(Washington) The Pentagon said Monday that protocol problems, linked to a desire to preserve the privacy of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the time of his cancer diagnosis, were at the origin of the silence kept by the department on This folder.
In an investigation carried out by the Pentagon chief’s subordinates, they claim to have discovered no evidence of misconduct or intentional cover-up.
The 70-year-old former general was hospitalized on 1er January for two weeks due to complications following an operation related to prostate cancer which was diagnosed in early December.
This diagnosis and the two hospitalizations that followed were only communicated to the country’s senior authorities, starting with Joe Biden, several days later, causing an outcry in the United States.
In the middle of an election year, Republican elected officials called for his departure, but Joe Biden declared that he had confidence in his Secretary of Defense, while regretting a lack of communication.
“Nothing analyzed during this review showed any indication of malicious intent or attempted cover-up,” the Pentagon said in a declassified summary of the investigation requested by Lloyd Austin’s office.
However, “medical confidentiality laws prevented caregivers from openly sharing medical information with the secretary’s teams”, who were also hesitant to “interfere or share any information they may have learned”, underlines the ‘exam.
The summary further highlights the “lack of an established methodology for making an unplanned decision” to transfer functions from the secretary to his deputy, which may have “contributed to the lack of exhaustive sharing of information on the situation.”
During a press conference on 1er February, the Secretary of Defense apologized for keeping his cancer a secret.
Lloyd Austin was hospitalized again on February 11 and admitted to the intensive care unit for a bladder problem.
This time, the Pentagon promptly communicated about his new hospitalization, the public having been informed about two hours after his departure for the hospital.
The secretary was released from the hospital two days later.