The Pentagon is seen in October 2021. (Robert H. Reid/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — Four senior advisers to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were named Thursday amid the turmoil at the Pentagon that has included the firing of three officials for leaking information.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, Patrick Weaver, a special assistant to Hegseth, Ricky Buria, a career Marine who served as a junior military assistant to former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Hegseth, and Justin Fulcher, the founder of a global telehealth startup, will serve as senior advisers, Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson said in a statement.
“Regular workforce adjustments are a feature of any highly efficient organization,” Wilson said. “Secretary Hegseth will continue to be proactive with personnel decisions and will work hard to ensure the Department of Defense has the right people in the right positions to execute President [Donald] Trump’s agenda.”
Parnell will continue to serve in his role as the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs in addition to being a senior adviser, Wilson said. The other three officials were only listed as senior advisers.
Buria, a colonel in the Marine Corps, submitted his retirement papers to the service last week, CNN reported. He was at the Pentagon on Thursday in civilian clothing and greeted the NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte before accompanying him, Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to a meeting.
Fulcher has served as part of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team to cut excess and refocus the Pentagon’s budget, Forbes reported.
The announcement comes after five senior Pentagon officials were either fired or resigned in the last two weeks and Hegseth has come under scrutiny for a second Signal chat during which he shared classified information.
Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide, Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, were dismissed from their posts last week as part of the probe into leaks at the Pentagon.
In late March, a Pentagon investigation was initiated into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications,” according to a memo signed by Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff.
Defense officials have not provided more information about the investigation, which Kasper’s memo had said could include polygraphs. Any evidence from the investigation will be provided to the Justice Department, according to Hegseth.
“Once a leaker, always a leaker, often a leaker. And so, we look for leakers because we take it very seriously and we will do the investigation,” Hegseth said Tuesday on Fox News. “And if those people are exonerated, fantastic. We don’t think based on what we understand that it’s going to be a good day for a number of those individuals because of what was found in the investigation.”
Caldwell, in an interview Monday with Tucker Carlson, said he has never taken a polygraph or had his access to classified information curtailed before being marched out of the Pentagon.
“We have not been told, as of this recording, one, what we were being investigated for,” he said. “Two, is there still an investigation? And three, was there even a real investigation?”
Caldwell added when he was first escorted out, he thought people would push him to testify against Hegseth in a separate inspector general investigation.
The firings associated with the investigation into leaks was preceded by the resignation of John Ullyot, the former top Pentagon spokesman.
Hegseth also said Tuesday that Kasper — his chief of staff — is moving into a different job at the Pentagon. Kasper will serve as a special government employee, or SGE, according to a senior defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. This came after Politico reported Kasper exited the Pentagon on Thursday.
The designation means he could work up to 130 days as a government employee in a year, in similar fashion to the role that Musk has held in the Trump administration.
