No One To Blame
The Pentagon reviewed how the agency and its personnel handled Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s secret hospitalization earlier this year and issued a report finding no one to blame. Hope you were sitting down for that shocking revelation.
In other words, the agency and personnel that may have done wrong took at look at their own actions, and said there was nothing to see here.
The Pentagon’s internal review found that was no indication of “ill intent or an attempt to obfuscate” the situation…so no one, including the Secretary and his Chief of Staff, will be reprimanded.
The public report says concerns about medical privacy and a rapidly changing situation were mostly to blame…but nothing about when individual members of the staff became aware of the Secretary’s condition, and whether the Secretary himself was advised to contact the White House but opted not to.
Secretary Austin, who returned to the hospital again since the secret hospitalization occurred, wrote in a memo to his staff, “As a learning organization, we will continue to learn and adjust.”
The House Armed Services Committee is not impressed by the Pentagon’s report, and will ask additional questions at a hearing with the Secretary on Thursday.
For an organization that relies on following orders and a chain of command…having the Secretary of Defense not inform the Commander-in-Chief of a surgical procedure on December 22 and a hospitalization on January 1 until January 4 seems odd. The continued secrecy about details surely seems like an attempt to obfuscate.
And the fact that this White House doesn’t seem to care speaks even more loudly.
