Politics
JUST IN: Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon Punishes Suspected ‘Leakers’
A top advisor to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been placed on leave as part of a sprawling investigation into leaks within the Pentagon.
Dan Caldwell, one of Hegseth’s leading advisors, was summarily shown the door by security on Wednesday, one official confirmed. For the meantime, he has been officially placed on paid “administrative leave” for an “unauthorized disclosure.”
“The investigation remains ongoing,” the official, who requested anonymity to discuss an active investigation, told Reuters.
No further details were provided about whether any leaks have been directly attributed to Caldwell.
A March 21 memo signed by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, requested an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications.”
Caldwell, though not well known beyond his day-to-day contacts at the top of the Defense Department, has nonetheless been a critical actor in the administration’s early stages of warfare and military readiness. In the leaked Signal chat last month, Hegseth instructed other members to speak with Caldwell for access to the National Security Council regarding an impending bombing campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
He is a Marine Corps veteran who deployed to Iraq and has been quoted saying the U.S. would have been better off if soldiers have stayed home, an opinion that critics have cited in calling him an anti-war isolationist.
Caldwell is the second Pentagon employee to be placed on leave this week as part of the leaks investigation. Darin Selnick, the Pentagon’s deputy chief of staff, was also suspended as part of the probe and escorted out of the building, sources told Politico.
Leaks under investigation include military operational plans for the Panama canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon, and pausing the collection of intelligence to Ukraine, another official confirmed to the outlet.
Before taking his current post, Selnick also carried out duties of the under secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness. He served in the White House and later at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs during the first Trump administration, and he knew Hegseth while working alongside him at the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America.
The removal of both men follows a broader purge of top military brass by Hegseth. In February he dismissed General Charles Q. Brown Jr. as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as Shoshana Chatfield, a top admiral in the U.S. Navy, while rooting out perceived “wokeness” in the military, Axios reported at the time.
Generals and admirals “involved in any of the DEI woke s*** has got to go,” he said in an interview last year.
The Defense Department is not the only source of leaks in the Trump administration. Last month U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that she and White House border Czar Tom Homan had located the source of leaks behind botched raids on illegal immigrations in Aurora, Colorado and Los Angeles, California. Homan previously suggested the leakers were hunkered down within the FBI.
“The FBI is so corrupt,” Noem said at the time. “We will work with any and every agency to stop leaks and prosecute these crooked deep state agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
