Parliamentarians strongly criticized US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin on Thursday for not informing the White House of his hospitalization for complications linked to cancer treatment at the start of the year.
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“It is completely unacceptable that it took three days to inform the president of the United States that the secretary of defense was in the hospital and not overseeing the Pentagon,” said Mike Rogers, Republican chairman of the House Committee. armed forces of the House of Representatives, during a hearing.
“Wars were raging in Ukraine and Israel, our ships were under fire in the Red Sea, and our bases were preparing for attack in Syria and Iraq. But the commander-in-chief did not know that his defense minister was out of service,” he added.
Democratic Representative Adam Smith deplored, for his part, “the lack of transparency” at the Pentagon and said that “we need clearer and more transparent information about what is happening at the Pentagon.”
The Pentagon chief failed to inform President Joe Biden of two hospitalizations in December and January, sparking an outcry. He publicly apologized for it on February 1.
At the hearing, Lloyd Austin insisted that “there has never been a breakdown in command and control” of the Pentagon, while acknowledging that “what we have not done well, it’s to inform senior officials.”
I “never told anyone not to inform the president, the White House or anyone else about my hospitalization,” he repeated.
