WASHINGTON—The White House has come under increased scrutiny this week after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin kept his physical condition secret from President Joe Biden and his top officials for days.
The issue emerged after the Pentagon revealed on Jan. 9 that on Dec. 22, 2023, Mr. Austin, 70, had undergone surgery for prostate cancer; he was subsequently admitted to intensive care on Jan. 1 because of complications from the operation. The president and his team weren’t aware until recently of either of Mr. Austin’s two recent hospitalizations or the cause of his illness. Even his deputy was kept in the dark for days.
On Jan. 4, the president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, received news of the secretary’s hospitalization. Later the same day, Mr. Sullivan and White House chief of staff Jeff Zients conveyed that information to the president, as confirmed by John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman, during a press briefing on Jan. 9.
However, the White House remained in the dark for days about how Mr. Austin came to be in the hospital.
“[The president] was not informed until this morning that the root cause of that hospitalization was prostate cancer,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. “Nobody at the White House knew that Secretary Austin had prostate cancer until this morning.”
Journalists persistently questioned press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as well as Mr. Kirby regarding the breakdown in communication between the Pentagon and the White House, seeking answers about what had gone wrong.
“The President has full confidence in the secretary,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.
The White House faced further questions on Jan 10 about why Mr. Sullivan didn’t ask about the underlying cause of the defense secretary’s hospitalization when he first became aware of it last week.
“Once we found out he was in the hospital, we certainly asked all the questions you would think we would ask to try to ascertain his condition,’’ Mr. Kirby responded.
“I'll let the Pentagon speak to the information flow, both publicly and inside the chain of command.”
He declined to go into detail about why the Pentagon initially kept the secretary’s cancer diagnosis a secret.
‘Huge Issue’
John Mills, a national security expert who worked at the Department of Defense for more than 30 years until retiring in 2018, believes that Mr. Austin’s dayslong disappearance without informing the White House is a “huge issue.”“I’ve never heard about an incident like this ever before,” Mr. Mills told The Epoch Times.
The U.S. government has a very formal protocol for top-tier members of its departments and agencies, requiring constant information about their whereabouts and who’s occupying the role in their absence, he said.
“We have to know where they are at all times,” Mr. Mills said. “So this is baffling. This means that we lost communications with the Secretary of Defense.”
He believes that Mr. Austin breached that formal protocol, which necessitates that Congress investigate the matter.
“This just raises all kinds of questions about competency and possible ethical issues. It’s not a political issue. I’ve never heard of anything like this in either party,” said Mr. Mills, who worked under the [George W.] Bush, [Barack] Obama, and [Donald] Trump administrations.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) on Jan. 9 opened a formal congressional inquiry into Mr. Austin’s “failure to disclose his hospitalization and incapacitation.”
The prostate cancer was discovered earlier in the month during a routine test. The Pentagon announced on Jan. 9 that Mr. Austin remained at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland while recovering from complications from the surgery.
Unprecedented in History
David Pietrusza, an author and historian, said he can’t recall any Cabinet member in U.S. history who went missing for days without alerting the president of the United States.“There are plenty of instances of presidents disappearing to hide illnesses, but I’m not coming up with anything off-hand regarding cabinet members,” he told The Epoch Times.
In Mr. Pietrusza’s view, Mr. Austin’s actions were “totally unacceptable.”
“I’ve been in the top tier of leadership for two agencies of the New York State government, and I know well that the governor’s office would have wanted to know something like this,“ he said. ”The rule everywhere, as you probably know, is: ‘Bosses don’t like surprises.’”
According to Mr. Pietrusza, prominent historical instances of presidents hiding health issues from the public include Grover Cleveland’s secret cancer surgery, the severity of Woodrow Wilson’s stroke, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s paralysis, as well as his deteriorating health during 1944–45. John F. Kennedy covered up Addison’s disease for much of his political career, while Theodore Roosevelt lost his sight in one eye while boxing at the White House and kept that a secret for years.
White House Memo
The White House on Jan. 9 ordered Cabinet members to notify the White House when they’re unable to perform their duties, after Mr. Austin kept his condition secret for days from top officials in the administration.Cabinet heads must inform the Offices of Cabinet Affairs and White House chief of staff “in the event of a delegation of authority or potential delegation,” the memo reads.
“Agencies should ensure that delegations are issued when a Cabinet Member is traveling to areas with limited or no access to communication, undergoing hospitalization or a medical procedure requiring general anesthesia, or otherwise in a circumstance when he or she may be unreachable.”
The directive also states that agencies must note when authority is delegated and that the person who assumes the authority must quickly communicate with White House staff members.
“It’s not good,” Mr. Kirby said when asked about the lack of communication.
“It’s certainly not good, which is why, again, we want to learn from this. We want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
