Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was given medication during his hospitalization last year that could affect cognitive functions before he transferred his authority to his deputy, according to a new report from the Defense Department’s inspector general.
Austin was hospitalized on Jan. 1, 2024, with complications from a procedure he received about two weeks earlier to treat recently diagnosed prostate cancer, but it was not until the next day, after he had been moved to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, that he transferred his authorities as secretary to his deputy, Kathleen Hicks.
He “received several different medications during the morning of January 2 that had the potential to affect cognitive functions,” reads the report from the Defense Department’s inspector general, which was released Wednesday. “Secretary Austin may not have been told the potential specific affects of any medication he was administered or the limitations to daily activities, including work, resulting from them.”
Austin’s authorities were not transferred to Hicks until 2:22 p.m. on Jan. 2, 2024, when he was in the SICU, and that occurred “on the basis that he no longer had access to secure communications.”
The report does not determine whether Austin’s cognitive functions were affected during that window when he was still in charge of the Pentagon but does indicate that investigators “found no clear evidence that Secretary Austin experienced severe cognitive impairments.”
A defense official pointed to the lack of clear determination when pressed about the subject of the medications Austin took that morning.
“I think with some of the language that you read in this review, the IG, who is not a doctor himself, by the way, makes illusions and creates sort of this supposition that there could have, maybe have been some sort of impact potentially, but at the end of the day, they don’t actually arrive at that conclusion,” the official told reporters.
“In fact, they say that they neither make or suggest a medical judgment as to whether he was medically incapacitated and that he gave explicit instructions to the effect that he did not want to receive treatment that would impair his abilities to do his duties and carry out his responsibilities.”
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said in February 2024 that there was “never any gap in authorities or command and control.”
When Hicks was notified that Austin transferred his authority to her, she was not informed it was because he was in the hospital. She did not find out he was hospitalized until Jan. 4, 2024. He resumed his duties one day later, even though he stayed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for more than another week.
Austin underwent medical procedures under moderate sedation on Jan. 6 and Jan. 8 and then underwent another procedure under epidural anesthesia on Jan. 9, 2024, per the report.
Robert Storch, the Pentagon inspector general, acknowledged that while his team “found no adverse consequences to DoD operations arising from how the hospitalizations we reviewed were handled,” the “risks to our national defense … were increased unnecessarily.”
Austin, for his own part, has acknowledged in the aftermath of his hospitalizations, because he was hospitalized with additional complications in February 2024, that he was overly secretive and should have been more open about his health scare.
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“I was being treated for prostate cancer,” Austin said in early February 2024. “The news shook me, and I know that it shakes so many others, especially in the black community. It was a gut punch, and, frankly, my first instinct was to keep it private. I don’t think it’s news that I’m a pretty private guy. I never like burdening others with my problems. It’s just not my way. But, I’ve learned from this experience.”
A DOD review of Austin’s hospitalization, conducted by Jennifer Walsh, the Pentagon’s director of administration and management, found that the secretary did not act with “ill intent or an attempt to obfuscate.”