and the department is taking immediate steps to improve our notification procedures. yesterday the secretary s chief of staff directed the dod director of administration and management to conduct a 30-day review of the department s notification process for assumption of functions and duties of the secretary of defense. while the review is underway, effective immediately, the chief of staff also directed several actions to ensure increased situational awareness about any transfer of authorities from the secretary of defense to include ensuring that the dod general counsel, chairman and vice chairman of the joints chief of staff, service secretaries, chief of staff, white house situation room and senior staff of the secretary and deputy secretary of defense are all notified and the notification for transfer of authorities includes an explanation of the reason. we ll keep you updated regarding the results of the review and any additional significant changes to process and
not to inform the white house until a month later that secretary austin was done with cancer and he dodged a response to that question. here is what he said. when this happened, whose decision was it? as far as the situation in terms of what the elective surgery was and the secretary s condition, we are providing that information to you as we received it. we received that this afternoon and we are providing it to you now. the pentagon acknowledges that there has been shortfalls in how the notification process was conducted when secretary austin was transported to the hospital last week. the white house was not aware that he was in the hospital until about three days after he was first admitted and they now say that he is conducting a 30 day review to go over the processes and see whether anything needs to be changed.
start wanted december 22nd when he first went to the hospital? writers answer is the lessons learned from january 1st on will be applicable in reverse. they will still apply on notification procedures. is also unclear when the chief of staff and senior advisor new on january second within 24 hours why did they not pass this on or know how. at this point the chief of staff had the flu and for some reason was not able to make notification or pass on the responsibility of notifying the president and others. there are still some questions about the notification process but also worth pointing out that the person ordering the review, the chief of staff is the person that ryder said had the responsibility. the person at fault initiated the review. we will have to see what comes
this memo from jeff, the white house chief of staff talking about the notification process putting it in writing that cabinet agencies, when there is something wrong, when somebody might have to transfer power, when a transfer of power is even being considered or will potentially be considered, there is a process that should take place. i m a little surprised they got to put it in writing now. i was, too, to be honest with you. we were asking yesterday and today about what level of policy there was around this idea of notification. yesterday during a press gaggle on air force one, the spokesman for the national security council said there was an expectation that secretaries would notify the white house about something like a hospitalization and so the question in my mind was does expectation equal policy. is there something written? and so now we ve got this memo that nbc news has obtained from the white house chief of staff, the person for whom the
going to be transferred? no. is that supposed to happen? there are, the delegations of authority can happen i wouldn t say on a regular basis, but it s not uncommon for the secretary of defense to delegate sometimes for very short periods of time. but i think one of the things we re all going to want to learn from this is the notification process for that delegation of authority. is there an expectation when a secretary is indisposed or hospitalized and has to transfer authority that the white house would be notified? i m going to get carine take this one. so yeah, again, there s a memo from the chief of staff of the white house laying out exactly what should happen when any cabinet level official or high level official needs to go to the hospital and there might even potentially be a transfer