Exclusive: Alleged Pentagon "Leaker" Colin Carroll Speaks Out About Life Inside DOD, Hegseth's Leadership, and to Dispute Allegations | Ep. 1058

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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. As we've been telling you, controversy has been swirling around the Pentagon all week.
You've heard that everywhere with reports of, quote, total chaos in the building. NPR reporting the White House is looking for a new defense secretary, which Team Trump says is fake news.
But three of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's top aides, Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll, and Darren Selnick, did lose their jobs last week, reportedly as the result of a leak investigation. They were looking into who's been leaking to the media.
These three got offered up as the sacrificial lambs. Now, they deny that they leaked.
And they say that they still support Pete Hegseth. You heard from Dan Caldwell on the Tucker Carlson podcast on Monday, and today, one of the remaining two who was fired, Colin Carroll, is here with me.
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Colin, thanks for being here. And thanks for having me, Megan.
And thanks for your service. Thank you.
What branch of the military did you serve in? I am still in the Marine Corps Reserve. Still in.
When I was active duty for a while. Okay.
And you were deployed? I was deployed. Yes, ma'am.
Afghanistan? Afghanistan three times. Wow.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
So you wound up working in the Pentagon. How? So I graduated from the Naval Academy, aerospace engineer, went in the Marine Corps, did my time as an active duty intelligence officer.
Weirdly, not doing a lot of intel things, but mostly in the force reconnaissance community, deployed a bunch of times. I left the Marine Corps.
I continued to serve as a duty civilian for a while, doing some other jobs. And then I left the duty to go work for Project Maven as a, as a Marine Corps reserve officer.
So in the office of secretary of defense, 2017 to 2019, it's an AI program. From there, I went to Johns Hopkins.
I went out to industry and then I left, I was at Andrel Industries. I left Andrel right before the, the administration started here.
And I joined to be the deputy's chief of staff. Okay.
So where is Steven Feinberg in relation to Pete? He works directly for Pete and he is the deputy secretary of defense. So the normal way things work, the secretary is kind of up and out, up being towards the White House, out being towards, you know, the combat commands, our allies and partners, and then the deputies down and in.
So running the day-to-day operations of the department. And so you were his chief of staff.
And who was Pete's chief of staff? Pete's chief of staff was Joe Casper until I think earlier this week. He's going to – we're going to hear that name a lot.
So you two were sort of parallel – in parallel positions. He was for the top guy and you were for the number two guy.
Correct. And how does Dan Caldwell fit in the one who went on Tucker? So Dan is a close friend of Pete or probably was until about a week ago.
Dan, I met Dan in November during the transition. Dan was kind of the guy in the back of the room when Pete interviewed me back in November.
And he was with the secretary all the way through transition, confirmation. He joined as a senior advisor doing policy ops work in the secretary's front office.
He and the secretary go way back to probably a decade plus ago doing veterans work and things like that from the past. How about Darren? What's Darren? Darren also is an old friend of the secretary, worked together for probably a decade plus, again, in the veterans community, doing veterans work.

He is an advisor to the secretary, was an advisor to the secretary until last week for really like workforce personnel things.

And then he became the deputies, sorry, he became the deputy chief of staff to the secretary maybe a month and a half ago.

So one under Joe Casper.

Correct.

Okay.

So you knew all these guys while you were working at DOD for the past- Thank you. Sorry, he became the deputy chief of staff to the secretary maybe a month and a half ago.
So one under Joe Casper.

Correct.

Okay.

So you knew all these guys while you were working at DOD for the past-

I worked with them closely every day.

Okay.

And you were brought into the Trump administration.

You hadn't been at DOD until Trump won.

I was not part of Trump won, actually.

No, I was just a regular-

I mean, until Trump, W-O-N.

Sorry, until Trump won in November.

That's correct.

I joined this time around, yeah.

All right.

So just personally, tell us a little bit about yourself.

How old are you?

Are you married?

Kids?

We'll be right back. It's a regular career.
I mean, until Trump, W-O-N. Sorry, killing Trump one in November.
That's correct. I joined this time around.
All right. So just personally, tell us a little bit about yourself.
How old are you? Are you married? Kids? 40, married. I have a wonderful baby boy.
He's nine months old. My wife's pregnant, so we're having a second one here later this year.
God love her. And she's probably going to kill me for saying that on TV, but I just did it.
I live outside outside dc and um i really really wanted to go back to the department of defense um in 2021 i was fired by the previous deputy secretary of defense which is now i have the honor of having been fired by a deputy secretary and a secretary of defense you know in a five-year period um yeah i really really wanted to go back and i can i can talk about why but'd you get fired? First time? Well, first time I got fired, I worked at an organization called the Joint AI Center, the JAIC. I was the chief operations officer.
So I was responsible to make the organization function. My job was to cut programs.
I got there. They had a lot of bloat.
My job was to reduce it to from 30 things to maybe five to eight things. You were Doge before Doge was cool.
I was Doge before Doge was cool. And as a part of that, you know, I did not make friends in some places.
You take people's money away. But in that era in the department, you couldn't get rid of people.
So there are just lots of unhappy people that didn't have any money to spend on their programs. And they, you know, complained to the IG about me.

There was a morale survey.

The morale was very low. The quote that I love the best is,

Colin Carroll had his foot on the throat

of innovation at the Jake, which is really funny.

Anyone that actually knows me knows

that I'm a pretty innovative person

and I'm very supportive of innovation.

But that was enough to get me tossed.

And I'll be honest, you know, I'm a Marine.

I'm a direct person. I can be abrasive.
I'm sure that I didn't handle every situation back then entirely well. So, you know, no harm, no harm feelings.
Live and learn. Well, no one's alleging that you needed to get fired this time because you were abrasive towards staff, et cetera.
You've been accused of something far more serious as you know. Okay.
So you get back into Pentagon, and you're working as the chief of staff for Pete's right-hand man, his deputy. And you're dealing with all this cast of characters that I mentioned.
And at least Darren and Dan are both close to Pete. But you didn't know Pete.
No, so if you think—I volunteered to go back, and then I volunteered to be the deputy's chief of staff. I was supposed to do a different role.
I volunteered to come in in the very beginning and and kind of set the foundation for him to join and then get him going. And then he asked me to stay.
So I said I will stay for a couple of years. He meaning Pete or Steve Feinberg? Steve Feinberg.
Okay. The other guys were actually called by the secretary and said, hey, please come join me in the administration.

I cannot be successful without you. So different story.
They upended their lives to come as well, but I volunteered. I was not a phone call saying, Colin, we really need you to come.
I just really wanted to come back. And let's just set the stage on ideology.
I listened to Dan Caldwell on Tucker. He's, I think, very much aligned with Tucker's view of foreign policy, more dovish, less hawkish, very anti-neocon, both having come to that organically over the years.
But Dan actually fought as a soldier and so has a personally, um, very committed view towards it. And, and you're in that camp yourself or no?

Um, um, very committed view towards that. And, and you're in that camp yourself or no? Um, well, I can tell you having, uh, been in a war for something like two and a half years of my life total.
Um, I am not a fan of going to places that I think we, we have no real policy objective. And then our military officers are not really understanding like the strategy to win.
We don't even know what winning is, but I'm not a policy person. Quite frankly, I was brought into buy the right thing at the right cost, which is a completely different problem that the department has.
And that is a really intangible problem that we're trying to fix or intractable problem. I should say that's me.
I think Darren was brought in very much on the workforce side and the military health side to try and rectify some of the problems there.

And Dan is a policy ops person.

So his role was EUCOM policy, so Europe, and CENTCOM policy, so the Middle East. That's what he focused on.
You know that Dan alleged that he's not a leaker. He leaked nothing and that it's possible he was fired for his ideology, in particular, his position that we should not be getting into a war with Iran.
What do you think of that? I think I watched that. I think that maybe Tucker was kind of had an angle there.
And honestly, when we were fired, I don't think none of us knew exactly what was going on. So when he filmed that, I think it was still very nebulous as to why we were fired.
You and I are talking about Friday. It's been a week since you're firing.
Right. He interviewed with Tucker.
It came out, I think, Monday morning. Correct.
So he probably interviewed over the weekend. I think that since then, we've learned a lot more.
And that's from friends in the White House, friends in the building, the Air Force OSI investigators. I talked to the media blitz of people that have called us saying, hey, here's what the White House or here's what the Department of Defense is leaking about you right now.
Can you comment on it? And so I think we have a better. And then, honestly, Joe Casper did a on the record interview with DropSite.
Joe Casper, just for the record, again, is the chief of to Pete Hegseth, or was up until a couple of days ago, and has been moved out of that position in this same time period, and has been sort of, I don't know if we'd call it a demotion, but he was a staffer and has been changed into a special government employee, which is different and less scrutinized position. The way to look at this is you have political appointees, i.e.
people that were vetted by the White House and were appointed. Some of them are Senate confirmed.
Others are like me. I was just a political appointee.
Joe was a political appointee as well. He is no longer a political appointee.
So he is no longer a part of the Trump administration. He is a basically a parttime uh employee like elon he's got the same role same same um exact uh you know hiring mechanism i'm not sure if it's exactly the same thing because sometimes you can be part-time sometimes you can be full-time for a certain period of time elon was like full-time for a certain period of time i'm not 100 sure what joe's why would they move somebody who's a political appointee over to the position of special government employee? My understanding is that there was a meeting in the White House last week, maybe Thursday or Friday morning, that was kind of a, hey, how do we do damage control on the own goal that we created here? And out of that meeting, there were two kind of outcomes.
One was what to do with Joe and one was what to do with the three of us.

And, you know, this is from people I've talked to that were not in the meeting, but got the debrief after the meeting.

The secretary was told basically Joe needs to move out of the role of chief of staff.

I'm not sure it was related to the investigation, the actions of last week, or if it was just Joe was not the best chief of staff and they were kind of frustrated with him. We can talk about why.
But he was basically told move him and kind of do it in a quiet way. And, you know, and then that turned into that wasn't that quiet because somebody leaked it out of the White House or wherever.
And then it was in the press. That same meeting, you know, they looked at what to do with the three of us.
And my understanding is there were some parts of the white house that were very supportive of retaining us and bringing us back and then uh you know there was some evidence that was he's doing air quotes for the listening audience there's some evidence of uh that was told that may or may not exist and because people said hey there's evidence here, and I was also told that someone said that we failed polygraphs, uh, the presidential personnel office decided get rid of them on leaking. Correct.
Okay. All right.
So let's, let's go back now and set that up. So you're, you're running along, things are going, I guess.
Okay. But before this whole dust up started, which really started at the beginning of April, I think, like you get this phone call from this political reporter.
But prior to that April 2nd phone call, how is the office operating? Yeah, I mean, you have to understand the dynamic between secretary's office and the deputy's office and like a what I call traditional administration, which I don't think is always the right answer. but traditionally how it is, is the secretary, chief of staff and the deputy chief of staff have a very close relationship, talk to each other 10, 20 times a day and are ensuring that what the president wants from the White House is what the secretary's vision is.
And then the deputy's delivering those results. The key thing there being taking words and memos and and making them reality.
I was brought in because quite frankly, like the one thing I'm really good at is making shit happen. That's what people pay me to do.
And I'm very, very good at it. I'm not the best chief of staff I'm learning too, but I know how to take words and build a team and make it, make it reality.
The secretary's office really struggled with the word team both internally and then with the deputy's office and then with the rest of the building that was my observation how so well you know you said at the beginning here that people are kind of this is a story about personalities and people like that's actually 100% accurate like most things in life it's a story about and people. I'm a firm believer in the fact that you need to be able to build a competent team, trust that team.
You can have arguments with that team, but then you can go out and grab a beer afterwards and everybody's kind of able to have a relationship. No matter how tense it gets in the office.
And this is a super stressful environment, right? You've got something like 200 executive orders in in 45 days we're all running as fast as we can there's a lot of pressure coming from the white house there's also just like the daily operational stuff that's happening and then there's the constant continuous rhythm of things that happen that need to happen to make the department run um joe is a very non-traditional chief of staff and he may have been brought in to be that. Maybe nobody knew he was going to be that.
I don't know. I didn't make the decision, but working with him was very difficult.
And I think there's out there in the press, it's, you know, the white house, other people in the department, such as me. I really struggled to get a relationship with the guy i tried really hard but i couldn't do it he

didn't want to talk to me didn't want to include us in meetings i don't know if that's his

personality if there's something from his past history that said like this is how to do it

but you can't run a three million person organization by kind of like having a cabal

of five people and making decisions it's like shotgunning memos out that's not how it's how

change actually happens um and so i i don't think that we ever we struggled as an administration

Thank you. just like shotgunning memos out.
That's not how change actually happens. And so I don't think that we ever, we struggled as an administration to really put a functioning team together.
Because you need to be in communication with your counterpart over in the secretary's office and that man was not receptive to dealing with you very well. Yeah, and you can say, hey, I saw a thing that said something like packages.
So if you, people have listened here and have been in the department, understand that a package is basically like a decision paper that's coming from somewhere in the department that has to get staffed and coordinated. It's typically a really long process is arduous.
The last administration was non-functional because they couldn't make decisions because they really wanted consensus before package came for decision. Well, the department's like not a, you know, there's 300 organizations.
You're never going to get all of them to have consensus. But you still need at least some level of process to coordinate things and get them through and get them signed by the secretary.
We just really struggle with that process. It was people running in and out directly to the secretary.
Hey, do this. You know, people finding out about it weeks later or days later and going like, how the hell did that even get signed?

Like, I don't think the lawyers looked at that, like that type of stuff.

I'm all about moving fast and breaking things.

And people that know me know I move fast and break things, but I also try to do it in a

way that protects my leadership and sets us up to actually execute the thing that we're trying to do. So it's hard to do if you're not even in on what's happening behind closed doors in the secretary's office.
Correct. Can't really execute.
I mean, yeah, a little bit of a black hole up there. But my way around that was to talk to people like Dan and then Darren, when he became the deputy chief or the deputy chief staff.
And I actually thought up until a week ago that we kind of worked a process by which we could function. I don't say like around Joe Casper, but just with Joe, the way that he was.
Because those two are on the other side. They're more on Pete's side and you're on the deputy side where you're kind of the worker horse, the workhorse.
So if you could get Dan and Darren talking to you, it was a meaningful end around Joe if you couldn't get Joe's attention. Right.
And honestly, Darren's role as deputy chief of staff was to kind of be the chief of staff. So that was it.
All right. So that was working and you were all in alignment with Pete, right? I mean, it was like, let's just settle that.
Is there, was there a divide between you three guys and Pete in any way? No. The only thing I would say maybe in the secretary's office that there was a divide about was whether Joe was fit to serve in that role.
You three had one opinion and Pete might not have shared it. Nobody ever asked me, but if they had asked me, I would have said, yeah, I don't think so.
It's not working. So unfit, how so? From my observation, just not responsive.
Sometimes not there. Not, not always giving the best advice to the secretary on like how to do things.
I think for example, had they wanted to just get rid of us, they could have said, Hey, the advice here is Colin, Darren and Dan aren't aligned anymore. They're an obstacle.
Whatever the case is, let's just terminate them for cause because we serve at the pleasure of the president and the secretary you can literally get rid of us what they did instead was they tied us to a leak investigation there is a real leak investigation we can talk about that to the extent i'm allowed to share but there is one they tied us to that when there's absolutely no evidence and it made no sense and then they basically publicly executed us and i'm not 100 sure what the reasoning was but that you know any i look at that as soon as it was happening i kind of realized what was happening and all i could think was this is totally going to backfire here and not end the way that you think it's going to end um but for whatever reason the advice that the secretary was getting from joe and some of the other people there was yeah this is this is going to be great. To get rid of you three.

And just the way that they did it, right?

So what happened, let's just back up because, all right, so you're going along, it's not

perfectly smooth and you've got some problems with Joe.

And I can see from some of the comments he's made, for example, to journalist Ryan Grimm,

he's not your fan either.

But then on April 2nd, you get a call, um, April 3rd, sorry. You get a call from a reporter at Politico, uh, named Lipman, right? Last name Lipman.
And this is where things start to go sideways and get us to this point where everybody's fired. So this guy, this guy calls you and you didn't like this guy because two weeks earlier, he'd done a hit piece on you about your firing, your earlier firing at DOD that we just went through.
Correct. So no one wants to see that written about in Politico.
It wasn't very nice. Politico never is.
So not towards the Republicans or Republican administration. So this guy calls you and what do you say? His phone's in your, his numbers in your phone because you dealt with him on the record.
I was able to give him a comment via my public affairs office. It was all known at the Pentagon dealing with him when they were doing the hippies on you was not forbidden.
Like they knew, you know, I mean, it was the deputy's office. We dealt with it and I gave him a comment and he wrote his piece.
Okay. But it wasn't a anybody at the pentagon that colin's getting hit by politico and we're going to allow him to make one statement to them i don't think it was a mystery no okay so that happened and then his number was in your phone because they connected you with him i called him to give him a comment okay i think i texted him a comment just to make sure that because my comment if i said something on the or the phone probably have been vulgar and not very good.
So I wrote it and texted it to him. Okay, very good.
But yeah, he called, I picked up the phone and I literally, I was driving out of the parking lot of the Pentagon and I said, hey, are you calling to apologize? To which he said, no. And then he just basically asked me, hey, have you heard anything about an investigation into Joe? And I said, no.
An investigation into Joe Casper. Correct.
The chief of staffer. Correct.
Pete Hexf. Okay.
And had you? I had not. No.
That was the first you heard about any investigation into Pete. Correct.
Sorry, into Joe, not Pete. Correct.
Okay. It will later be alleged that you orchestrated that phone call from Dan Lipman.
I read that in Ryan's piece. Joe is claiming this.
Yeah, that's what Joe said. I've read that.
That you wanted an IG investigation of him or had started an IG investigation of him and somehow manipulated Dan Lipman at Politico to call you, now I'm doing the air quotes, whereas really you were the one who had first reached out because you wanted to see in Politico that there was an investigation into Joe.

Yeah. From what Ryan told me, cause I, I went on the record for Ryan as well.
And he kind of walked me through this when he called like the most batshit crazy interview he's ever done. With Joe Casper.
with Joe is that Joe had about six stories for how this occurred ranging from there was

never a call ranging from Colin called the reporter, Colin meant to email the reporter, but accidentally emailed the public affairs office. That is reflected in Ryan's report.
It's clear, Ryan thinks Joe's all over the board on suggesting how this went down. I'm not 100% sure why.
The facts are, the guy called me. I texted Dan when I got home after dinner and said, what do you want me to do? I got this call.
You texted Dan. He said, yep.
He said, send a note to Sean Parnell, who was in the public affairs office, which is exactly what I did. He's basically a spokesperson for the Pentagon now for Pete.
Correct. Yeah.
Okay. We know Sean.
Yeah. All right.
So, and you did that because we have an email from you to Sean saying, Hey, I got this call from this guy. Yes.
So you, but you maintain. And then I talked to Sean next day.
He called me, I think it was a Friday afternoon. I was out in the field throwing a ball to my dog.
He called me and I told him the same thing. That you'd gotten this call.
Correct. And that you didn't, you didn't, did you speak with Dan Lippin on anything of substance? No.
Okay. So what did you tell him? I said, I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't know anything about an IG investigation. Okay.
And the comm shop basically said, don't have further communication with it. No, no one said anything to me, honestly.
Sean was just like, this is crazy. I don't know anything about it.
And that was it. Okay.
Yeah. So this is early April.
Have any leak investigations happened yet? Have the leaks, I don't have it in my mind when the leak was on the Panama Canal, on the Elon briefing at the Pentagon. Had it started already? It definitely started.
The leaks had started, but did you know anything about an IG investigation into who the leakers were at that point? No, let me walk you through the investigation real quick because it is kind of confusing. So there were leaks.
There were probably four or five that the secretary cared about and said go investigate these are in like the february maybe march time frame the ones that are out in the press are the panama um and then elon visit and then i think they're they mentioned another one about maybe seizing or stopping or starting ukraine aid i forget which it was yeah i just i have just a little timeline here. On March 5th, Politico with a story on, we stopped intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
On March 13th, NBC News went with the big one, which was Trump White House has asked the military to develop options for the Panama Canal. March 20th, the New York Times with a story, the Pentagon set up a briefing for Elon Musk on potential war with China.
That one was said to have infuriated Trump, who saw that it would be inappropriate to brief Elon at the Pentagon on anything happening with China, given his business interests there. March 21, Politico ran a story entitled Trump sends second aircraft carrier to the Middle East and ramp up against the Houthis.
And then we had the signal debacle with Jeffrey Goldberg that hit the press and that dominated the media for quite some time. Then on March 28th, Wall Street Journal ran a story.
Hegseth brought his wife to sensitive meetings with a foreign military official. And here we are on April 3rd, where acting Pentagon inspector general Stephen Stebbins said he was opening an investigation into the signal gate story.
And shortly thereafter, April 15th, the three of you, April 15th and 16th, the three of you were placed on leave. So, okay.
So when we're back at early April and you get this call from Politico, we'd had leaking, but we hadn't yet had an announcement of investigation into leaking.

It might not have been announced, but there is definitely an investigation going.

We talked about it internally and walked through, hey, what's the best way to do this?

I don't exactly remember when Joe signed the memo saying, hey, we're chartering an investigation, but there was investigation.

Okay.

So he was the one initially to get the IG on the case. It's actually not the IG.
Oh, it's not. No.
Oh, it's the Air Force. They went with the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, I think, Air Force OSI, which is, you know, the Air Force has Air Force OSI, Navy has NCIS, the Army has Army CID.
These are like the criminal investigative units of the services. The Air Force was assigned to do this one.
It could anybody but it was the Air Force I think it probably could have been anybody but maybe there's maybe the Air Force is like the executive agent to support the Office of Secretary of Defense I'm not sure okay but they started their investigation and they've been doing an investigation in two weeks I talked to them I came so we were put on leave and we were then terminated.

So I was put on leave on a Wednesday,

terminated on a Friday.

The other guys were Tuesday.

Air Force OSI,

by the way,

is doing its investigation.

None of us talked to Air Force OSI.

I can walk you through how I was like escorted out,

but it was,

it was very funny.

I mean,

there are these two older gentlemen. One guy had been depending on for 47 years they came from Washington headquarters services like administrative security and you know the dude was like a national hero he he was he had a cane because he burned his legs with jet fuel on 9-11 trying to like save some other airmen's lives and he was like an e-7 in the air force and the other gentleman had a cane too so it was the slowest perp walk of all time i like walked down to this guy's you know room in the basement and they would walk me out after you know talking to me for 30 minutes um super nice don't fault them at all they just read me out of my clearances and then said you know like what's going on and i was like what do you think this thing's going on we had a conversation but were they the ones who told you you were fired they did yeah well they told me i was put on leave actually they didn't really know what status i was in they're like we're not sure we're trying to find out but basically get out you got to get out of here yeah okay and so i spent the next five days uh messaging people in the department to say please send air force osi to talk to me and over on Easter Sunday, I got, you know, somebody called me and said,

hey, people in the department to say please send air force osi to talk to me and over on on easter sunday i got somebody called me and said hey a friend of mine called said air force osi will reach out to you i've been bugging people like literally every two hours they called they came into my house on monday they made me sign an nda which i think is a little strange but um so i'm so I'm not going to talk about the details of their investigation. I did talk to the agent.
He told me that I could defend myself as accused and, you know, kind of talk about the generality. So I'll tell you this now, what they told me is that they were not involved.
The actual people doing investigations were not involved with any of what they termed the HR actions of the previous week. so they've been investigating leaks and they have leads in my opinion having talked to them but they were not involved in the three of us being being put on leave or fired wasn't their decision no it wasn't decision they weren't even looking at us they got told after that like hey go and my one question to them was i i was told by people I know in the White House that the secretary said that he had evidence.
And I wanted to know, like, what is that evidence? And they said, we have not been handed any evidence to start. Now, they didn't read me my rights.
It was a super informal conversation. I offered them to take a polygraph.
I offered them to take my phone. I told them I did not leak anything.
I did not leak anything classified or unclassified to the media. I've not had a single conversation with the media that wasn't on the record sanctioned by public affairs since I started at the department.
No texting, no emailing, no communications at all. Nothing.
I've had people email me and I just send them to the press sec the my other guy at deputy's office he was like the public affairs guy that's it have you been told by dan caldwell or darren that they leaked i've been told that neither leaked and honestly i don't know them super well but i can tell you that darren um dar Darren's job was workforce and culture. Darren did not sit in any of the, like the things that you just read off there on the, from the news.
Like Panama attack plans. Darren didn't sit in any of those meetings.
Darren probably doesn't even know what the hell's going on there. And so I can assure you that Darren did not leak any of those things.
I truly believe that. But Dan would have had access to those.
Dan would have access to every one of those things.

Or, you know, maybe half of them.

He would have had access.

I know Dan now, and I work with him pretty closely.

I do not think that Dan leaked either.

And I heard him say it on Tucker that he did not leak any classified information related to any of this stuff.

And I believe him.

And he never told you that he leaked?

No.

He denied to you that he leaked?

Well, so, yeah, he denied to me, exactly. But what happened was i was on the way back from the white house i was at a meeting and i was with the cio and somebody texted me a tweet said calmo was escorted out and so my first thought was um well my first thought was like shit maybe he leaked something honestly and i got back to the office and I was and people were kind of like yeah it was a talk of the office um but there wasn't really any information I went to a play with my wife I think I told you just I went to a play Annie and in the middle of the play I got a message from someone or maybe someone sent me a link I don't even know it was Darren Darren is now escrowed out so it immediately got really suspicious at that point it's like this doesn't make sense uh i didn't think dan would leak but i know darren didn't leak and then i got messages from friends of mine on the senate armed services committee towards the end of the play that said hey a reporter called us and said that you're the next person on the list and so you know i'm showing my wife and my wife's like hey do you want to, do you want to stay? I'm like, no, the sun's going to come out tomorrow.
We're going to, we're finishing this play. Right.
And so I get home, I called Darren and Darren said, hey, this is kind of what happened to me. The two guys with canes came and they were super nice about it.
And he's like, I heard your next. And so I'm like, yeah, I just heard the same thing.
I messaged my boss and said, hey, I heard I'm next from the Senate Armed Services Committee, heard from a reporter. And he, he kind of was like, nah, it it's not true and then of course the next day i go in so i was kind of prepared for it i wasn't shocked or frustrated i just you know i was as nice as i could be to these guys i gave one of them a ride because one of the cane yeah he had to wielding he had to go like all the way down to the gate and i didn't want him to have to walk all the way back.
So I gave him a ride around the Pentagon and dropped off.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So you left the building having no idea why you got fired?

No, I knew I didn't leak anything.

So I knew it wasn't that.

And to this day, has anybody told you why you got fired?

The only, the best thing I know is what Joe told the reporter, which is we were fired because he thinks that we created. Back toe casper the chief of staff i mean he literally said this is why they were fired so that's the best i've got suggesting that you were the leakers correct yeah on an ig into him uh where i can show for sure that we did not leak that i mean i talked to dan and dan wasn't like oh yeah that ig like he didn't know what I was talking about.
Sorry, just to clear that up. Joe Casper says you guys leaked or suggested that he was the subject of an IG investigation.
We're not, he didn't say that you were the Panama leaker or that you were the Elon leaker. No, he didn't say that, no.
But Pete seems to have suggested it, right? Because Pete went on Fox in France. Forgive me for just calling him Pete every time.
You know, I know a long time. He's secretary.
He's secretary. He hangs up to me, but to other people.
I mean, no disrespect. Yeah.
To Dan and Darren, he's Pete. Yeah.
Myself and Deputy Feinberg, he's the secretary. Secretary hangs up.
But he's Pete. And so, yeah, the reason I'm here today, quite frankly, is because I feel wrongly accused.
I know for certain I did did not leak anything I know for certain I didn't do anything else that's criminal either and after his interview on Fox and Friends this week I felt like one I'm being told I can't talk about my investigation but he is directing investigation and on national television basically saying everyone were criminal or maybe not maybe we're gonna be exonerated i don't know it was kind of a a bit of a it's hard to interpret what was going on um yeah i'm here because i want the american public to know the truth i think that your viewers you've got a lot of viewers and i think this is a good medium to do that and i think from the truth i will be able to to show that I am innocent and hopefully be publicly exonerated, which is really what I'm looking for. And I'm also hoping that we all learn some lessons from this because we've got another three and a half years here and potentially more.
And there are some how to build a team and people type lessons that we need to learn. And if the secretary is going to be successful going forward, if he's not going to be the secretary and there's going to be somebody else, like we need to learn how to build a team to accomplish the president's agenda.
The three of us are not deep state. We're not disgruntled former employees.
Like two of these people are very good friends with the secretary. And I'm just a person that literally upended my entire life to come back into the department, gave up a great job, gave up seeing my eight month old kid during daylight hours, seven days a week to actually try and deliver what the president wants.
And so, yeah, I'm here to kind of get that message out. You feel betrayed? I don't feel betrayed.
No, I think Dan and Darren definitely do. I'm not, I wasn't that close to the secretary, i don't feel betrayed no i feel when you saw frustrated but not betrayed when you saw pico on fox and friends um and you know kind of made it clear what he thinks happened here's i'm going to play just a little bit so people people know uh how he sounded because we were he was talking about the the terrible press that he's been hit with since you guys got fired.
And here it is in Sat 34. What a big surprise that a bunch of a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out.
They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me because we're changing the Defense Department,

putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters,

and anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees

on old news doesn't matter.

So that was on Monday at the White House

at the Easter egg roll,

and then he doubled down and went further

on Fox & Friends the next day, which I'll play.

But are you disgruntled?

No, I'm not disgruntled. I actually want to go back.
I very much want to go back and work with Steve. It's been an awesome 90 days.
I think that we have a great next three and a half years in front of us to deliver what the president wants. I'm the type of person, if you ask people that know me, I'm very confident in my own abilities to solve problems if I am part of the solution.
And I really want to go back. I don't know if they'll take me.
I know there's a path back or not, but that's what I want. Well, I mean, he did seem to suggest, you know, this could come out a different way.
Like maybe they did it or maybe it was someone else. So there seems to be a window there on like who actually did the leaking.
Here he is on Fox and Friends on Tuesday,

SOT 32. For a series of serious leaks at the Pentagon, which there were Panama Canal plans,

Elon Musk's visit, you name it, any number of things. And there's four, five, six, seven things.

We said enough is enough. We're going to we're going to launch a leak investigation,

which we did, which was then handed over to OSI, which is the special investigators here at DOD. And if one or two of these guys is exonerated after an investigation, great.
That's what investigations are for. But we took it seriously.
It led to some unfortunate places, people I have known for quite some time, but it's not my job to protect them. It's my job to protect national security, the president of the United States.
What's your response to that? I think that there are leakers and I think that there is a leak investigation. I do not think that leak investigation involved us until after we were terminated.
I think that if there's a path to be exonerated, we should have been placed on an administrative leave and investigated. And I would have been totally comfortable with that.
And I would have talked to OSI and done all the things I said I would do. I think the others would as well.
So why would they have pinned it on you and your two buddies that we've been mentioning if you guys didn't do it? I don't think that anybody actually pinned anything on us. I think that the easiest way to get rid of us was to say, hey, it's part of this leak investigation.
I actually think that Joe probably believes whatever he told Ryan Grimm. Like, he probably thinks that whatever version of email or phone call thing, he thinks that that's what happened.
That you tried to get him in trouble. Yeah, I have to believe that he actually thinks that.
Now, maybe he just hasn't looked at, like, the logical sequence of events. And this is my problem, is just call us in and ask us.
And we could have said, literally, here's my email. Go for it.
That would explain you, but not Darren and Dan. Yeah, so what's not public is Darren got a text message from Daniel Lippman right before this all happened.
From who? He got a text from Daniel Lippman. So Daniel Lippman has been texting the whole office.
He texted half of my office. He's just persistent.
And so Darren got one and went to the secretary on Sunday. So a couple days before he was put on leave, said, hey, I got something to talk is one of them and I'll say that I'll let Darren talk about it but that conversation didn't go very well there was a blow up and Darren thinks that he got flagged that way and I think Dan was flagged he talked to Pete Hexeth about that email you're saying he talked about the text message that he got and Pete got angry with him you'll have to let Darren a story, but there was a blow up on the phone on Sunday.
Well, I mean, can you help us understand that at all? Why would the secretary be angry at Darren for receiving a text from Politico? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think that that was a super sensitive subject, and I don't 100% know why.
but I invite when other people in our office got the text message i just said don't respond to it and don't tell anybody just like let it die and daniel's a persistent guy okay what i was told last week is that this is how he operates he just he runs political playbook and he's like literally blasts everybody and tries to get scoops and And then he tries to confirm things and he just runs with stories. So it doesn't surprise me that he was doing it that way.
Is there any fairness to the accusation that you guys didn't like this guy, Joe Casper? This is an opportunity, political sniffing around him. They're saying there might be this investigation, whether there is or isn't.
This is our chance to bring it to Pete and be like, the guy's a problem. Well, I mean, the reporter had a scoop.
It wasn't us that gave him the scoop, in my opinion. I can tell you that the other two have talked to the secretary directly about Joe months before this.
The White House has talked to the secretary about Joe before this. I have not.
I didn't have that kind of relationship, but we've all talked internally in the deputy's office about, hey, how do we work this? How do we work with this person? So I don't think it was a secret here. Now, whatever the IG was about, I don't actually know the details of that, but I've read about it in the press.
I read what Joe said on the record. Well, do we believe there is or was an IG actually? I mean, I think Joe confirmed on the record that there was an IG and it was a drug usulated.
It sounds to me like it was an insane, uh, IG report and probably was some version of a weaponization of the IG, but I don't know that to be certain. And Joe Casper's denying that he uses drugs.
He volunteered to Ryan Grimm to take a drug test for 45 days

if Ryan would pay for the test.

But he said, there's no way to, I could fake,

because he passed the drug test, he says.

He said, I couldn't fake that, nor do I have a life like this.

He said, my life should be so exciting that I'm doing drugs.

Right.

That's everything that he said.

Okay.

So we do believe that there was some sort of an IG,

if it's not an official investigation, it was either ramping up or they were kicking the tires around Joe Casper. And it seems clear he was blaming you and also possibly Darren.
Correct. That's what, from what he said, that is actually the reason I believe that we were put on leave.
And how about Dan? How does Dan get sucked in? Dan was CC'd on the email that I sent. And Joe thinks that that email was meant to go to a reporter or the reporter was also CC'd.
I mean, he had some weird- Just to be clear, this is, you sent the email after Daniel Lippman of Politico emailed you or texted you. Right.
And you sent an email to Sean Parnell, the comms guy- Correct. At the Pentagon to say, hey, this happened, you know.
Yeah. Now what? Or let me know.
I didn't talk to him. And his theory as bows to Ryan Grimm is that you mistakenly sent that to Sean, even though it is addressed to Sean.
And it's obviously sent to Sean and it lays out exactly what happened. So I don't totally understand the, you misfired it to Sean.
I don't know where he got that. He also there was a version of the story that he told that was that I sent the email prior to IG existing.
And therefore, I knew about it before it existed. Like, I have no idea when the IG started.
I'm pretty sure that is a very easily verifiable fact that you can ask the IG. And then they'll say the date was before April 3rd or 4th, whenever that call was.
Do you believe his denial on the drugs? Uh, I will say this. I don't know if Joe uses drugs or not.
I don't know. Did you ever suspect that? No, but I also don't know what drug users look like and how they act.
I can that joe was super erratic and he would be totally normal in one thing and then totally not normal in another thing within the same 30 minute period but i have no idea i've been told by other people like that seems like a mannerism of a substance abuser but i don't know and i'm not going to allege that here and again he's denying that he uses drugs and is telling Ryan Grimm that he passed a drug test and has not been fired. I mean, he got moved to a different position, but if he had tested positive for drugs, he would have been fired.
I'm assuming he would have been fired. Yeah.
Okay. So we're not sure.
Maybe he's an erratic guy without drugs. That's possible, too.
Correct. But in any event, what you're saying is you feel he blamed you for whatever the IG was doing around him and blamed Darren and saw that Dan Caldwell was CC on these emails and might've had something to do with it and may not have had a great relationship with those other two either from the start.
Yeah. And my understanding is that Dan, prior to all this happening, had gone to the secretary and basically said, I'm out at the end of the month.
I can't work with,. So, you know, either- Things were coming to a head between those two.
Yeah, you want to keep me or you want to keep Joe. But like, I can't, what he told me was that he said, and this, he told me this before any of this happened.
I knew about this a month ago. He had said, basically, I'm trying to do the best I can in this job and I'm unable to deliver the results that you need with Joe's chief of staff.
And I don't feel like I'm, I'm kind of spinning my wheels. So I think he was going to leave anyway.
I don't know if he's gonna follow through on that, but that's what he told me. Okay.
So, but the, the, where it gets weird is at some point in this timeframe, they handed the investigation over to Tim Parlatore, right?

Pete's lawyer.

Yeah, that's what I've been told.

This is in the press.

I actually don't,

I'm not a firsthand source on it.

I don't know.

Okay, but if it's true,

what we read in the paper

is that Tim Parlatore

took over the investigation.

This is Pete's longtime personal lawyer

and also a Pentagon employee

and also one of the members

of the private Pete signal,

second signal gate to the second signal.

Tim was in that chat too.

Yeah, the reports are that he was in it,

his brother was in it, his wife was in it

and some group of others.

But in any event, so if he took it over,

that's somebody who doesn't work for Joe Casper,

who works for Pete.

I mean, now he works for the Pentagon,

but I mean, his loyalties are to the secretary. And my understanding is that's the person who made the call.
Like he was in charge of the investigation at the time. Yeah.
I'm not sure. I get fired.
Yeah. I'm not, I've heard things about who was kind of in the know on the decisions that were made.
It wasn't Joe Casper's call. It was not Joe's capital.
No, I agree with that. And, and I don't actually know if Tim worked for Joe or the secretary.
I mean, everybody works for Joe. I'm pretty sure in that office, all the other senior advisors work for Joe.
Okay. But my understanding is Joe was moved to this special governmental status and he was not, he's not overseeing, uh, Tim.
Joe, Joe was chief of staff until Friday last week. Okay.
Yeah. But that's what I mean.
Well, that's the day you got fired. He was chief.
He was still in the role. I believe when the, when the letter was signed.
Okay. Well, my understanding is that he didn't run that investigation to the end and that parletory took it over.
And if that's the case, he must've seen something that disturbed him, right? About you three guys, one or all. I would love to know what it is.
You have no idea? None. No clue.
You know, I said this on the air and I have absolutely nothing against Dan Caldwell. He seems like a great guy.
Actually, everybody I've talked to about him says he is. But I did think it was a little weird just between us.
I thought it was strange that he told Tucker he hadn't been polyed and no one looked at his cell phone. but I did think it was a little weird just between us.
You know, I thought it was strange that he told Tucker he hadn't been polyed and he, no one looked at his cell phone, but I, and I said this on my show, there are a lot of other ways you can catch a leaker. You know, there are so many other electronic trails that you can check, especially in a building like the Pentagon.
So how are we ruling out that Dan is a leaker? Yeah. You know, OSI could come in here and give you all the mechanisms that they're using.
If you told me, hey, Colin, go run an investigation of leaks. Here are the five or six leaks we care about.
I would have started and said, what is a leak where the information can be tied directly to a certain document or series of documents? Panama, I think is the one yeah and i'm pretty sure more plans but also um around the time that leak happened there's some time before maybe a day or two before there was a meeting in the pentagon that secretary took with south com and some others where we talked about the plan and then then the leak happened. And the secretary,

my understanding is that he thought that somebody in the room or on the call was involved in the

leak based on what he read. Now, I was in that meeting and I read what was in the news.
And I

actually thought like the news didn't get what we got. They got something else.
My gut instinct is

that there was some kind of upstream preliminary document that had been created as a part of the

Thank you. what we got.
They got something else. Um, my gut instinct is that there was some kind of upstream preliminary document that had been created as a part of the process to staff this meeting and build the plan.
And somebody leaked that. So what NBC news had was not as advanced as what you guys had gotten to.
Trust me there, you know, I'm not going to say anything that I shouldn't say, but had they had the plan that we got, I think it would have been a more juicy explosive story. Let's put that way.
Okay, it would have gone everywhere. Yeah.
And so I would have said, okay, let's focus on the people that may have been like, let's find that document so we can actually find what she said. And then what, where, you know, where's the document said those exact things.
And then who had that saved on their desktop? It's probably secret, maybe top secret document. Who opened it? Who printed it? Who was editing it? Who was emailing it around? And I would like narrow the pool down to that group of people.
My guess is that Air Force OSI is probably doing exactly that. I don't know, but these guys are professionals and they're probably looking at exactly that.
And they may, there may be three or four other leaks where they could narrow it down that way too um i do not think that the secretary like the deputy's office is not involved in that kind of level of upstream work right we're staffing final products to the deputy secretary's office is staffing final products to the secretary so i highly doubt that that upstream thing somehow wound its way into uh the secretary's office. I doubt that.
So, I mean, yeah, could, is it possible? Like, yeah, there's a million ways you could leak things. Most of those ways, you know, if you wanted to get information out, you just use your personal phone because FISA doesn't apply because you're not a foreign national.
And, you know, they have to have some kind of probable cause to seize your phone unless you want to voluntarily give it over to seize your phone and search it's a warrant you have to get a warrant so that's what i would have done so i actually think what dan said is they didn't come from to say look at that like there wasn't enough public cause at that point now your point was well it's nice investigation and what i learned from osi is like there't even, we weren't even looking at us yet. So the time we got fired,

Air Force OCI wasn't involved. Now I think they are.
And we'll see how it plays out. The, Dan said he hadn't given over his phone.
He hadn't given over, he hadn't been asked to give his phone and he hadn't been polygraphed. Do you know whether Dan received a visit from any investigators or from the Pentagon asking for electronics back?

My understanding is that Air Force OSI has only talked to me because I reached out to them and basically said, please come.

Now, we all had to go turn our electronics in.

So, like, I drove back the same day and handed in my laptop and my secret phone and all my stuff i believe that dan had like a whole safe and stuff at his house i did not i was in the middle of renovation so i never got a safe installed so i didn't have to deal with that i do think people came and probably took that safe back at some point do you know whether he did that willingly on the first visit uh yeah i'm pretty sure they came and he just handed over. Do you know whether there's a warrant involved? No, there wouldn't be a warrant for that.
Well, there would be if he refused, potentially. To hand over his safe? I mean, he's no longer a government employee, so.
I mean, if he's got Pentagon electronics and didn't willingly give them, they'd have to step it up and get some sort of subpoena or search warrant that's correct yeah i don't know if he's subpoena search warrant they probably just like break his door down and take it because it's their property but that you'd probably know about yeah i think so so have you did have you talked to him at all about like how many times they've come and whether he's voluntarily given over all electronics and so on i just know know that they came and took his safe and whatever, whatever the things he had. Okay.
He may have driven his electronics back like I did. I don't know.
I mean, those would be interesting questions to have answered because, you know, if there's a, any sort of a reluctance to give over this one device, right? This is how investigations go down, right? I agree. Is there anything, is there any device that you have in your possession that you would not give if they want it? Not a single one.
You wouldn't make them get a warrant. You'd hand it all over.
Correct. Including your cell phone.
Correct. I mean, that's uncomfortable, right? No one wants anybody looking through their phone, their cell phone.
Yeah. Even if you didn't leak anything, it's just, you know, do you worry that if you did that, they'd be like nitpicking now looking for justifications after the fact? I don't think so.
I think I'm innocent. Uh, and I don't think I violated any other crimes either.
So I don't think so. Well, that's, that's good.
Hopefully. I mean, will they, do you think they will come get my phone or ask for my phone? Yeah.
I mean, I told the guys like, you know, if you want to polygraph me and get my stuff, set it up. And they said, basically, we'll have to go get permission or something like that.
So I haven't heard from them in a week. Have you ever heard of something like this where somebody gets fired without getting polygraphed? Like for alleged something as serious as leaking top secret documents? Honestly, I've never.
I don't know. I'm not an investigator, so I'm not sure if polygraphs are involved or not.
I can tell you polygraphs aren't the most admissible thing in court from what I've been told. So I'm not 100% sure.
But I think it's a good starting point at least to see, hey, is somebody, you know, I've been polygraphed before as a part of my job. Have? Yes, I have.
Yeah. And, you know, it's a stressful experience, but like they can interpret the results and tell you if you're lying or not.
I'm pretty sure. They've done enough of these.
Yeah. There was a report in NBC News earlier this week that Dan Caldwell and Darren Selnick, the other two, had already been exonerated in this investigation.
Did you read that? I didn't read that, no. Do you have any reason to believe that's true? I have no idea what's going on, quite frankly, so I don't know.
Do you think there's any chance they're working together and you're going to be left the fall guy? No, I don't think there's no conspiracy here. It's not like, hey, we all conspired to do a thing.
It's not true. I work with Dan and Darren on work stuff where I would call them and say, Hey, we need this memo done.
Or how do we want to, how do we think the secretary appeals about X thing? Or for Dan, it's like, dude, I need to get a whole joke. Can somebody please get them for me? That's it.
So you haven't, since you got fired, have the three of you been working together on. We, we have, we have, we have talked, but no, I'd say everyone's kind of doing their own thing.
Dan got a lawyer. That's why he's not here today.
Darren got a lawyer yesterday, which is also why he decided not to come today. Yeah.
I got my dad on a retainer for a buck. He probably would have told me you're an idiot for doing this, but I mean, you're a lawyer, so you, you know more than I do, but I didn't do anything wrong.
That helps.

Yeah, it does.

That helps a lot.

I mean, I've told a lot of people, like, don't do it if you're guilty.

It's really not in your best interest when I'm advising friends who get asked for interviews and so on. The leaks against Pete that post-date these triple firings have been numerous.
So the one I saw, so like my, the deputy's office does primarily resourcing, which is like programming and budget and then execution of the budget. So at the program level, like can we build a Virginia class submarine or not on time at cost or not? That's really what we do.
We also facilitate the rest of the department, but that's what we do. I can tell you, having just spent the last 90 days building the 2026 budget, of which there are numerous sensitive things in there that would upset people if they got loose in the world, that none of that got loose.
The only thing that I saw saw was the americom like merge of northcom and southcom that was in a news article at some point and that was in a budget document well the the leak to the new york times of the second signal chat came post-firing and my understanding is darren and dan were both on that chain i read the article He said he had four people from that chain. I said, the article said there were 13 people in the chain.
So two of the four were unemployed. I don't know if John Elliott was in that chain or not.
I don't know who the third. We haven't talked about him, but he's, he worked over in the comp shop too.
He's the one we mentioned in the passing, but he says he left off his own volition and Pete said they fired him. So he resigned.
Um, maybe he was forced to resign. I don't know the details, but it's a better term than fired.
Yeah. I do think it was a petty move to take what John had put out in the press and said, Hey, we're part of ways to say, no, we fired him.
Like that doesn't make any sense to me like that again is an example of just the staff advising you poorly. Is that how it went down? Yes.
He put out a generic statement saying I'm leaving. And I think he's put on a generic statement like, Hey, it was great.
I decided to move on. They didn't let him save face.
Right. Okay.
And then he wrote the piece in political. I think he got upset.
Yeah. I mean, that's not really where you go when you're team MAGA to be right.
I agree. I don't know why you went to Politico.
I've actually never met John Elliott. I passed him the hallway.
He's been in a meeting once or twice with me, but I've never actually even said hi to him. So it's just coincidental that he went at the same time you guys went? Yeah, it's coincidental.
It's very strange. So do you know if he was on that private signal chain? I don't know.
I would venture to guess the answer is no, but I don't know. What did you think of how Pete seemed in his Fox and Friends interview? Yeah, I don't think he prepared.
And honestly, I think that it was probably a bad move to do that. I understand why his team is advising him to do it.
You know, he has an audience of one. It it's the president of the united states and he wanted to appear combative and he wanted to appear forceful i'm not sure what message he really got across the guy am i a leaker is it possibly exonerated you fired me like i honestly don't know and we've had no official communications from anybody besides the air force advisors that came to me because i asked them to come the air force guys yeah none of the other guys have had anything so i'm not 100 sure i and what i think of it i don't know just to me it's an example of people on the staff that are giving him bad advice i thought the signal gate response when he de-planed from the plane in hawaii was a terrible if you look at who is the background there, you have Sean Parnell and Joe Casper right in the frame.
Then he's out there yelling about how it wasn't war plans. It wasn't classified.
All he literally needed to say was, I'm the secretary of defense. I got an email from general Crilla that was secret and I am an original classification authority and I declassified portions of it and provided it to the cabinet team because I needed them aware of certain things yeah guess what on a text thread somebody all started 100 illegal or sorry 100 legal he is an oca he can't do exactly that and explain it all away the problem is that the people that were advising him don't even know what an original classification authority is they never heard of it it wasn't something that they could have suggested because the team he has, they're not like people that know what to do.
They don't know how to protect him. Right.
Which could lead to a lot of frustration on his part. Do you think he's okay? Do you think Pete is okay? Yeah.
Honestly, I don't know. I'm not sure.
I have observed a Pete that is one Pete and crushes it in meetings. For example, this is out in the press.
They did like a little blog post on it, but the house freedom caucus came to talk to us about budget. It was a breakfast.
They all came as a super interesting. Their, their bus hit a hit like a signpost on the way in and shattered some windows.
So they were super late, but they all came in. They're super excited to be there.
Well, I've never been in the Pentagon before. These are people that want to spend less.
They want a strong national security. They want a strong defense, but they don't want us to have a big budget.
And they, they're afraid that if we go up, domestic spending goes up and, you know, everything falls apart from their ability to balance the budget secretary crushed that meeting i've never seen

a meeting like that there is not a secretary in living memory that could have done as good a job

with those guys he was it was informal he was super direct he was very transparent and they left i could tell you they left it was like the best trip they've probably ever been on in all year at the same time i've seen the secretary in more internal meetings where he is super focused on like very, in my opinion, weird details and very agitated and kind of like yelling and just nothing's good. So it's like a tale of two peats.
And I'm not the person to ask about what he was like before. And I don't know.
I'm just telling you what I observed in the 90 days that I was there.

Was there like a particular point at which his agitation stepped up? Yeah, I think, you know, roughly it was around the time of SignalGate, maybe before when some of these leaks started. There was a focus on the leaks.
So don't get me wrong, like leaking is bad and there are leakers and we should try to catch them especially when it comes to classified things i'm mostly concerned about leaks that lead to like true opsec concerns where there are u.s service members lives at stake and maybe less of the like policy stuff but but if the policy thing sinks a negotiation or something like that like this is critical that we don't do that we should find those people. And I don't think that those people are people that the Trump admin brought in on the team.
I don't think it's Dan. I don't think it's Darren.
I don't think it's anybody else. That's a political, my personal opinion.
We're aligned on the mission. We all want the same thing.
He was very focused on the leaks. And honestly, I think it's kind of like consumed the team a little bit.

Like if you look at a pie chart of,

of the secretary's day at this point,

50% of it's probably leak investigation press.

Like it's that,

like that can't be,

that is a bad thing for America.

It's bad thing for the president's objectives.

And then in order to kind of combat an image,

it's,

Hey,

we're going to go do work out with the troops. I'm a troop.
As a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, I thought that was the fucking coolest thing in the world. The secretary of defense is out doing pushups with me.
As a midshipman, when he went to the Naval Academy, like, hell yes, I would have been screaming on the side too. However, I think I've matured a little bit to the point where I realized that while that is important and it's a thing to do and get out there because it helps with recruiting it just helps like with morale you know if you're taking a half day trip to the naval academy at the same time the budget is due and we really need some support here like come on you gotta weigh priorities and so I don't know I mean when you ask he's okay I don't know I'm not sure I wish I could definitely say he's totally fine but I don't know that's so whole signal gate thing was, I mean, I just don't even think it was Pete's fault.
It was like, obviously Mike Walls's office committed a colossal error. Yeah.
And those on the chat, I guess technically should have known they shouldn't have been having this discussion on signal, but it seems to me like they use signal and that the previous administration had signal on the computers. And it was like, no one was really seeing this as an insecure channel, even though.
I'll be honest with you. You go to Ukraine, like they're fighting off signal.
Yeah. So it is, is the rule.
Hey, don't put sensitive information on signal. Absolutely.
It is. Was the information classified? Like probably as an Intel officer, I'd say my personal opinion is, yeah, it was classified.
However, secretary can just say, I declass say i declassified it yeah exactly literally has the authority to do that and by the way the the opsec concerns from that like okay the bad guys that could hack it they have radars and kind of know when we're taking off from aircraft carriers and stuff right so like they already know what we're doing and the bad guys that don't have the ability to crack it are getting bombs dropped on their head and like, don't, they don't know. They're not cracking signal.
Yeah. So, uh, but it's so unfortunate because it was a successful mission, you know, something to feel proud of.
And all the press around it has been about this signal gate thing. And so much of it on Pete's shoulders, even though he's not the one who add, who created the chat or who added, um, Jeffrey Goldberg.
So I, I feel for, and I'm sad to hear it's become such a distraction for him because it'd be great if he could focus on this. I can hear that you feel the same.
If he could just focus on the mission that he's trying to enact. It just adds a lot of stress that is not needed when you already have a lot of stress on really important things.
Yeah. And also, we talked about, I gave you the timeline, the audience the timeline timeline of all the leaks that had preceded that signal thing.
So he's already dealing with somebody internally or maybe multiple somebodies. If you look at the agenda, you know, the suspected agenda behind these leaks, who's trying to hurt him? My read is that there are for each one of these leaks that you mentioned, and probably some that aren't even in there, there is a specific person that is doing it.

It's not one person.

It's a person per thing.

And they all have some agenda. Elon.
The agenda either was someone disagree with Elon coming and getting whatever brief he was going to get. And so they wanted to blow it up.
Or it was someone that disagreed that maybe the White House didn't know about it and wanted to shut it down. Right.
But it's one of those two things. Is it somebody who accurately deduce Trump will not like this? Potentially.
Because he didn't. Potentially.
I would put my money more on the former, which is like someone just didn't want this to happen. Excuse me.
And then wanted to blow it all up. Yeah.
Because just to be clear, it's not all Pete loyalists surrounding him. And in these meetings, I mean, there will be some people who maybe weren't thrilled with the choice.
There's a lot of people in the Republican party who are more neo-conny or who just thought he was inexperienced and didn't belong in this role, right? I mean, you tell me, but within the Pentagon, it's not all loyalists. I think that it goes back to building the team.
So I'm a firm believer in like, in order to get stuff done, you have to have a team. The whole part of the team is trust.
And you have to trust the department. Will there be people that are trying to undermine you? Absolutely.
Are there going to be people that have their own agenda in the department? Three million people. Of course there are.
Half of them are probably Democrats. Half of them are Republican if it mirrors America.
the reality though is you can't just like write a memo and then it's done you have to rely on the

people to get the work done and when you find people that aren't you you know eliminate them

or put them off to the side or whatever mechanism you can use to make that person less of an obstacle. My observation from the first 90 days, and this is gonna sound weird, is that we had less of a problem from like the deep state bureaucrats in the department than we did from maybe some people on our own team.
And that sounds weird, but if you think about the department, the civilian workforce, I don't say they were running scared. Maybe they would come on and say that they were scared, but we were actively shaping that workforce to be proactive to what we wanted done.

And where there were people that were like an obstacle, it was just steamroll over them. The military workforce is the military.
They clearly have their agendas, especially at the general officer level. Like there's agendas for sure.
And I watched some of the agendas play out. But at the end of the day, like they work for the secretary and he says, this is what's going to happen.
And the military goes and does it. where I saw us run into problems was like,

we did not have a functioning political team process. The people he brought in.
Yeah. Really one person in my opinion, but it was, it was a non-functioning process.
Yeah. Joe just said, Hey, I realized that I'm not the right person to actually cheat the staff.
I'm better for special projects. Joe's a nuanced person because he's not not he's not like a complete idiot right he he was useful for certain things and he did a good job with those things hey renaming brag and renaming betting you know that that was joe he managed that whole thing end to end came up with a clever solution and went and did it unfortunately that probably took hours of his time when he should have been like chiefing the staff for a much larger strategic efforts that we were trying to do.
But he did it. Now, if he said, hey, Joe's going to go do special projects like that and like knock out of the park.
Great. The secretary brought in Darren to chief the staff.
You know, from my from my perspective in the deputy's office, I was kind of told, like, hey, Darren's the guy to work with now. And this is how we're going to do it.
Joe would get mad about that and like not accept that fact.

And so now that he's gone,

do you feel like it'll be a more functional place?

Sort of thought through this before in the last couple of days, I like to hope so,

but I think that there's a lot of water under the bridge at this point.

This can be really hard to recover from.

There are now there is like actually a culture of kind under the bridge at this point this can be really hard to recover from um there are

now there is like actually a culture of kind of fear and toxicity and you know whether it was the

the disgruntled former employees like it is clear to me that there are people in the department that are actively leaking uh and are seeing this as an opportunity and i'm not sure how you recover from that what when i was told you know driving up here from the from new york city is like they're polygraphing people actively right now in the department uh there's just like a culture fear it's people that are like political people you know that are on the team and no one's going to want to come into that environment so if you've created that environment you're basically it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy now where people are just going to leave because no one wants to deal with that. And then your, your team gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
And it's going to be really hard. It's like, what was he supposed to do? If people are leaking top secret information, like you have to do leak investigations and you have to fire people.
Now, whether he fired the right three people. So, I mean, there are ways to run leak investigations.
And I actually think that there's one that's in the press right now that has been kind of that super public thing, which is how Tulsi ran the IC leak investigations, where she just referred two people to come to DOJ. I think there's a third coming.
And like, we don't know their names and we don't know exactly what they leaked, but they clearly ran a great investigation. They probably have enough evidence to actually go, go get these people.
That's not what we did here. We had Air Force USA trying to do that.
And then we had this like separate thing that was super public and basically totally backfired. And that's why we're having conversation right now.
Right, right. And the truth of it is I shouldn't even know your name.
Right. And honestly, like I shouldn't even know I'm under investigation until my handcuffs go on, right? Like, that's how we do it.
I'm a Marine Corps intelligence. I'm like, that's what we do.
It's almost like they wanted to humiliate you. Yeah, I mean, it's clear to me that there was an agenda.
You know, I think I wasn't even like, hadn't even been escorted out by the time someone was tweeting out, like, hey, he got escorted out. That's not a, that wasn't leaks, right? That was an orchestrated campaign from public affairs to say these things off the record or on background or whatever the

terminology is i i mean that just makes me upset right if you have something to say go on the

record and say it speaking of the investigation and status of it i i got a call from um

yeah a reporter at the guardian yesterday and like i don't want to give away all the things

Thank you. He asked me to comment.
I'll go on the record and state the thing. And he basically had told me that a person from the Pentagon who we determined was Tim Parlator was calling him and peddling a theory of the leak investigation that involved the Panama Papers being leaked by a conspiracy to get Joe in trouble.
And that when that didn't stick, they called back and said, actually, Collins obstructing the investigation investigation because I have a legal team and they are working a defamation lawsuit against Joe, who, by the way, wasn't part of the investigation, as you told me and as he has personally told me. So I don't know how I'd be obstructing the investigation by looking at Joe.
But I was told, hey, Colin is what they came back with, told him was actually he was fired because he was routing contracts to his former employer. So I'm telling you that there's a coordinated campaign of people in the department that are anonymous, official people that are trying to get the press to publish things about myself, Dan and Darren and probably John, but I don't know, that are completely factually inaccurate and are,

it is cowardice in my opinion. It is fucking cowardice.
Like if you have something to say, say it via the investigation or go on the record and say it. And oh, by the way, I sent the knowledge that I got from that reporter calling me to my Air Force OSI agent and said, it is unacceptable that they lead for the investigation.
Tim Parletor is calling the press and leaking about my investigation.

I didn't reply back.

Well, we'll reach out to them and give them the chance to respond to all this. But you mentioned that you hired a lawyer, a defamation lawyer.
I'm working with a team. I haven't hired him yet.
Okay. So what's the thought there? Yeah.
I mean, what they're telling me is that there's the Federal Tort C act i think is what it's called but don't tell me what your lawyers are telling you that's that's between you and them but just tell me yeah i'm just generally what's in your head what are you thinking i personally think that that joe uh i have people that are reporters that i talked to who told me that jo called them as the anonymous source from his personal number, probably in an off-duty status, right? So like in the evening and said, Colin was fired for leaking like Ukraine and Panama. And if that is the case, and we can prove that, then we will sue for defamation.
If you have reporters who are going to go on the record with who their source is on something like that, like giving it up, that's extraordinary. Well, they feel like they were, they've been bamboozled this whole time and have been lied to.
Wow. Yeah.

What do you like? What's the bottom line here? Like, is the Pentagon salvageable in its current

form? Is Pete going to make it? And should he? On the Pete question, I think that's really a

question for the president. And like, I wouldn't get ahead of that.
What are you rooting for?

I really want to go back to the department. I don't think that Pete would have me back.

And honestly, I'm not a hundred percent sure I would go back with him there just based on what

I've seen. Now, maybe he's been told, Hey, there's all this evidence and he just didn't do the

detailed look at it. But I'd have to say that for Dan and Darren in particular to be fired, the secretary would have looked at that in detail because those are his people.
And so my guess is that right now people are trying to scramble to create some evidence. That's personally for me.
for the department, it's a hard question.

I mean, we, we, we have not had a major challenge at this point.

So I don't know how the department would function if we had say like the fall of Kabul, where

we had to, you know, the department had to scramble to get 70,000 people out of Afghanistan

in like a week or less than a week.

I'm not sure how that would. Something where disorganization could really hurt us, you're saying.
Correct. That's my biggest fear.
It's not like signal gate and all that stuff. Whatever.
I told you before, I don't think that's as serious as it is. Maybe it's a lack of judgment, but it's not the end of the world.
I think that my bigger fear is something happens something happens somewhere on the planet and we have to perform the duties of the department of defense and we are unable to do it. I also personally think that with the three of us out and then some of the other senior assistants that were in my office that quit last week, like the, the president's agenda is at risk right now.
It is, I mean, it is risk of, of of failing but is at risk of being accomplished on the schedule that we sat and that he wanted so things like golden dome um things like ship building there's a team these are really hard problems and um they're massive and they involve a lot of parts of the department coordinating together to deliver something that That's my biggest fear. And I think that, that, um,

Mr. Feinberg is trying to probably corral the wagons right now, like get everything back on track and moving in a direction.
Um,

I would much rather be there helping him do it than out here talking to you,

quite frankly.

You never know could work out. I mean, I,

I think Pete is a great guy.

I think he's capable of many when he's wrong.

I realize he's in a different post now, and it's a very important one, and there may be many other considerations. But I don't know.
I feel like if you get exonerated, maybe you could go back. Maybe they could turn the page on both sides.
Yeah. Steve Feinberg is a super private person and will probably murder me for going on the tv but honestly you know this isn't something i do i'm not just my first time on tv i um they don't put me in front of the camera i'm not that person i'm the person in the background that tries to get work done um i do feel like this was the one recourse i had to try and actually explain what the hell is going on here and and I do think that we are owed an apology.

I certainly believe that I am owed an apology

and I would like to be exonerated publicly, yeah.

It must be incredibly frustrating

to see all these negative stories about you

and to feel powerless to stop them.

Yeah, you know, I don't think I've like had a chance

to process it quite yet.

I was working six to seven days a week,

depending on the day.

I would get up in the dark.

I would leave at six,

six 30.

I would come back at between eight 30 and 10,

11,

depending on the day,

Saturday,

Sundays.

I just get like the weekend before we got fired.

There was a big crisis.

And I see,

it was like,

Hey,

can you come in?

We went in on Saturday. We're there all day.
Sundayay i had a winery book with my wife in virginia it's at 2 p.m i went in in the morning i got back around 12 30 i was like all right we're gonna go out there it's an hour drive and i had to be back by 4 30 to meet with my boss on a sunday on sunday and then i got a note from the nsc it's like damn i gotta go back to work to go back to work. So I was like, sorry, babe, I got to go back.
So that was my life. It was just like running full pace.
This past week has kind of been like a vacation. I actually feel worse for the people that I left behind in the department, like my boss and my team.
Who need you. Who are, you know, there's 16 balls in the air and I probably was the only person that knew about like four of them and those balls have fallen.
And that's my fault for not, you know, having the team read in. And I think that they're probably, you know, rowing even harder now.
And I left a huge gap. I feel terrible about that.
I feel like I'm, I'm, I don't, I didn't do anything wrong. So like my stress level is not really high.
I've not been, you know, there's not like a criminal, all these criminal kind of allegations coming out. Like Dan has, Dan has, you know, this is his life.
He is a like MAGA ecosystem person. And if he's not credible and trusted in that ecosystem, it's not like he can go jump the Democrats or jump to the other part of the Republican party.
Like this is him. He has friends.
Darren, I think we'll retire. These guys are are great americans by the way like dan is a enlisted marine who went to combat he's after he got back he's been literally serving his entire life to like make this agenda a thing darren spent years in the air force he after the air force he's literally been trying to help veterans like me who are in a way worse shape than me for the last decade and a half.
These people dropped everything to come in the department. I'm honored to actually work with them.
And when I hear things like Joe's a great American and I look at Joe and it's like, yeah, he was in the Air Force a little bit. And that's awesome.
He served. He worked for Duncan Hunter.
Probably not the best lessons learned from that experience. And then he went to lobby for literally all the companies that fail to make anything that works at a cost that we can afford.
I don't like, I'm not, I don't see it. I don't see the, the, the juxtaposition there is weird to me.
Um, so I feel for those two. I, uh, you know, I feel for my twin brother who sent me a note last week and was like, they're using my photo on Twitter.
No, we're not identical. No, we're fraternal, but I don't have, I'm not the most public person.
So they couldn't find a photo of me. And I guess they just grabbed one of Kieran.
So he was really upset. You know, I've been getting threats.
I wouldn't call them death threats, but things like, you know, we're coming for you or like, they're going to get you stuff like that on LinkedIn. And that's the only media platform I have.

My wife's like, hey, we got to change the doors, the locks to the doors.

You know, we've got a kid, another kid on the way.

It's like, it is stressful.

And I just think that it could have been done in a completely different manner.

And I didn't leak anything.

So I'm totally comfortable saying I'm innocent.

Nothing's going to come out proving that you leaked anything. No.

Or aided and abetted a leaking. No.
Not at all. God bless, Colin.
Yeah. Thank you, Megan, for having me on.
Yeah. Thank you for trusting me with the story.
Yeah, definitely. After our interview with Colin, we reached out both to Joe Casper, whose name you heard quite a few times there, and to Tim Parlatore.
And Mr. Parlatore declined to give us a statement, but Joe Casper did.
And it reads as follows. The idea there was dysfunction is an argument of convenience, which in hindsight is being weaponized by a small group who are rallying against the president and the secretary in their own interests.
In 90 days, we reestablished Gitmo, transferred migrants on gray tails, which we think is a reference to military aircraft, added 10,000 troops on the border, protected freedom of navigation against Houthi threats, redesigned installations, restored warrior ethos, and put recruitment and retention back on track. That's not dysfunction.
That's success. Colin wasn't part of any of it, but I wish him all the best.
He's a smart guy with unlimited potential. We've extended an offer to both men to come on and we will let you know if they do.
Awaiting your thoughts as well. You know how to reach me.
It's Megan at MeganKelley.com. Would love to know what you think of this whole story.

Until next time, see you soon.

Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

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