Former Pentagon Officials Speak Out After Being Placed on Leave Amid Leak Investigation

The trio, in a statement posted by Dan Caldwell, said they still don’t understand why they were placed on leave.

The Pentagon building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, is seen in Washington, D.C. in an undated aerial photo. U.S. Air Force/Getty Images

A trio of former Pentagon employees spoke out on April 19 after being placed on leave this week in connection with an ongoing investigation into leaks within the Department of Defense.

This week, a Defense Department official confirmed that Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll, and Darin Selnick were all placed on administrative leave during an ongoing leak investigation.

Taking to social media platform X on Saturday, Caldwell posted what he described as a joint statement between himself, Carroll, and Selnick, addressing the recent shake-up.

“We are incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended,” the statement began.

Until this week, Caldwell had been serving as an adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Selnick was most recently listed as Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff. Carroll served as the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg.

“Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door,” Caldwell’s post continued. “All three of us served our country honorably in uniform—for two of us, this included deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, based on our collective service, we understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it.”

Caldwell is a Marine Corps veteran and recently worked for the Defense Priorities national security think tank. Carroll is also a Marine veteran who served as an intelligence officer. Selnick is a retired Air Force officer.

The Pentagon has offered no specifics about what led to the three men being removed from their posts.

“At this time, we still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with,” Caldwell’s social media post added.

The social media post states all three men remain supportive of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their administration’s efforts to “make the Pentagon great again and achieve peace through strength.”

“We hope in the future to support those efforts in different capacities,” the statement concludes.

Caldwell appears to have been tangentially involved in a separate leak episode last month.

In March, Hegseth listed Caldwell as his preferred point of contact in a Signal group text in which multiple high-level U.S. national security officials discussed upcoming plans to strike Yemen. White House national security adviser Mike Waltz has accepted responsibility for inadvertently adding The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, into the chat, giving the journalist some foreknowledge of a set of March 15 airstrikes.

On April 3, acting Pentagon Inspector General Steven A. Stebbins announced his office would review Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app in the leak episode, to determine whether the defense secretary followed proper procedures for safeguarding sensitive national security information.