# Lloyd Austin Retired Army four-star general and the **28th Secretary of Defense** (2021–2025), the first Black officer to hold the post. Previously Vice Chief of Staff of the Army and commander of U.S. Central Command, where he oversaw the withdrawal from Iraq and the opening of the anti-ISIS campaign. His confirmation is the vault-relevant part. Because he had been relieved from active duty in 2016, Austin required a congressional waiver of the **10 U.S.C. § 113** cooling-off period — the third such waiver ever granted, after George C. Marshall in 1950 and [[James Mattis]] in 2017. Congress granted it and confirmed him **93–2** on January 22, 2021, then in December 2021 rewrote the statute to restore a ten-year bar for general and flag officers. See [[Civil-Military Relations]] for why the grant-then-tighten pattern is the interesting part. He presided over the completion of the Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021 (see [[Forever Wars]]) and drew sustained criticism in January 2024 for failing to disclose a hospitalization to the White House for several days — a genuine chain-of-command lapse and the episode most cited against him. ## See Also - [[Civil-Military Relations]] — the waiver pattern - [[James Mattis]] · [[Pete Hegseth]] — the adjacent Secretaries - [[Department of Defense]] · [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] [[People Hub]]