Fired Pentagon adviser says foreign policy views cost him position

A top Pentagon adviser, who was fired last week alongside two other top Defense Department (DOD) officials, said during a recent interview that his foreign policy views, particularly regarding the Middle East, played a part in losing his role at the Pentagon. 

Dan Caldwell, who served as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s senior adviser and was terminated as part of the department’s ongoing probe into information leaks at the Pentagon, said on Tucker Carlson’s podcast that his opposition to the U.S.’s potential attack on Iran facilitated his ouster. 

“And of course, I have some views about the role of America in the world, you know, as we discussed, little controversial, all of us in our ways threatened really established interests,” Caldwell said on “The Tucker Carlson Show” that aired on Monday. He was referring to Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick, the two other top DOD political appointees that were ousted last week. 

“We threatened a lot of established interests inside the building and outside the building,” the Marine Corps veteran who deployed to Iraq added. 

Caldwell was initially escorted out of the Pentagon and put on administrative leave on Tuesday last week as part of an investigation into leaks at the department that was kick-started in March. On Friday, Caldwell, along with Carroll, who was the chief of staff to deputy secretary of Defense Steve A. Feinberg and Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, were terminated. 

The trio, in a joint statement on Saturday, said they were  “incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended” and asserted that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.”

Caldwell, who was a public policy adviser at foreign think tank Defense Priorities, told Carlson that he did not leak any classified information to news outlets while working at the Pentagon and that he, along with Selnick and Carroll, have not been told “what we were being investigated for.”

“If I actually did some of the things that anonymous people on the internet and in the Pentagon are saying I did, I’d be in handcuffs,” Caldwell said. 

Hegseth’s former adviser also stated that he has not been polygraphed or asked to provide his personal phone to check if he had leaked any information to the news media. 

Caldwell, who worked at Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit that was led by Hegseth, said on the podcast that when he was getting escorted on April 15, he initially thought that he was going to be asked to testify versus Hegseth as part of an inspector generals’ probe into the defesne secretary’s use of Signal app to discuss information about the forthcoming strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen. 

The spotlight is back on Hegseth over his alleged Signal use. The New York Times reported on Sunday that he shared sensitive military information with family members and his personal lawyers on a Signal thread.

Hegseth blasted the media when asked about the report on Monday and argued that he and Trump are “on the same page all the way.”

“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax,” the defense secretary told reporters at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.