The Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff explicitly laid out longstanding procedures for the White House to know the location of the secretary of defense and the nation’s other military leaders at all times.
It’s a policy that apparently wasn’t followed when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was absent during his hospitalization at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C., for three days without President Joe Biden knowing he was sidelined.
The directive from the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is titled “Key Personnel Location Reports to the National Military Command Center,” or NMCC. The directive was issued Aug. 23, 2016, toward the end of the Obama administration, and was current as of Dec. 15, 2021, during the first year of the Biden administration.
“The NMCC maintains access to continuous location data (e.g.,…
