The Department of Defense didn't notify the White House that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in the Walter Reed National Medical Center intensive care unit until Thursday. That's it.

I've posted twice on the growing mystery of why the Defense Department failed to notify Congress that Secretary Austin was in the hospital. In the first episode, it was revealed in a Pentagon statement on Friday that Austin had been in the hospital since New Year's Day due to "complications" from an "elective medical procedure." This came as a shock to the Pentagon Press Corps and Congress.

BACKGROUND: Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin Has Been Hospitalized for a Week and Just Told Congress Today

The second act materialized earlier on Saturday with the report that Austin hadn't just been in the hospital; he'd been in the intensive care unit from Monday to Friday evening. His deputy, Kathleen Hicks, was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time. While he was incapacitated and she was sunning herself, the US ordered a drone strike on the leader of an Iranian militia; the US Navy was trying to make the Red Sea safe for commercial traffic without upsetting the Iranians or Houthis, a war raged between Israel and Hamas, and North Korea lobbed a couple of hundred artillery rounds into South Korean waters.

BACKGROUND:

South Korea Orders Evacuation of Islands After North Korean Artillery Barrage

UPDATE: Congress Not Told SecDef Austin Was in the ICU and His Deputy on Vacation for the Last Week

I ended that update with this note.

While we are focused on Congressional notification, no one has yet asked if the White House was told.

Now we have the answer to that question.

The Pentagon did not inform senior officials in the White House’s National Security Council of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization until Thursday — three full days after he arrived at Walter Reed Medical Center, two U.S. officials said.

The news came as a shock to top staff, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, as they were unaware the DOD chief was dealing with complications following an elective medical procedure, the officials said. NSC staffers were surprised it took the Pentagon so long to let them know of Austin’s condition. The Pentagon didn’t make the information public until Friday evening, notifying Congress about 15 minutes before releasing a public statement.

For three days, Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the National Security Council, and, it seems, a lot of senior Pentagon officials did not know where Austin was, nor did they miss him.

One DOD official said their office was told by Austin’s aides that the secretary was working from home for the week –– even though SecDef was in the hospital.

— Alex Ward (@alexbward) January 6, 2024

In what is probably a monument of understatement, one unidentified US official said, “This should not have happened this way.”

Ya think?

There is a Paul Harvey "Rest of the Story" angle that remains to be teased out. What possible elective surgery could Austin have had that he'd literally go AWOL for a week and put the nation's security at risk rather than discuss?

Still, there are apologists at work. Democrat apparatchik Brad Carson doesn't see anything wrong.

There is no standard protocol for when to announce a defense secretary’s hospitalization or temporary inability to do the job, said Brad Carson, formerly under secretary and chief management officer of the Army, though he added it could depend on the severity of Austin’s condition. If Austin were incapacitated, Congress would surely want to know. But if he were still capable of making decisions, even under a doctor’s supervision, “I don’t think Congress has to be notified in such cases.”

This is bullsh**. It makes no sense to say Congress doesn't need to know if the Secretary of Defense is in the ICU because that affects national security. It certainly makes no sense to imply the national security adviser doesn't need to be told.

It's childish and unprofessional to tell the leaders of both chambers of Congress to FOAD by not informing them you are incapacitated. It is dangerously disloyal not to let Jake Sullivan, idiot that he is, know. It is a sure bet that Sullivan didn't know that Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines were also out of the loop.

So for ~72 hours, neither the NSC nor the APNSA nor presumably POTUS knew that SECDEF was in the ICU and that DEPSECDEF was discharging his duties as Acting SECDEF? Not just an external communications catastrophe, but an internal one as well https://t.co/pKPojV5w8U

— John Ridge 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 (@John_A_Ridge) January 6, 2024

Austin's Department of Defense is a barking shambles. It is incompetent in action and not trustworthy. It not only lies to the people and to Congress, but to the White House and itself...okay, maybe that isn't all that unusual. As the old saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. If Biden lets this slide by, he's a much bigger imbecile than even I had considered possible.

New Update [7:15 p.m. EST]: Bloomberg White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs reports:

🚨In a statement, @SecDef Lloyd Austin notes his lack of transparency on his hospitalization. “I recognize I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed. I commit to doing better,” he says.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 6, 2024

Austin added to his statement, while not addressing several lingering questions:

SecDef Lloyd Austin mentioned the “media concerns” in his statement about keeping his five-day hospitalization a secret but didn’t address the problem of not informing Congress before his surgery — or the White House national security chain of command.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 6, 2024

If you are not able to read the above posts, Jacobs writes:

In a statement, @SecDef Lloyd Austin notes his lack of transparency on his hospitalization. “I recognize I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed. I commit to doing better,” he says.

SecDef Lloyd Austin mentioned the “media concerns” in his statement about keeping his five-day hospitalization a secret but didn’t address the problem of not informing Congress before his surgery — or the White House national security chain of command.

She added that "[a]s he left church in Greenville, Delaware, [Pres. Joe] Biden didn’t answer a shouted question about SecDef Austin."

UPDATE [8:37 p.m. EST]: A White House official told Reuters' reporter Jeff Mason: 

"The President has full confidence in Secretary Austin. He’s looking forward to him being back at the Pentagon.” Biden and Austin spoke this evening, the official said.