Well, for what it's worth it's not uncommon, especially for companies that close to the federal government, to use Federal standards not directly applicable to them since the government is (can be) very demanding in terms of quality, correctness and what not. Ha ha, I know, but at least when it comes to Federal standards they are not only usually pretty good for what they specify but they're almost always entirely published and usually not encumbered by any intellectual property claims. A good example is that of AES, an encryption standard that was created in a contest by the Feds and is now practically ubiquitous in the public and private sectors.
tl;dr - "DoD wipe" is a term for a particular kind of hard drive wipe that, while it was created at the DoD, may or may not have anything to do with the DoD when it is applied. He may very well have been dealing with, say, Social Security numbers of Medicare beneficiaries. Or whatever. You get the idea.