Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

MORGAN MURPHY: The Last Thing The White House Wants Is Hearings On An Official Who Looks As Checked Out As Biden

President Joe Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, depart after delivering remarks about the situation in Afghanistan, Friday, August 20, 2021, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

“We didn’t get this right”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin appeared before Congress on March 4th to defend his secretive hospitalizations in December and January. “There was never any attempt to obfuscate,” Austin intoned. Yet President Joe Biden, the Pentagon’s chief of staff, combatant commanders, and the public at large were kept in the dark for days.

The deception was intentional.

Even during the emergency 911 call that brought medics to the secretary’s home on January 1, an aide took care to shroud the event: “Can I ask that the ambulance not show up with lights and sirens? We’re trying to remain a little subtle.”

I worked in the Secretary of Defense’s office during the Trump Administration. The idea that the secretary could just sneak off is absurd. The Secretary of Defense doesn’t go anywhere without notice. He is scripted. He is scheduled.

The calendar of President Trump’s secretaries was scheduled down to the minute, even for mundane tasks such as checking email or going to the bathroom (often scripted as “executive time”). There is nothing “subtle” about a cabinet official being whisked about in armored convoys and flown in blue and white Air Force jets bristling with the latest communications equipment. There  isa reason that the secretary and his senior staff can always reach the White House regardless of whether they are in his Pentagon office, his black Suburban, or flying in a helicopter over one of our 700 bases around the world.

Once this news was public, the Pentagon claimed Austin was always in command and this was just a communications lapse. If that were true, why not be forthcoming from the start?

It seems the secretary also did not tell his second-in-command, Kath Hicks. Austin was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital on January 1, and Hicks herself was reportedly not informed until Thursday, January 4, while she was on vacation in Puerto Rico. It is unheard of for the top two leaders of the department to be off at the same time.

Austin’s half-truth to Hicks about her responsibilities further underscores the depth of the deception. Reportedly, Hicks was only told she’d need to take on “certain operational responsibilities,” which is why she did not return to Washington.

What was Austin hiding? To be clear, Austin was not in the hospital on December 22 for a facelift or gastric bypass surgery, as “an elective medical procedure” might suggest. It was for prostate cancer — a serious and unfortunate diagnosis.

Nor did Austin immediately “resume his full duties,” as the public was initially told. According to two senior administration officials, Austin was in the intensive care unit for at least four days and was not fully released for two weeks. Patients in the ICU focus on survival, not running departments with two million personnel.

National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby insisted that the Pentagon had not made “some Machiavellian effort across the board to keep this from getting public.”

Yet that’s exactly what it looks like.

The last thing the White House wants during an election year is hearings on a high-level official who looks just as checked out as Biden himself.

Morgan Murphy served as press secretary to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2020 and 2021.