Third Pentagon official put on leave amid leak investigation

A third top Pentagon official has been put on leave amid an investigation into leaks at the Department of Defense. 

The latest official potentially implicated in the probe is Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, multiple outlets reported on Wednesday. 

Carroll’s suspension follows the removal of Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, the Pentagon chief’s deputy chief of staff, from their posts on Tuesday.  

“We can confirm that Mr. Carroll, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Selnick have been placed on administrative leave pending investigation,” a defense official told The Post.

Caldwell was put on administrative leave for “an unauthorized disclosure,” a Pentagon official said Tuesday. 

Selnick had been under investigation in the same leak probe that implicated Caldwell, according to reports. 

Both men were escorted out of the Pentagon by security.

The defense official on Wednesday would not say whether Carroll’s suspension was related to the leak probe. 

The suspensions come less than a month after Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, ordered the director of defense intelligence (counterintelligence, law enforcement, and security) to assist in a probe into “unauthorized disclosures of sensitive and classified information across the Department of Defense.”

“Recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications with principals within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) demand immediate and thorough investigation,” Kasper wrote in the March 21 memo.  

The directive noted that polygraph tests could be administered “in accordance with applicable law and policy” as part of the hunt for the leakers. 

It’s unclear whether any of the suspended officials were subjected to a polygraph test. 

A report including a “complete record of unauthorized disclosures within the Department of Defense and recommendations to improve such efforts” is expected to be delivered to Hegseth at the end of the investigation.  

“I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution,” Kasper wrote. 

It’s not yet known whether any of the suspended individuals could face criminal charges. 

The leaks under investigation include disclosures about operational plans for the Panama Canal, carrier movements in the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon last month and the March pause on intelligence sharing with Ukraine, a US official told Politico.