TRUMP ADMIN FINDS LEAKER - ESCORTED OUT BY POLICE
Pentagon Strips Frank Kendall’s Clearance Over an Air Force One Leak Allegation—But It Still Hasn’t Said What He Disclosed
Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is preparing to challenge the Trump administration in court after the Pentagon revoked his eligibility to access classified information and barred him from holding sensitive positions.
The government says the action was triggered by an unauthorized disclosure involving the capabilities of Air Force One.
Kendall says he did no such thing.
That dispute now sits at the center of a broader argument over classified information, presidential aircraft security and the administration’s increasingly aggressive use of security-clearance authority against former officials.
The Pentagon announced the decision on August 7.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Kendall’s eligibility for classified access and his ability to hold any sensitive position were revoked effective immediately.
Parnell said the action followed an unauthorized disclosure of classified information concerning Air Force One’s capabilities to a media organization.
He did not identify the outlet.
He did not say what information the Pentagon considers classified.
And the department has not publicly said that Kendall has been referred for criminal prosecution.
Those omissions matter.
The public record establishes that Kendall spoke to reporters about the Boeing 747-8 donated by Qatar and rapidly modified for use as an interim presidential aircraft.
It does not establish that every statement he made was classified.
Kendall has denied disclosing classified material and said he was not told what specific statement the government believes crossed the line.
So the accurate description is that the Pentagon has accused him of an unauthorized classified disclosure.
It is not yet an established fact that he leaked classified information.
The controversy grew out of questions about the new aircraft’s capabilities.
Trump began flying on the Qatari-donated jet in July after an accelerated modification program intended to put it into presidential service years before Boeing’s purpose-built replacement aircraft are ready.
Reporting by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other outlets raised questions about systems that are standard or expected on traditional presidential aircraft but were not included in the rapid conversion.
The Air Force has acknowledged that some highly complex modifications associated with the purpose-built replacement program were intentionally excluded from the bridge aircraft.
Kendall was one of the former officials publicly questioning the compressed schedule.
He told reporters that a full conversion of a commercial 747 to the defensive and communications standard normally associated with presidential transport would take years rather than months.
In comments attributed to him by The New York Times, he said the shortened timeline meant some combination of security, communications and support capabilities would necessarily be missing.
He also questioned using the aircraft abroad during heightened tensions with Iran.
Those comments were critical of the administration’s decision.
The Pentagon has not publicly identified which portion, if any, it says revealed classified information.
The underlying security issue became more serious after Trump’s July trip to Turkey.
The president had flown to the NATO summit on the newly converted aircraft.
As threats involving Iran intensified, the Secret Service and other officials took extraordinary measures for Trump’s departure, including moving him covertly to another military aircraft as part of a deception operation.
The episode renewed attention on the difference between the bridge aircraft and the older VC-25A jets that have carried presidents for decades.
Trump later said the newer plane would receive additional upgrades and be “maxed out.”
That history creates an unusual classification problem.
Some general facts about the aircraft’s limitations have now been discussed publicly by government officials and reported by major news organizations.
But presidential aircraft also contain systems whose exact capabilities, vulnerabilities and countermeasures are among the government’s most sensitive national-security secrets.
The existence of public reporting does not automatically mean every technical detail is unclassified.
At the same time, the government cannot prove an unauthorized disclosure merely by pointing to criticism of the aircraft.
It would have to identify information Kendall was authorized to know, show that it remained classified and establish that he disclosed it without authorization.
Kendall says that did not happen.
After the revocation, he told the Associated Press that he was “completely mystified” and said he had always been careful not to discuss classified material.
In a later CNN interview, he said he intended to sue.
“As my mother taught me years ago, you stand up to bullies,” Kendall said.
He has retained national-security attorney Mark Zaid, who confirmed that he is representing the former secretary.
As of August 15, Kendall has announced plans for litigation, but there is no publicly reported final court ruling resolving the dispute.
The lawsuit could put two very different questions in front of a judge.
One is factual and procedural: what did the government accuse Kendall of disclosing, and what process did it give him before revoking his eligibility?
The other is much harder: how far can a court go in second-guessing an executive-branch decision about access to classified information?
On that second question, the government starts with substantial legal advantages.
The Supreme Court has long recognized unusually broad executive authority over security clearances.
In Department of the Navy v. Egan, the Court emphasized the president’s constitutional responsibility for protecting national-security information and the highly predictive nature of clearance decisions.
That precedent has made federal courts reluctant to review the substance of decisions about who should be trusted with classified material unless Congress clearly provides otherwise.
A security clearance is generally treated as a privilege tied to national-security judgment, not an ordinary entitlement.
That does not necessarily make every clearance decision immune from challenge.
Federal personnel-security rules have historically included procedural protections in many contexts, such as notice of reasons, an opportunity to respond and information about available review rights.
Kendall says he received no meaningful process and was not even told what he allegedly disclosed.
Whether those protections apply to his particular post-government status, and whether any constitutional or statutory claim can survive the deference courts give national-security decisions, will be central to whatever lawsuit is filed.
That makes the legal fight less straightforward than either side’s rhetoric suggests.
The administration’s broader record will also shape the political context.
Trump has repeatedly used security-clearance revocations as part of his campaign to remove access from former officials and other figures he says abused government power or politicized national security.
Critics describe the same pattern as retaliation against political adversaries.
Those are competing interpretations of a real series of actions.
In March 2025, Trump directed agencies to revoke active clearances held by a list that included former President Joe Biden and members of his family, former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, New York Attorney General Letitia James and attorney Mark Zaid.
The presidential memorandum said continued access for those individuals was no longer in the national interest.
Zaid later challenged the loss of his own clearance and has now become Kendall’s lawyer.
That gives the new case an unusual symmetry: the attorney attacking the policy is himself one of the people previously targeted by it.
The administration went further in August 2025.
At Trump’s direction, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revoked the clearances of 37 current and former national-security professionals.
The administration accused them of politicizing or manipulating intelligence.
Some of those officials had worked on matters related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, an intelligence assessment Trump has attacked for years.
The affected officials and outside critics argued that the revocations were politically motivated.
The government said it was restoring accountability and trust inside the intelligence community.
Kendall’s case is different in one important respect.
The Pentagon is not merely saying that it no longer trusts his judgment or that continued access is contrary to the national interest.
It has accused him of a specific category of misconduct: an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
That is a much more serious allegation.
It is also one that normally invites a basic factual question—what was disclosed?
So far, the government has not answered that publicly.
Parnell did not say whether the alleged disclosure appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or another outlet.
He did not identify a sentence, subject or classification level.
The department has not said whether investigators interviewed Kendall before the action.
And it has not announced an Espionage Act case or another criminal charge against him.
Those gaps do not prove the allegation is false.
They do mean the public cannot independently evaluate it.
The New York Times leak investigation adds another layer.
After the newspaper published stories about the Qatari aircraft’s security limitations, the Justice Department issued subpoenas to reporters seeking testimony and information about confidential sources.
The Times challenged the subpoenas, arguing that they threatened press freedom and violated protections governing efforts to obtain information from journalists.
Federal prosecutors defended the investigation as a response to a serious national-security leak involving the president’s aircraft.
The subpoenas were withdrawn on July 23 after a federal judge spent an extended hearing questioning prosecutors about procedural problems, including the handling of reporters’ phone-record subpoenas.
The withdrawal did not end the underlying leak investigation.
Prosecutors said they could return with new subpoenas.
That distinction matters here too.
The government stepping back from its demands to reporters did not establish that no leak occurred.
It showed that the methods used in that phase of the investigation had encountered legal and procedural trouble.
The administration can therefore make a narrower case for its action against Kendall.
Former senior officials often retain clearance eligibility because the government may need their expertise or because they work with defense contractors, think tanks or advisory bodies.
That continuing access depends on trust.
If a former secretary knowingly disclosed classified details about presidential-aircraft defenses, revocation would be an obvious national-security response.
No administration is required to preserve access for someone it reasonably concludes cannot safeguard classified material.
Kendall’s response is equally narrow.
He says the government has not shown that he disclosed anything classified.
He says he was not told what he supposedly revealed.
And he argues that the revocation fits a pattern in which Trump has removed clearances from critics and political opponents.
If the government’s evidence is simply that Kendall publicly questioned the safety of the Qatari jet, that would be a very different case from proof that he disclosed a classified defensive capability.
The difference is especially important because the administration itself has publicly acknowledged that the bridge aircraft does not contain every feature of the traditional presidential fleet.
The Air Force has said some complex modifications were excluded from the accelerated conversion.
Trump has publicly discussed additional upgrades.
And the aircraft’s temporary removal for more work has made the general existence of capability gaps part of the public record.
That does not declassify secret technical details.
It does make it harder to infer a classified leak merely from a general statement that the aircraft has fewer capabilities than a fully hardened Air Force One.
Kendall’s professional background also explains why the allegation carries weight.
He served as Air Force secretary from 2021 until January 2025 and previously held senior Pentagon acquisition positions during the Obama administration.
He spent decades working around some of the military’s most sensitive technology programs.
He says he held a clearance for roughly 60 years.
The Pentagon can point to that experience as a reason he should have known precisely where classification boundaries were.
Kendall can point to the same experience as a reason to take seriously his insistence that he stayed on the unclassified side of the line.
There is also a practical consequence beyond access to government secrets.
Clearance eligibility can affect consulting, contracting and advisory work throughout the defense industry.
Losing it can close professional doors even when no criminal case is filed.
That makes the government’s accusation reputational as well as administrative.
Kendall’s decision to challenge the revocation is therefore not only about whether he expects to read classified documents again.
It is also about whether an official accusation that he mishandled national-security information will stand without a public explanation.
The “deep state” framing around the dispute should be treated as politics rather than a factual description of Kendall.
Trump and senior administration officials have repeatedly said they are trying to remove politicization, leaks and disloyalty from the national-security bureaucracy.
Their supporters describe that effort as dismantling entrenched resistance to an elected president.
Critics say the administration is using national-security powers to punish dissent and enforce personal loyalty.
Kendall’s case could become a test of those competing claims because it combines a concrete leak accusation with the administration’s broader clearance campaign.
The better argument for the Pentagon is therefore narrower than saying a Biden-era official was part of a hostile bureaucracy.
If it has evidence that Kendall knowingly disclosed classified Air Force One information, it has a strong national-security reason to revoke his eligibility.
The better argument for Kendall is also narrower than saying a former official has a permanent right to a clearance.
He does not.
His stronger claim is that the government accused him of serious misconduct without publicly identifying the disclosure and, according to him, without giving him a meaningful opportunity to answer it.
The courts may never conduct the kind of merits review Kendall wants.
Egan gives the executive branch broad room to decide who may access classified information.
A judge may focus on procedure, jurisdiction or constitutional retaliation arguments rather than deciding whether a particular aircraft capability was properly classified.
That legal uncertainty is why announcing a lawsuit and winning one are very different things.
As of now, Kendall has retained counsel and promised to sue.
He has not yet obtained an order restoring his eligibility.
So the Pentagon’s action settles one question: Frank Kendall no longer has eligibility for classified access or sensitive positions under the department’s decision.
What it does not settle is the allegation underlying that punishment.
The government has not publicly identified the classified information it says he disclosed.
Kendall denies disclosing any.
The Justice Department’s related effort to compel testimony from New York Times reporters was withdrawn after judicial scrutiny, although the leak investigation remains alive.
And Kendall is preparing to ask a court to intervene.
For the administration, the case is about protecting secrets surrounding the president and the most security-sensitive aircraft in the American government.
For Kendall, it is about whether clearance authority can be used to brand a critic a leaker without explaining the evidence.
Both questions matter.
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The line between them is the same one that has governed the other fact-checks in this dispute: an allegation by the Pentagon is significant, but it is still an allegation until the government shows what happened.
