Pentagon Leak Investigation that Justified Firings Draws Suspicion on Itself

Trust between the Pentagon and White House broke down over unsubstantiated allegations that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth used illegal wiretaps in his investigation of information leaks and suspicion that the findings used to justify firing his top three aides may have been unfounded.

The investigation was led by Hegseth’s personal lawyer Tim Parlatore to find the source who leaked a supposedly top secret document to a reporter. The document outlined military options for the USA to retake the Panama Canal.

White House advisers said they were fed information by Parlatore that a warrantless and therefore illegal National Security Agency wiretap exposed Hegseth’s three aides as the source of the leak. The advisers raised the issue with Vice President J.D. Vance’s staff because the wiretap would be an unconstitutional scandal dwarfing the leak. Parlatore claimed he never told anyone about an illegal wiretap and said all the information he passed along came to him from people in the Pentagon.

The advisers came across a rumor that Air Force Office of Special Investigations may have identified the leaked document as a draft missing some details that were in the final version. The rumor said this led to a focus on mid-level aides for the Southern Command, Central Command or Joint Chiefs of Staff. OSI was told to focus on Hegseth’s three aides the weekend after he fired them.

All of this left the advisers unsure of who to trust and what to believe. One adviser told Hegseth he thought none of the fired aides leaked any information and the investigation was used to get rid of them due to conflict with Hegseth’s first chief of staff Joe Casper. Parlatore and Casper are regarded as having personal ties.

Hegseth’s senior adviser Dan Caldwell, former deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and deputy defense secretary’s chief of staff Colin Carroll were fired last month for allegedly leaking the document.

Ever since then, Hegseth has lacked a chief of staff and deputy chief of staff. He is using former junior military aide Ricky Buria as a de facto chief of staff, but the White House will not allow him to make that a formal long term job due to Buria’s lack of experience and his involvement in dramas within Hegseth’s office.

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