The secretary of defense has “taken full responsibility” for failing to inform the public of his hospitalization, but that’s not enough.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized this week, and apparently, the president of the United States didn’t know about it—for days.
Austin was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital following complications from an “elective procedure” on New Year’s Day, according to a statement from the Pentagon. “Elective” could mean almost anything that is not serious or urgent, but something went wrong, and Austin ended up in the Intensive Care Unit for four days, NBC News reported. In itself, the secretary’s incapacity is not a crisis; the Pentagon’s chain of command has multiple people who can take over for him. And there might be good reasons to keep such news, at least temporarily, away from the public (and America’s enemies).
But what possible reason could there be for Austin’s failing to inform President Biden and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, as Politico reports he did?
The most benign explanation (based on what little we know so far) would be that Austin’s health issues developed so rapidly that his subordinates assumed he’d be released, when in fact he was being held over repeatedly in hour-by-hour medical decisions for more treatment. Meanwhile, a competent and efficient Pentagon staff might have extended their acting duties beyond the one day they initially expected, while everyone involved mistakenly thought someone else was keeping the White House in the loop.
The more worrisome possibility is that Austin and his staff did not want to release the news that Austin was incapacitated to anyone—including the president and his staff. If Austin’s illness was kept under wraps by his aides to shield him from criticism or scrutiny, that’s evidence of a dysfunctional staff environment, in which actions to protect the boss’s equities overtake both necessary procedures and plain good sense. The fact that Austin’s hospitalization, according to Politico, was “a closely guarded secret, kept from even senior Pentagon officials and congressional leaders,” suggests that this strange episode was the result of more than just an oversight.
For now, all we know is that Austin has “taken full responsibility” for the Defense Department’s failure to inform the public. Austin is a retired four-star Army general, and it is not surprising that his instinct as a former military commander was to move quickly and accept responsibility for the actions of those under his command. The public, however, deserves better answers to important questions.
Who, for example, was in charge and able to execute the secretary’s duties during his illness—including taking Austin’s place in the nuclear chain of command? When the president orders the use of nuclear weapons, the secretary of defense confirms those orders to the U.S. Strategic Command. (The secretary has no veto, but he or she must verify that the orders are authentic and came from the president.) In theory, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks would take Austin’s place as the acting secretary, but the Pentagon, according to the Washington Post, has been “ambiguous about what happened in this case,” saying only that Hicks “‘was prepared to act for and exercise the powers’ of the defense secretary, if required.”
“If required?” The Pentagon was already having a busy week: While Austin was in the hospital, the United States launched an airstrike in Iraq, killing one of the leaders of an Iranian-backed militia. Austin apparently signed off on the strike before his hospitalization, but what if something had gone wrong and a crisis erupted? What if the White House couldn’t find its own secretary of defense quickly in a deteriorating military situation?
Or, in an even more hair-raising possibility, what if something else had gone wrong—something far more catastrophic?
At approximately 3 am on November 9, 1979, President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was awakened by a call from his military aide, Major General William Odom. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, had detected the launch of a massive nuclear strike from the Soviet Union against the United States. Brzezinski was about to call the president—he chose not to wake his wife, knowing that she, and everyone else in Washington, D.C., would be dead within a half hour—when Odom called back. It was all a terrible mistake. Someone had goofed, and fed a mock-attack training tape into NORAD’s computers.
Had anyone involved taken one more step, Carter would have needed an immediate link to his secretary of defense, Harold Brown, both to confirm the attack and order retaliation. Imagine, at such a moment, what might have happened if no one at the White House could locate Brown—especially if the attack turned out to be real.
Fortunately, the United States did not suffer such a crisis, real or mistaken, while Austin was out of commission. But if Biden and Sullivan had needed to find Austin in a hurry, precious minutes would have been lost in the ensuing confusion. Merely apologizing for keeping the public in the dark isn’t enough. President Biden, Congress, and the American people, need to know exactly what just happened over the past five days.
Lloyd Austin Owes Americans an Explanation
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07.01.2024
The secretary of defense has “taken full responsibility” for failing to inform the public of his hospitalization, but that’s not enough.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized this week, and apparently, the president of the United States didn’t know about it—for days.
Austin was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital following complications from an “elective procedure” on New Year’s Day, according to a statement from the Pentagon. “Elective” could mean almost anything that is not serious or urgent, but something went wrong, and Austin ended up in the Intensive Care Unit for four days, NBC News reported. In itself, the secretary’s incapacity is not a crisis; the Pentagon’s chain of command has multiple people who can take over for him. And there might be good reasons to keep such news, at least temporarily, away from the public (and America’s enemies).
But what possible reason could there be for Austin’s failing to inform President Biden and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, as Politico reports he did?
The most benign explanation (based on what little we know so far) would be that Austin’s health issues developed so rapidly that his subordinates assumed he’d be released, when in fact he was being held over repeatedly in hour-by-hour medical decisions for more treatment.........
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