The office of Inspector General of the Pentagon The Opening of an investigation on the use by the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsethof a commercial application of text messages not classified to coordinate the launch of the US attacks against Yemen’s hutishighly sensitive, March 15.
In a memorandum aimed at Hegseththe Inspector General’s office indicated that it would examine whether the use of Signal by Hegseth complied with the guidelines of the department of Defense And it seemed willing to analyze whether the information provided was or should have been classified.
Hegesh has reiterated that no information classified in the chat was revealed, although it included the precise hours of the launch of US air attacks and some details about the objectives that are considered jealously stored secrets before a surprise military operation such as Yemen. The details of the chat were revealed last week by the magazine ‘The Atlantic’, after their chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in the chat by mistake.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine to what extent the Secretary of Defense and other personnel of the Department of Defense complied with the policies and procedures of the Department of Defense for the use of a commercial messaging application for official matters,” wrote Steven Stebbins, interim inspector General. “In addition, we will review compliance with the requirements classification and retention requirements.”
Stebbins assumed the position of Interim Inspector General in January, after President Donald Trump fired the former director of the Independent Control Agency of the Defense Department and other control agencies of government agencies during his first week in office.
Stebbins indicated that the review will be carried out in Washington DC, as well as at the headquarters of the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida. “We request that they designate two contact points for this evaluation within 5 days,” he wrote in the Memorandum, which was also aimed at HEGseth’s attachment, Steve Feinberg. The main Republican and Democrat of the Senate Armed Services Committee had requested an investigation into the use of messaging application last week.
