One Phone Call Set Off a Chain of Events That Could Topple Pete Hegseth
On the night of April 3, Colin Carroll got a simple phone call that set off a chain of events leading to the roiling internal meltdown among top Pentagon staff that is now threatening to topple Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Carroll, who was chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary, answered because he knew the number: It was Politico reporter Daniel Lippman, who just weeks earlier had penned a story taking Carroll apart as a “bad boss” who’d been fired in 2021 during the Biden administration. For that article, the Pentagon’s public affairs office had set up a call between Carroll and Lippman, and Carroll had commented on the record for the story. When Carroll answered, he asked Lippman if he was calling to apologize. Lippman was not; he had a new lead to ask about. He had heard that Pentagon chief of staff Joe Kasper was facing an investigation by the inspector general and wanted to know if Carroll could confirm. Carroll told him he knew nothing about it and ended the call.
He then texted his colleague, Dan Caldwell, on Signal, to tell him about the exchange, asking how he should handle it. At the time, Caldwell was a top Pentagon official and longtime Hegseth loyalist. “I just had a politico reporter call me and ask to comment on ‘an ongoing IG and criminal DCIS investigation into Joe Kasper.’ I told him no comment,” Carroll texted Caldwell. “Same reporter that did a hit piece on me two weeks ago for getting fired for ‘bad leadership’ last time around. I feel like I should report this call to someone but not sure who. Given the leak and disclosure stuff.”
Caldwell texted back: “Flag for your PAO. And then Sean Parnell.” Parnell is the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson. Carrol sent the email that night and copied Caldwell. He also informed his boss, Steve Feinberg, Carroll told Drop Site.
Last week, Carroll, Caldwell, and deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick were all marched out of the Pentagon and subsequently fired, with Hegseth accusing them of leaking information. “When we had leaks, which we have had here, we did a serious leak investigation. And through that leak investigation, unfortunately we found some folks that we believe were not holding to the protocols that we hold dear here at the Defense Department,” Hegseth said on Fox and Friends on Tuesday, adding that the investigation had uncovered “sufficient evidence to believe that they or others near them were party to leaking.” While he did not specify exactly what they may have shared, the investigation followed multiple reports in the press based on Pentagon leaks regarding U.S. policy toward Panama and Ukraine.
But, according to Kasper, the email Carroll sent to the press office regarding Politico played a significant role in their firings. Kasper, who officially left his role Monday night, launched and then delegated the leak investigation that led to the recent firings of Carroll, Caldwell, and Selnick. For Kasper, Carroll’s email was not an innocent act of forwarding on information received from a reporter, but was aimed at manufacturing an IG investigation. “Odd that he gets a ‘call’ from a reporter about it and cc’d Dan Caldwell,” Kasper texted Drop Site.
“They have to be careful, because they're also on email creating this,” Kasper added in an interview, referring to Carroll and Caldwell. “They're the ones who are on email--if you want to know why somebody is dismissed by higher powers and higher authorities, you know, it's not only just unauthorized disclosures, but it's shit like this, where they were trying to manipulate people and things, and the Secretary through, shit like this.”
Kasper said that the IG’s involvement never rose to the level of an investigation. He was told, he said, there had been an anonymous complaint filed alleging that two people were overheard at a party talking about Kasper and drug use. “I tried to turn over every rock on this but here's the thing that everybody knows about me: I don't have a dealer. I don't do drugs. I don't have anything to worry about in any way whatsoever, because it's not real,” he said. “I wish my life was that exciting.”
Kasper told Drop Site that he passed his routine drug tests and even volunteered to take a drug test a day for 45 days if Drop Site would pay for it. He said he was also accused of deliberately undermining a drug test, but that the charge was baseless. “Then it was like I tried to fake it or something was the next thing. And I'm like, how the fuck do you do that when they sit there and they watch you?” he said.
“I know who did it, and we have that on email and they mistakenly sent it to [spokesperson] Sean Parnell, and then tried to allege, when they were caught, that it was a leak, that there's a leak in the IG, and the IG does not leak shit, trust me,” Kasper said. “So that's what allowed me to basically reach out to the IG, and be like, dude, what is this? And that's where it went nowhere.”
Kasper’s assumption that Carroll’s email to the press office was sent by mistake to Sean Parnell is questionable to say the least. Drop Site obtained a copy, and the subject line is “Press inquiry,” and the body of it is addressed to “Sean.” It was sent at 10:31 p.m. on April 3, and largely confirms the narrative provided by Carroll.
“Sean,” Carroll wrote, “keeping this in political channels. A Politico reporter (Daniel Lippman) called me on the way home at 9 pm and asked me “do you know anything about a IG and criminal DCIS investigation into Joe Kasper.” I told him no comment. Eric Pahoon and I dealt with Lippman a few weeks ago when he wrote a hit piece on me for getting fired back in 2021 for IGs and being a bad leader, Eric got me a comment in the article. Clearly he has a bias against us here, but I wanted to flag that Politico is snooping around, and if there is any credibility to the info then there is a serious leak somewhere as IG stuff is pretty closely held. I will let you know if he reaches out again.” Parnell wrote back the next day asking for Carroll’s cell phone number.
At other times in our conversation, though, Kasper suggested the IG may have leaked it. “They tried to allege that there was [a] leak in the IG’s office, to which, to be quite honest with you, I believe that that might be,” Kasper said.
Caldwell did not respond to requests for comment, but gave an interview to Tucker Carlson. Carroll said the allegation from Kasper was baseless. “The story he has concocted is false, and he has used this story to slander myself, Dan Caldwell, and Darin Selnick, both privately as a ‘anonymous defense official’ and now publicly on the record,” Carroll said in a statement to Drop Site. “He also used this story to have us placed on administrative leave, and then terminated, for allegations of ‘leaking’ both this as well as classified, sensitive operational information. Both allegations are entirely false.”
He told Kasper he had no motivation to leak in a text message exchange Kasper shared with Drop Site; “I am in violent agreement with everything we are doing.”
Carroll told Drop Site:
“I am not aware of when the investigation into Joe began. I assume that it began before the outreach I got on 3 April, because a reporter was aware of it, but the exact date should be verifiable by the DoD IG or by Joe himself. I am unaware of the specifics of the IG, what the results were, and whether it is completed or not. I did not file the IG, talk to the IG, or attempt to create an IG complaint. I did not talk to any other reporters about this IG prior to my termination. I do not believe that Dan or Darin talked to the IG or other reporters about the IG either.”
“We refer you to the DoD IG office regarding any investigations they may or may not be doing,” a Pentagon spokesperson told Drop Site. The IG’s office was not forthcoming. “Consistent with longstanding policy, the DoD OIG does not confirm or deny the existence of, or comment on investigations or investigative issues,” a spokesperson said. Lippman declined to comment, despite being this reporter’s intern many years ago.
Hegseth—who, sources said, had been briefed on the allegations, as had White House officials—made a statement in support of Kasper. “Joe’s a great guy, he’s a great American,” Hegseth said on Fox and Friends. “He’s staying with us. Going to be in a slightly different role, but he’s not going anywhere. He’s certainly not fired. You make changes over time.”
Kasper also said the timing of his shift to a new position inside the Pentagon was coincidental. He said he spoke with Secretary Hegseth Monday night and made the transition to a special government employee official. The move was first reported Friday by Lippman. Kasper was previously chief of staff to Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., spending more than a decade in his office. Hunter Jr. was known as one of the hardest-partying members of Congress in living memory, a run that ended with his conviction on corruption charges. Kasper served multiple roles in the first Trump administration and spent the Biden years on K Street before being brought on by Hegseth to be his chief.
Whether the inspector general investigation was or is official or not, news of the inquiry sheds additional light on the chaotic infighting inside Hegseth’s Pentagon, now spilling out into the open. The New York Times in an article this week on Pentagon dysfunction included an anecdote regarding Kasper:
One meeting Mr. Kasper led this month, with a group that works with veterans that was offering its services to the Pentagon, devolved into a recounting of an evening Mr. Kasper and a representative of the group spent at a Washington strip club, said a person who took part in the session.
Former Defense spokesperson John Ullyot wrote in Politico Magazine on Sunday that the allegations that the three staffers were not true—and that Hegseth was trying to “smear the aides.” “While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test,” he wrote. “In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing.”
Hegseth did not respond to a question from Fox and Friends’ Brian Kilmeade on why the staffers—who, he noted, had been close to Hegseth—were not asked to take a polygraph or hand over their phones as part of the investigation. “These are the guys you picked, especially Caldwell,” Kilmeade said. The leak investigation, Hegseth replied, “led to some unfortunate places, people I have known for quite some time.”
“I should have handled you my way a month ago, but Steve [Feinberg] convinced me not to. That’s ok though, I don’t think this is going to end the way you thought it would,” Carroll texted Kasper. When Kasper told Carroll he had “delegated” the investigation, Carroll replied, “I’m not saying you do have anything to do with the investigation - I just know I didn’t leak anything, and the only person who didn’t like me was you.”
Asked about the texts, Carroll told Drop Site: “In my defense he has just had me fired on bullshit. I’m actually shocked he replied since he never replied to me when I needed something when I was still employed.”
Seems as though the clown car blew a tire.
weasels and shrews snapping a each other