The week of turmoil affecting the Pentagon’s inner circle continued Friday, when two political appointees suspended earlier this week were terminated, multiple officials told CBS News.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, ordered an investigation into unauthorized disclosures in March. His memo said the investigation would seek “a complete record” of leaks and use polygraph tests if necessary. The two now-fired officials are Hegseth’s senior advisor Dan Caldwell and deputy chief of staff Dan Selnick, the sources said. Both were put on administrative leave earlier this week pending the leak investigation.
Read more…
Source: CBS News
Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- Disgraced US gov software contractor found guilty of database destruction
May 8, 2026
A Virginia man, Sohaib Akhter, faces decades in prison after a jury convicted him of being involved in a scheme to delete approximately 96 databases containing US government data. The events of the case transpired around two weeks before the twin brothers allegedly involved were fired from their jobs at a software supplier to the US ...
- Poland says hackers breached water treatment plants, and the US is facing the same threat
May 8, 2026
Poland’s intelligence service said it detected attacks on five water treatment plants where hackers could have taken control of the industrial equipment inside, including, in the worst case, tampering with the safety of the water supply. The story is relevant beyond Poland’s borders: U.S. water infrastructure has faced similar threats in recent years. In 2021, a ...
- DOJ says ransomware gang tapped into Russian government databases
May 6, 2026
A U.S. court has sentenced Latvian hacker Deniss Zolotarjovs to more than eight years in prison following his conviction for carrying out ransomware attacks. The Justice Department accused the hacker of working for a notorious Russian ransomware gang called Karakurt, which was led by former leaders of the Akira and Conti ransomware gangs, who were sanctioned ...
- How ChatGPT conversations became ‘a treasure trove’ of evidence in criminal investigations
May 2, 2026
Days before two University of South Florida graduate students went missing last month, a roommate of one of the students allegedly asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT an unusual question. “What happens if a human has a put (sic) in a black garbage bag and thrown in a dumpster,” Hisham Abugharbieh asked on April 13, according to ...
- FBI: Hackers making millions from stolen cargo – losses ‘surged’ to nearly $725 million in 2025
May 1, 2026
The FBI has warned cybercriminals are increasingly targeting cargo shipments with hacking and impersonation tactics – and making a hefty profit doing so. With incidents rising 18% in 2025 and the average value per theft up around 36% (to $273,990) due to criminals targeting high-value goods, losses in the US and Canada alone hit around $725 ...
- CISA flags data-theft bug in NSA-built OT networking tool
April 29, 2026
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning anyone who uses GrassMarlin, a tool developed by the National Security Agency (NSA), about a new vulnerability that attackers can use to snoop on sensitive information. First reported by Grady DeRosa, senior industrial pentester at Dragos, the weak spot affects all versions of GrassMarlin, a tool developed ...