More than a week after keeping his hospitalization a secret from the White House, the Pentagon, and the rest of the country, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s medical team finally disclosed that the highest-ranking member of the Cabinet was hospitalized for procedures relating to his prostate cancer not just once but twice.
Not only was Austin hospitalized at the start of the year, when President Joe Biden and Austin’s deputy defense secretary, Kathleen Hicks, did not discover as much for four days, but Austin was also admitted for a prostatectomy three days prior to Christmas.
“During this stay,” Austin’s doctors wrote of his second visit to treat a complicated urinary tract infection, “Secretary Austin never lost consciousness or underwent general anesthesia.”
But Austin did undergo general anesthesia during his Dec. 22 surgery, his medical team conceded. And on Monday, Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder admitted that neither the deputy defense secretary nor the White House knew Austin would be undergoing the prostatectomy, let alone that he would be put under.
So what happened here? Ryder, Pentagon press chief Chris Meagher, and chief of staff Kelly Magsamen were notified of Austin’s second hospitalization shortly after his admittance, and he transferred some of his duties to Hicks, According to Politico.
“On Tuesday, Austin’s staff, Hicks’ staff, and the Joint Staff were notified that the transfer of authorities had occurred ‘through regular email notification procedures,’ Ryder said, noting that such transfers are not uncommon,” Politico reports. “He cited Austin’s visit to the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in December, during which Hicks assumed Austin’s duties because the defense secretary had limited communications. However, this most recent notification included nothing about Austin’s hospitalization. Hicks was on vacation in Puerto Rico, although she had full access to a secure communications suite. She would later learn of her boss’s condition on Thursday, when she and the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were officially notified.”
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So it seems as though Austin initially made the unilateral decision to conceal the very existence of his prostate cancer from the broader Pentagon, as well as the rest of the federal government, but when his post-surgical complications began, his closest confidants made the fatal error of continuing this misguided secrecy, to the point that the deputy secretary supposedly in charge of overseeing the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Red Sea was on vacation at the beach.
Biden may maintain that he would not accept Austin’s resignation, but at this point, the rest of the Democratic Party, the press, and the public may not allow that even to be an option.