Secretary of Defense

The last Secretary of Defense was the head of the Department of Defense, and part of the Cabinet of the last president of the United States.

Background
The Secretary of Defense sent a joint letter with the President of the United States to Governor Evans of the Appalachian Territory, thanking him for the continued flow of resources vital to the war effort, and expressing their admiration with his efforts to automate the territory. Three months before the bombs fell, Senator Samuel Blackwell of West Virginia had lunch with the Secretary of Defense.

After his election, the final president assembled his cabinet to assist in the running of the country. In the spring of 2077 the president and Cabinet disappeared from the public's eye. The White House Press Corps was unofficially disbanded and no news from the West Wing was released thereafter. In October 2077, news outlets reported that a skeleton crew of manual laborers remained on staff to maintain the property, but no one had lived there or worked politically at the location for several months.

Although the same outlets surmised the entirety of the United States government had moved operations to the Raven Rock military operations center, further investigations revealed that neither the president nor his Cabinet had been to the Raven Rock complex in over a year. The Boston Bugle revealed that the president had subsequently moved his operations to Control Station Enclave, meanwhile the Cabinet Nuclear Alarm system was set up in case of a required evacuation due to nuclear war.

When these warning systems activated on October 23, 2077, government officials sought shelter from the impending nuclear strikes. While some members of the Cabinet managed to flee to the Whitespring bunker, a majority of them, including the Secretary of Defense, were removed from the Cabinet Nuclear Alarm system in suspicious circumstances.

Appearances
The last Secretary of Defense is mentioned only in Fallout 76.