New details\u00a0emerged Wednesday to indicate that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin\u2019s chief of staff, Kelly Magsamen, was aware of her boss\u2019 hospitalization on Tuesday last week but\u00a0did not inform Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.<\/p>\n
Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters this delay was in part due to Magsamen having the flu.<\/p>\n
A senior U.S. defense official told Fox News on Wednesday that a military assistant from Austin\u2019s office notified a\u00a0counterpart in Hicks\u2019 office of the transfer of authority\u00a0to her\u00a0on Jan. 2.<\/p>\n
Then on Thursday, Jan. 4, it was Magsamen who notified the chief of staff for Hicks that Austin had been hospitalized on Monday, Jan. 1, and that his condition was improving.<\/p>\n
When asked by Fox News if it was senior military assistant Lt. Gen. Ron Clark who spoke to\u00a0the military assistant in Hicks\u2019 office on Tuesday, the senior U.S. defense official did not have an answer\u00a0and said a 30-day review will cover exactly who the military assistant was.<\/p>\n
President Biden first learned of Austin\u2019s prostate cancer on Tuesday, which was the same day as the public and a month after the diagnosis.\u00a0This is despite the two speaking on the phone on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center revealed Tuesday that Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early December and underwent a prostatectomy on Dec. 22.<\/p>\n
The hospital added that the 70-year-old recovered uneventfully from his surgery\u00a0and was released the following morning. His prostate cancer was detected early\u00a0and the prognosis was \u2018excellent,\u2019 according to the facility.<\/p>\n
During his hospitalization, Austin transferred authority to\u00a0Hicks and did not inform the White House\u00a0nor the reason behind the transfer.\u00a0The Defense Department has for days said Austin was initially at Walter Reed for an \u2018elective medical procedure,\u2019 not prostate surgery.<\/p>\n
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday that Biden was not informed of Austin\u2019s hospitalization until last Thursday and only learned of the cancer diagnosis on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Asked whether Biden believed the time-lapse was acceptable, Kirby said it was \u2018not optimal.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018For a situation like this to go as long as it did without the commander in chief knowing about it or the national security adviser knowing about it or, frankly, other leaders at the Department of Defense, that\u2019s not the way this is supposed to happen. The president understands that,\u2019 Kirby said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fox News\u2019 Bradford Betz and the Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n
New details\u00a0emerged Wednesday to indicate that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin\u2019s chief of staff, Kelly Magsamen, was aware of her boss\u2019 hospitalization on Tuesday last week but\u00a0did not inform Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters this delay was in part due to Magsamen having the flu. A <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}