Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was admitted to intensive care at Walter Reed on January 1. He was suffering complications from an undisclosed surgical procedure. For some reason he held his hospitalization as a secret to be kept inside the Pentagon. No one in President Biden’s world was notified — not Biden, not National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, not communications spokesmen inside the White House.
No one mentioned Austin’s disappearance and incapacity when he failed to appear for a White House meeting last week. The Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy — one Sasha Baker — stood in for Austin. Baker is the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Politico has a useful backgrounder here.
Austin allegedly transferred responsibility to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hick on Tuesday afternoon. However, the transfer was unbeknownst to Hicks. She was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time. That’s what NBC News reported yesterday. NBC News has appended a helpful correction to its story: “A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of a senator from Mississippi. He is Roger Wicker, not Wiger.” CNN supplied more details to the mix last night.
This past Friday evening, four days after Austin’s hospitalization, the Pentagon went public with the information. The Associated Press and others reported it on Saturday.
Austin must not think we have any serious national security issues requiring a clear chain of command. President Biden is okay with it all in any event. Biden spoke with Austin on Saturday and a White House official told Semafor the president “has full confidence” in the secretary. Biden is a bystander exerting himself to remain upright.
It is a story full of anomalies that are weird beyond immediate comment. We don’t know the whole story. In its own way, however, it seems representative of the vacuum at the top of the administration.
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