One of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s right-hand men was put out to pasture Tuesday after being accused of leaking.
Dan Caldwell was escorted out of the Pentagon and placed on administrative leave for an “unauthorized disclosure,” reported Reuters.
Caldwell was named in the “Signalgate” drama when Hegseth told the rest of the leaked group what that he was the Pentagon’s best staff point of contact for the National Security Council as it prepared for strikes in Yemen.
“The investigation remains ongoing,” a U.S. official told Reuters. The official did not provide details on what information was divulged or who was on the receiving end of the leak.
President Donald Trump’s administration has made efforts to pursue leaks, and Hegseth has followed suit. On March 21 his Chief of Staff Joe Kasper requested an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications.”
The memo noted the possibility of a polygraph test. It is unknown if Caldwell will be subject to a lie detector.
But Hegseth himself was involved in the biggest leak of all when The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was inadvertently added to a Signal Chat that revealed highly sensitive information about an ongoing attack.
Hegseth texted the Signal chat details of exactly when bombs would fall, the methods of the attack and messaged: “Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Then he boasted, “We are currently clean on OPSEC,” meaning operational security—despite a journalist having been in the chat all along.
The Trump administration said what Hegseth texted was not classified—but others, including the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, said it was.
Caldwell, a former enlisted Marine who served in Iraq, was one of Hegseth’s leading advisors and advocated for the U.S. to scale back its approach in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Before the president was elected, he co-wrote a September 2024 article called “Trump Must Not Betray ‘America First’” and published it in Foreign Affairs.
He had argued in favor of “significantly” pulling back from the Middle East, where he says “American interests are less pronounced.” Caldwell also publicly criticized the U.S.-Israel alliance, as reported by Jewish Insider. He called the Iraq war a “monstrous crime” and said that America would have been better off if U.S. troops had stayed home. Critics have labeled him an isolationist, but proponents of his views claimed he was improving the country’s defense priorities.
Caldwell’s co-authored Foreign Affairs article notes that for years, the White House has championed an “interventionist strategy aimed at maintaining U.S. primacy abroad.”
He and co-author Reid Smith continue: “The United States sacrificed thousands of American lives and $8 trillion for wars in the greater Middle East that were largely unrelated to its own safety and core national interests.”
Caldwell, who believes “Republicans must be honest about the limits of American power,” also has deep ties with the Koch network, a multi-million dollar rightwing organization formed by the fossil fuels billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. Caldwell reportedly took an active position in staffing the Pentagon, despite Trump issuing a directive against hiring those who have worked for Koch or his political group Americans for Prosperity. Caldwell previously served as a foreign policy strategist and lobbyist for Americans for Prosperity, and he was most recently a public policy adviser at the Koch-funded Defense Priorities.
In February Caldwell became senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, with a special focus on Ukraine policy.
His removal from the Pentagon comes after a string of prior firings which included the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top admiral in the Navy, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, and the top U.S. military lawyers.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Trump administration for comment.
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