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Biden picks retired general Lloyd Austin as first black Pentagon chief

Washington - Biden also announced members of his health team to lead the administration’s response to the raging Covid pandemic.

Lloyd Austin, who led US troops into Baghdad in 2003 and rose to head the US Central Command, has been chosen by President-elect Joe Biden to be the first African-American secretary of defense, US media reported on Monday.

A veteran of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the retired four-star army general, 67, beat out the favorite for the job, former under-secretary of defence Michele Flournoy, amid pressure on Biden to nominate more minorities for positions in his cabinet.

CNN, Politico and the New York Times cited unnamed sources familiar with the decision, after Biden said earlier Monday that he had made his choice and would announce it on Friday. Austin would require Senate confirmation to take up the post.

He spent four decades in the army, graduating from the West Point Military Academy and following a career with a wide range of assignments, from leading platoons to running logistics groups and overseeing recruiting, to senior Pentagon jobs.

In March 2003 he was the assistant division commander of the 3rd Infantry Division when it marched from Kuwait into Baghdad in the US invasion of Iraq.

From late 2003 to 2005, he was in Afghanistan commanding the Combined Joint Task Force 180, the principle US-led operation seeking to stabilize the security situation in the country.

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In 2010 he was made commanding general of US forces in Iraq, and two years later became the commander of the Central Command, in charge of all Pentagon operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Austin retired from the military in 2016, and joined the board of directors of Raytheon Technologies, one of the Pentagon’s largest contractors.

He would require special approval from the Senate due to federal law that requires military officers to wait seven years after retirement before serving as the Pentagon chief.

The waiver has happened twice — most recently for general Jim Mattis, the first defense secretary in the administration of President Donald Trump.

But members of the Senate agreed begrudgingly, amid concerns over Trump’s views on the military, and several said at the time that they wouldn’t want to do it again.

“He shouldn’t be considered for the same reason that Sec. Mattis shouldn’t have been,” said Congressman Justin Amash in a tweet.

“The law prohibits recently retired members of the Armed Forces from serving in this civilian capacity. Biden would be the second president in a row to violate this norm.”

Austin would take responsibility for the 1.2 million active service members, of which about 16 percent are Black.

But Blacks serve disproportionately in the lower ranks and few have achieved high command positions.

The issue became more clear over the past year when African American servicemen and women expressed support for the national Black Lives Matter movement against police racism and abuse.

Former defense secretary Mark Esper said he held numerous listening sessions to make White soldiers understand what the Black colleagues felt.

Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20, also announced members of his health team to lead the administration’s response to the raging coronavirus pandemic.

Biden chose California Attorney General Xavier Becerra for secretary of health and human services and picked Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, to run the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was named as Biden’s chief medical adviser on the virus.

Biden’s first major challenge in the White House will be containing a resurgent COVID-19 virus that has killed more than 282,000 Americans, and finding ways to jump-start an economy still reeling from millions of pandemic-fueled job losses.

He installed Jeff Zients, an economic adviser here known for his managerial skills, as coronavirus "czar" to oversee a response that will include an unprecedented operation to distribute hundreds of millions of doses of a new vaccine, coordinating efforts across multiple federal agencies.

“This team of world-class medical experts and public servants will be ready on Day One to mobilize every resource of the federal government to expand testing and masking,” Biden said in a statement, adding they would “oversee the safe, equitable, and free distribution of treatments and vaccines.”

Biden, a Democrat, has pressed ahead with the transition to the White House even as Trump, a Republican, refuses to concede the Nov. 3 election and wages a foundering effort to overturn the results with unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Dozens of Trump’s legal challenges have been rejected by the courts, the latest on Monday when judges in Detroit and Atlanta tossed bids to decertify Biden’s election victories in Michigan and Georgia. Biden won Michigan by about 154,000 votes and Georgia by about 12,000 votes.

Georgia certifies Biden win

In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday certified the state’s results, a statement said, after a third count confirmed Biden’s win. The Electoral College will formalize results nationwide on Dec. 14.

Raffensperger, a Republican, said continued debunked claims about voting fraud were “hurting our state.” Runoff elections for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, scheduled for Jan. 5, will determine which party controls the chamber.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who has led legal challenges in several states, was being treated in a Washington hospital after testing positive for COVID-19. Giuliani, 76, the latest in a long string of people close to the White House to catch the coronavirus, including the president himself, was doing well and did not have a temperature, Trump said.

Biden’s choice of Becerra, 62, a Latino former congressman, adds a politician to a health effort that otherwise largely relies on government administrators and health experts.

The choice also comes as Biden faces pressure to ensure diversity in his Cabinet appointments, including complaints from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus about the number of Latinos and from civil rights groups about the lack of Black nominees for top posts.

Biden’s decision to nominate the first Black defense secretary in Austin helps him make good on his promise for more diversity. It will also resonate among proponents for greater diversity in the leadership of the U.S. armed forces, which is regularly criticized for failing to promote Black servicemembers and whose top leadership has been largely white.

Austin has not cultivated a public persona and is not seen as someone who enjoys the media spotlight. However, he is known to be a shrewd military strategist with deep knowledge of the US armed forces.

Earlier on Monday, the Democrat who leads the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith, had openly shown his preference for Flournoy. “I think Michelle Flournoy is hands-down the best-qualified person to do the job,” Smith said.