Paul McLeary covers the Pentagon — the major players, overseas movements, personnel changes and policy shifts — for POLITICO. He previously covered the Pentagon, the armed services, and NATO for Foreign Policy, Defense News and Breaking Defense, and has embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Paul was in front on many of the hot-button issues in the U.S.-led effort to supply Ukraine with weapons, breaking news on internal White House and Pentagon negotiations over sending fighter planes and long-range weapons to Kyiv. In Afghanistan, he was the first reporter to get inside the secretive ODIN program that targeted insurgents, and accompanied U.S. special operations forces training Syrian Kurds in northern Syria.