Lloyd Austin confronts perils of being private man in a public job
Not telling President Biden, others of his hospital stay for days stuns officials
For three years, President Joe Biden has been just fine with the private nature of his mediashy, introverted defense secretary, Lloyd Austin.
But in failing to inform the president that he required surgery for prostate cancer and that he later had to return to the hospital suffering from severe complications, Austin, 70, has not only attracted more attention to himself than at any point in his long career. He has also drawn scrutiny and criticism to Biden's national security team during a period when it is managing multiple crises around the world.
Asked about Austin on Friday, Biden said he retained confidence in him. But the president gave a pointed, one-syllable answer when asked if it was a lapse in judgment for Austin not to have informed him that he had been out of commission at times in recent weeks. “Yes,” he said.
The entire incident has exposed Austin as that rarest of creatures in Washington: an intensely private person in a relentlessly public job.
Austin, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, brought 40 years of service with him when he took the top Pentagon job in 2021.
He led men and women in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and helped devise and put in place the campaign to defeat the Islamic State group. A graduate of West Point, Austin did what no other Black man had done before, rising through the military to eventually lead the country's 1.4 million active-duty troops in a civilian role that puts him second only to the president in the chain of command.
But Austin also brought with him to the job a reputation for avoiding attention
President Joe Biden expresses confidence in Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin even after Biden acknowledges a lapse of judgment on Austin's part about the hospital stay.
and exposing as little as possible about himself.
At the Pentagon, staffers often share the meme of Homer Simpson backing into a hedge and disappearing from view to characterize their boss's aversion to any limelight. But that reticence, Austin's backers say, reflects decades of cultural challenges for a Black man who has succeeded in the military by learning not to showcase too much of himself.
Austin has told friends the story about how just after graduating from West Point, he did what many young men coming into their own do when they get their first few paychecks: He bought a flashy new car. Within weeks, he was stopped by cops in Alabama wanting to know if the car was stolen.
Austin has spoken of getting a white officer to give his briefings back when he was the commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division because he figured a white officer was more likely to be listened to.
Now it is Biden who listens to him. The two men spoke as recently as Thursday, before the strikes carried out by United States and allied forces against the Houthi militia in Yemen, even though Austin remains hospitalized.
Asked about what role Austin played in the planning for the strikes, John Kirby, the White House's national security spokesperson, said that his “participation was no different than it would be on any other given day, except that he was briefing the president on options and engaged in the discussions from the hospital. But he was fully engaged, as he would be in any other event.”
For much of the three years he has been defense secretary, Austin's low-key nature was obscured by the voluble presence of Gen. Mark Milley, who was his sidekick as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1.
“I really wish you wouldn't write that,” Austin told one reporter last month in the Pentagon's E Ring hallway, discussing a story about his role in advising Israel to do more to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip.
His beef was not with the thrust of the story. It was with the inference that he had a role in the policy.
It has been more than a year since he appeared in the Pentagon briefing room to talk to reporters, and he usually avoids reporters who travel with him on his plane trips. Ditto for much of his staff; when traveling, he prefers to dine alone in his hotel room when he doesn't have a scheduled engagement with a foreign counterpart.
He does not like to schmooze or engage in lubricating political relationships. He waited for weeks to get on the phone with Sen. Tommy Tuberville, RAla., when Tuberville began threatening to put a hold on military nominations to protest the policy Austin had put in place to ensure that service members would have continued access to abortions and other reproductive medical care.
Austin's relationship with the president, before this latest crisis, was believed to be cordial and affectionate, going back to the days when Biden's son, Beau Biden, served under Austin in Iraq. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015.
After the president ignored Austin's advice not to pull troops out of Afghanistan in 2021, the defense secretary appeared before Congress in the chaotic aftermath and shielded his boss, saying, carefully, only that he did not “support staying in Afghanistan forever.”
When he was head of Central Command, his most high-profile job in the military, Austin was known as a smart strategist. In meetings at the Pentagon and at the White House, officials say that Austin demonstrates a command of military strategy and an understanding of the day-to-day issues of the rank and file.
He has been stung by some previous public controversies. After tangling while still in uniform during a hearing in 2015 with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., over the Obama administration's policy in Syria, Austin made headlines when he acknowledged publicly for the first time that a $500 million Pentagon program to train Syrian fighters against the Islamic State group had only produced four or five of them.