Third Top Defense Department Official Placed On Leave Amid Leak Probe

Suspensions at the Defense Department have continued, with a third top Pentagon official being placed on administrative leave amid an ongoing investigation into information leaks at the department. 

Colin 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. 

Carroll’s suspension came just a day after two of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s advisers were suspended and escorted out of the Pentagon. 

On Tuesday, the Defense Department suspended and escorted out Dan Caldwell, Hegseth’s senior adviser, and Darin Selnick, the department’s deputy chief of staff. Both Caldwell and Selnick previously worked at Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit group previously headed by Hegseth.

Carroll, a U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, previously worked at Anduril Industries, a defense contractor that specializes in autonomous systems, according to his LinkedIn. He also worked at Applied Intuition, a software company headquartered in California. 

Carroll deployed to Afghanistan four times as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with an aerospace engineering degree and got his master’s degree from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

The Defense Department said in March that it kicked off 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.”

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.