A QUIETER PRESENCE AT THE PENTAGON

What Secretary Austin’s brief disappearance says about the four-star general's style of leadership

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin pictured during a joint press conference with Israel's defense minister, in Tel Aviv on December 18. / Photo by Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images.

Three days before Christmas, Army four-star General Lloyd Austin, the seventy-year-old secretary of defense, disappeared—he was simply no longer to be found in the Pentagon—and President Biden and his aides did not know about it for ten days. He had gone, without notice to the president he serves, into an Army hospital to be treated for an unspecified illness. The story broke in the media—it was front-page stuff—and Admiral John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, told the press corps that the president has no plans to fire him: “We will obviously, I think, as you might expect, we’ll take a look at the process and procedures here and try to learn from this experience.” He did not indicate what there was to learn.