Three Pentagon officials fired on Friday after being placed on administrative leave amid an ongoing investigation into information leaks at the Defense Department say they are “incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended.”
In a joint statement from Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll, and Darin Selnick, posted on Caldwell’s X account, they claim that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”
“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,” the statement continues.
On Tuesday, the Defense Department suspended and escorted out Caldwell, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s senior adviser, and Selnick, the department’s deputy chief of staff.
Caldwell, a Marine Corps veteran, was a public policy adviser at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy-focused think tank. Selnick, a retired Air Force officer, worked as a senior adviser to the Concerned Veterans for America from 2019 to 2024.
Carroll, chief of staff to deputy secretary of Defense Steve A. Feinberg, was placed on administrative leave on Wednesday, a U.S. defense official told The Hill. The department did not have any more information to share at the time.
The three officials were fired on Friday, according to multiple reports.
The department officials said in March that the building had begun an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information.”
“This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense,” Hegseth’s chief of staff Joe Kasper wrote in a March 21 memo. “The report will include a complete record of unauthorized disclosures within the Department of Defense and recommendations to improve such efforts.”
Politico reported on Tuesday that leaks under probe by the department include the movement of a second aircraft carrier to the Red Sea, military operations plans for the Panama Canal, tech billionaire Elon Musk’s visit to the department and halting intelligence sharing with Ukraine, citing an official familiar with the matter.
But in their joint statement, Caldwell, Carroll and Selnick say they have not been told what exactly they were investigated for, if the investigation is still active and if there “was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”
“While this experience has been unconscionable, we remain supportive of the Trump-Vance Administration’s mission to make the Pentagon great again and achieve peace through strength,” the statement read. “We hope in the future to support those efforts in different capacities.”