Washington
CNN
—
Colin Carroll, the chief of staff of Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg, has been placed on administrative leave, two defense sources said Wednesday, the third such appointee to be placed on leave reported this week.
One defense source told CNN that Carroll was escorted out of the Pentagon and that the recent spate of Pentagon officials being investigated was related to disagreements with the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff Joe Kasper.
“This is a purge of people who had disagreements with the Pentagon chief of staff,” the defense source said.
Carroll was sworn in in January; according to his LinkedIn, Carroll previously worked at defense contractor Anduril Industries, and the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. His being placed on administrative leave comes a day after two other senior political appointees of Hegseth’s — senior adviser Dan Caldwell and deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick — were also placed on administrative leave. Caldwell is being investigated over an alleged unauthorized disclosure, CNN previously reported.
Hegseth smiled but did not answer shouted questions about his advisers being implicated in a leak scandal on Wednesday at a bilateral meeting with El Salvador Defense Minister Rene Merino Monroy.
Kasper ordered an investigation of unauthorized disclosures in a memo on March 21, to include the use of polygraph tests, saying the probe would culminate in a report to Hegseth.
“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 said.
The investigations also come just weeks after Hegseth came under fire for sharing sensitive military operation details in a Signal group chat with other national security officials, which had accidentally included a reporter. The officials on the chat, inclduing Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz, and President Donald Trump sought to downplay the information that was shared in the chat, though defense officials told CNN the information Hegseth shared was highly classified in order to protect service members involved.
“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this,” one defense official previously told CNN. “We don’t provide that level of information on unclassified systems, in order to protect the lives and safety of the servicemembers carrying out these strikes. If we did, it would be wholly irresponsible. My most junior analysts know not to do this.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
