineer in the photo had the last name Gay. And some photos and videos of the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first Black military pilots who served in a segregated WW2 unit, were listed :( The Air Force briefly removed new Tuskegee recruit training courses. That drew White House’s ire over malicious compliance, and the Air Force quickly reversed the removal. Many of the images listed in the database already have been removed, and it’s not clear if others might be allowed to stay, including those with great historical significance.
Asked about the database, Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Dept with the directive removing DEI content from all sources. Hegseth declared that DEI is dead and that efforts to put one group ahead of another through DEI programmes threatens mission execution.
Cadets at the Flying School for Negro Air Corps Cadets Jan 1942.
Richmond Free Press
The main page in a post titled Women’s History Month: All-female crew supports war fighters was removed. But note that at least one of its photos, about an all-female C-17 crew, could still be accessed. An Army Corps of Engineers photo called Engineering pioneer remembered during Black History Month was deleted. Other photos flagged in the database but still visible included images of the WW2 Women Air Service Pilots and one of U.S Air Force Col. Jeannie Leavitt, the country’s first female fighter pilot.
Also still visible was an image of Private First Class/PFC Christina Fuentes Montenegro becoming one of the first women to graduate from the Marine Corps’ Infantry Training Battalion and an image of Marine Corps WW2 Medal of Honour recipient PFC Harold Gonsalves. And it was unclear why some other images were removed.
The database of 26,000 images was created to conform with federal archival laws, so if the destroying images was queried in the future, officials could show they were complying with the law. But it may be difficult, because the responsibility was dependent on each unit. Workers might have taken screenshots of the pages marked for removal, but otherwise it would be difficult to restore images.
A Marine Corps official said every one of its images in the database either has been taken down or would be. The Marines were moving on the directive as fast as possible, but as with the rest of the military, very few contractor employees at the Pentagon could perform content removal. In the Marine Corps, one defence civilian had to do the work! He identified 10,000+ images and papers for removal online, and after further review, 3,600 of those were removed. The total excludes 1,600+ social media sites that have not yet been addressed. The Marine official said the service is going through each site and getting new administrative privileges so it can make the changes.
This Feb the Pentagon ordered all the military services to spend countless hours poring over years of website postings, photos, news articles and videos to remove any mentions that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. If they couldn’t do that immediately they were told to temporarily remove from public display all content published during the Biden administration’s four years in office.
Tank officer Jackie Robinson’s heroic career was purged from military site. Then reinstated.
NBC News
A database obtained by CNN shows that 24,000+ articles would be purged, with many gone already. This goes well beyond just the removal of images from the Pentagon’s visual database, Defence Visual Information Distribution Service, and includes articles from across 1,000+ websites hosted by the Dept. Articles about the Holocaust, September 11th, cancer awareness, sexual assault and suicide prevention are among the tens of thousands removed or flagged for removal from Pentagon websites as the Dept has scrambled to comply with the order to scrub diversity content to comply with Pres. Trump’s order.
A Defence Department’s website celebrated six Marines photographed hoisting a U.S flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, including famous Pfc Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian. This was an emblem of the contributions and sacrifices Native Americans have made to the U.S in the military etc. But along with many others about Native American, this page has now been erased amid the Trump administration’s wide-ranging crackdown on what it says are “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts in the federal government (The Washington Post). Multiple articles about the Navajo code talkers, critical to America’s victory at Iwo Jima and the wider Pacific theatre, were also removed, along with a profile of a Tonawanda Seneca officer who drafted the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox toward the end of the Civil War.
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, Feb 23 1945
Reddit