Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is facing rising outrage for failing to disclose for days that he was in the hospital with a serious medical condition.
The Pentagon late Friday announced that Austin had been hospital since Jan. 1 related to an elective medical procedure. The Defense Department didn't alert the White House until Thursday about Austin's condition, three days after he had been admitted to the hospital, according to a senior Defense official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.
Neither Austin, 70, nor the Pentagon provided any details about why he was in the hospital, or explained what his medical procedure was.
In a separate statement, Austin said he "could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed. I commit to doing better."
Austin remained hospitalized Sunday, according to his spokesman, Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder.
"Secretary Austin is still in the hospital and recovering well," Ryder said.
Unanswered questions and partial disclosures
The unanswered questions and partial disclosures prompted immediate backlash. Sen Tom Cotton, a member of the Armed Services Committee, demanded on X, that Austin explain why he delayed notifying the White House about his medical condition.
"The Secretary of Defense is the key link in the chain of command between the president and the uniformed military, including the nuclear chain of command, when the weightiest of decisions must be made in minutes," Cotton wrote Saturday.
The failure to disclose that Austin had been hospitalized for days was a breach of the norm in which health issues of senior government officials are released with alacrity.
Austin in August 2022 announced that he had COVID-19 within hours of taking a test, detailing his symptoms in a statement and explaining his plan to "retain all authorities." At the time, he also included his last in-person contact with the president.
'Deliberately withheld'?
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., in a statement on Saturday alleged that the Department of Defense "deliberately withheld the Secretary of Defense’s medical condition for days. That is unacceptable.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence said Austin’s delay in disclosing his hospitalization amounts to “a dereliction of duty.”
“The handling of this by the secretary of defense is totally unacceptable,” Pence said on CNN’s "State of the Union." "The American people have a right to know about the secretary’s medical condition and the reasons behind it."
“To think that, at a time when we have allies at war in Eastern Europe, and here in Israel, that the leader of America's military at the Pentagon would be out of commission for a number of days and the president of the United States didn't know about it, I think it was a dereliction of duty,” Pence, who has been meeting with Israeli officials, said. “The secretary and the administration frankly need to step forward and give the American people the facts.”
HIPAA laws and questions of who's in charge
At least one Austin ally urged caution before critiquing his approach to his health issues.
“I don’t think that there’s a dereliction of duty," Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, said in an interview with CNN. "I do wish that it had been disclosed, and maybe it was—maybe just not made public."
Clyburn also raised questions about whether there were legal issues around his health disclosures.
"The HIPAA laws keep us out of people’s medical business," he said. "And I do believe this man has as much right to be protected by those laws and be subjected to those laws as everybody else.''
Ultimately, though, he said the medical issue is not impacting Austin's leadership.
"I’m told," he said, "he is now in charge of things as he was before the illness."
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