When The Secretary Of Defense Disappeared
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You have probably heard by now that the Secretary of Defense has been found, still in a hospital but out of ICU.
Lloyd Austin had an elective surgical procedure done on December 22, and began experiencing extreme pain on January 1, when he went to the hospital and was put in the ICU. Fred Kaplan has the most complete account I’ve seen.
But Austin didn’t tell anyone about all this. His deputy, Kathleen Hicks, didn’t know until January 3. The NSC and President Biden didn’t know until January 4.
Even though it was Christmas break, the rest of the world and wars in Ukraine and Israel continued through Austin’s surgery and hospitalization. Kaplan and others argue that Austin should be removed from his job for this breach, but that’s unlikely to happen as long as the Republicans in Congress remain hostile and dysfunctional. Biden has renominated Julie Su to be Secretary of Labor after the Senate failed to confirm her last year. So Austin will likely remain, to avoid the prospect of no Secretary of Defense at all.
Austin issued a tight-lipped statement taking “full responsibility for my decisions about disclosure.” We still don’t know what the procedure or complications were. Plastic surgery? Probably not. More likely a man problem that he doesn’t want to talk about, like prostate surgery. Probably not cancer, because the procedure was said to be elective. It would be good to know whether the complications are an indication of Austin’s underlying health.
Tom Cotton continues to get stuff wrong as he, along with Don Bacon (R-NE) criticized Austin for breaking the nuclear chain of command. The Secretary of Defense is not in that chain, as Jeffrey Lewis enlightens us:
The Secretary of Defense not only isn’t a key link in the chain of command, he’s not even in the chain of command. The President can contact the National Military Command Center directly and order from a menu of preplanned operations just as easily as you can order a pizza delivered. The only difference is it would probably take the pizza much longer to be delivered.
Keeping this quiet was bad judgment on Austin’s part. If he had informed the appropriate people and issued a short press release, nobody would have noticed.
Update: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center released a statement. Austin’s December 22 surgery was for a prostatectomy because of cancer, and the January 1 hospitalization for a urinary tract infection.
