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That news capped off a chaotic weekend that began with the termination of several senior DoD officials, who called their unexplained termination "unconscionable" in a joint statement.

“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Stebbins wrote.

Questions over security have dogged the DoD since National Security Advisor Michael Waltz inadvertently added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the group chat that also contained Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.

A 2023 Pentagon memo forbids staffers from using any unclassified communication network “to access, transmit, process non-public DoD information,” since there’s already a specialized Defense intranet system for classified info.

"The Secretary of Defense is the original classification authority for DoD in deciding what would be classified information," Ratcliffe said.