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“You and the NSC staff need to understand that you are not in the chain of command,” Rumsfeld wrote. “Since you cannot seem to accept that fact, my only choices are to go to the President and ask him to tell you to stop or to tell anyone in DoD not to respond to you or the NSC staff. I have decided to take the latter course. If it fails, I’ll have to go to the President. One way or the other, it will stop, while I am Secretary of Defense. Thanks.”
This was not a matter of preference; it was a matter of law — a law that has come into renewed focus in light of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to inform the White House, Congress or his own deputy that he was hospitalized and incapacitated at a time when the U.S. military was carrying out a strike against an Iran-backed militia while under ongoing attack in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea.
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In 1986, Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act, a sweeping reorganization of the military structure which states, “Unless otherwise directed by the President, the chain of command to a unified or specified combatant command runs — (1) from the President to the Secretary of Defense; and (2) from the Secretary of Defense to the commander of the combatant command.”
Former national security adviser Stephen Hadley provided some context for the Rumsfeld memo in a 2011 interview for the University of Virginia’s oral history project. Bush “would have a tendency to say, ‘I’ve decided that you should call Gates,’ or ‘Call Rumsfeld,’ and I would say, ‘Mr. President, I’m not in the chain of command,” Hadley said. “You’ve got a phone there. Pick up and hit that third line and you’ll have Don Rumsfeld. You ought to give that order to him directly.’” If someone else tried to pass on an order from the president, Rumsfeld would remind them they were not in the chain of command. And I vividly recall that he directed his staff to make certain that he and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz “will not be out of the city of Washington, DC at the same time. One of us will always be in the city” to preserve the chain of command.
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Austin should know all about the chain of command. As Rumsfeld wrote in his book “Rumsfeld’s Rules,” “in every case those in the senior ranks of leadership have worked their way up from the lower positions. Every three- or four-star officer once was a junior officer with a single gold bar on his or her collar.” That includes Austin, who received orders down the chain of command as a second lieutenant and eventually a four-star general, before passing down the president’s orders as the civilian leader of the Pentagon.
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While he was incapacitated this month, the U.S. military carried out an airstrike in Baghdad that killed a high-ranking commander of an Iran-backed militia. I asked White House spokesman John Kirby how the order was given if Austin had been in the intensive care unit since Jan. 1. Kirby responded that the president gave the order to Austin on Christmas Day (leaving the decision on when to pull the trigger to the combatant commander).
That answer deserves examination by Congress. And it does not excuse Austin’s failure to disclose his incapacity to the president, the national security adviser or Congress. Austin did not even transfer his responsibilities in the chain of command to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who was vacationing in Puerto Rico, until Jan. 2, and even then he only transferred “certain operational responsibilities that require constant secure communications capabilities.”
What if something had gone wrong? What if Iran had retaliated, necessitating rapid decisions on how to respond? What if the president said “get me the secretary of defense” — but no one at the White House knew where he was? The fact that Austin disappeared for so long while no one at the White House noticed does not speak well of President Biden’s engagement with his defense secretary — especially at a time when Iranian-backed terrorists are launching almost daily attacks on U.S. forces, and American partners and allies are fighting major wars on two continents with support from the U.S. military.
The reason the chain of command exists, as Rumsfeld explained, is that it allows our troops to “know from whom they must take orders and to whom they must give them. Where there is no continuity there can be no accountability.” Austin’s failure to disclose his illness was a dereliction of duty — and now he needs to be held accountable.
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In 2002, my then-boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, became concerned that the National Security Council was issuing orders, taskings and guidance directly to U.S. military combatant commanders in the field. That authority belonged solely to President George W. Bush, to be delivered solely to Rumsfeld and on to uniformed officers. So, he sent one of his famous “snowflakes” — short memos he dictated to staff and colleagues — to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
“You and the NSC staff need to understand that you are not in the chain of command,” Rumsfeld wrote. “Since you cannot seem to accept that fact, my only choices are to go to the President and ask him to tell you to stop or to tell anyone in DoD not to respond to you or the NSC staff. I have decided to take the latter course. If it fails, I’ll have to go to the President. One way or the other, it will stop, while I am Secretary of Defense. Thanks.”
This was not a matter of preference; it was a matter of law — a law that has come into renewed focus in light of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to inform the White House, Congress or his own deputy that he was hospitalized and incapacitated at a time when the U.S. military was carrying out a strike against an Iran-backed militia while under ongoing attack in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea.
In 1986, Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act, a sweeping reorganization of the military structure which states, “Unless otherwise directed by the President, the chain of command to a unified or specified combatant command runs — (1) from the President to the Secretary of Defense; and (2) from the Secretary of Defense to the commander of the combatant command.”
Former national security adviser Stephen Hadley provided some context for the Rumsfeld memo in a 2011 interview for the University of Virginia’s oral history project. Bush “would have a tendency to say, ‘I’ve decided that you should call Gates,’ or ‘Call Rumsfeld,’ and I would say, ‘Mr. President, I’m not in the chain of command,” Hadley said. “You’ve got a phone there. Pick up and hit that third line and you’ll have Don Rumsfeld. You ought to give that order to him directly.’” If someone else tried to pass on an order from the president, Rumsfeld would remind them they were not in the chain of command. And I vividly recall that he directed his staff to make certain that he and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz “will not be out of the city of Washington, DC at the same time. One of us will always be in the city” to preserve the chain of command.
Austin should know all about the chain of command. As Rumsfeld wrote in his book “Rumsfeld’s Rules,” “in every case those in the senior ranks of leadership have worked their way up from the lower positions. Every three- or four-star officer once was a junior officer with a single gold bar on his or her collar.” That includes Austin, who received orders down the chain of command as a second lieutenant and eventually a four-star general, before passing down the president’s orders as the civilian leader of the Pentagon.
While he was incapacitated this month, the U.S. military carried out an airstrike in Baghdad that killed a high-ranking commander of an Iran-backed militia. I asked White House spokesman John Kirby how the order was given if Austin had been in the intensive care unit since Jan. 1. Kirby responded that the president gave the order to Austin on Christmas Day (leaving the decision on when to pull the trigger to the combatant commander).
That answer deserves examination by Congress. And it does not excuse Austin’s failure to disclose his incapacity to the president, the national security adviser or Congress. Austin did not even transfer his responsibilities in the chain of command to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who was vacationing in Puerto Rico, until Jan. 2, and even then he only transferred “certain operational responsibilities that require constant secure communications capabilities.”
What if something had gone wrong? What if Iran had retaliated, necessitating rapid decisions on how to respond? What if the president said “get me the secretary of defense” — but no one at the White House knew where he was? The fact that Austin disappeared for so long while no one at the White House noticed does not speak well of President Biden’s engagement with his defense secretary — especially at a time when Iranian-backed terrorists are launching almost daily attacks on U.S. forces, and American partners and allies are fighting major wars on two continents with support from the U.S. military.
The reason the chain of command exists, as Rumsfeld explained, is that it allows our troops to “know from whom they must take orders and to whom they must give them. Where there is no continuity there can be no accountability.” Austin’s failure to disclose his illness was a dereliction of duty — and now he needs to be held accountable.
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