The Roosevelt saga redux

        I took a whole lot of flak from a Facebook group of which I am, by choice, now an ex-member. The issue was my defense of The CO of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Capt. Brett Crozier,   in the wake of his having been relieved because of what was erroneously characterized as a  message which he (incorrect allegation) sent to “30 or so” of his higher ups regarding his growing concerns about an outbreak of Corona Virus on board his command.

        First, to clarify, He did not “send his e-mail to 30 recipients” as the now, thankfully resigned, former acting SECNAV, Modly, alleged. It was sent to a small handful of senior Naval officials. Period. Someone in the Navy released his enclosed explanatory letter to the San Francisco Chronicle.

        So, what was wrong about this whole mess?

        Begin with the Navy sending the TR into port in Vietnam in early March. Problematic? If one considers the timeline of the current pandemic, on Jan. 22, Trump told CNBC he was “not at all” worried about a potential pandemic: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China … It’s going to be just fine.”  But within two weeks it was obvious, regardless of Trump’s whistling in the dark, that there was a world pandemic and that Corona wasn’t “contained” at all. By Feb. 24, Mr. Trump had been presented by public health officials with a plan titled “Four Steps to Mitigation,' telling the president that they needed to begin preparing Americans for a step rarely taken in United States history. But over the next several days, a presidential blowup and internal turf fights would sidetrack compliance. The focus would shift to messaging and confident predictions of success rather than publicly calling for a shift to mitigation.

       By that time there was ample opportunity to recall Roosevelt to Guam, but alas, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, the U.S. military’s top officer in the Pacific, ordered the ship to continue to port in Da Nang, Vietnam, as planned. Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Mike Gilday, described it as a “risk-informed decision.”  In retrospect, it was an unwise and avoidable risk and had Trump not been lying to, or at least grossly misleading, the entire nation, in spite of conflicting expert recommendations, Gilday might well have called visit off.  

Sailors spent five days in Da Nang, mingled with Vietnamese civilians during a reception and performed community service projects. One group stayed at the same hotel as two British tourists who were later confirmed to have the virus.

        What has been truly lost in all this is the fact that there was physically no way to insure against a much wider and less controlled spreading of the story once Corona was discovered onboard. 50 plus years ago, when I first rode submarines, we, the crew were unable to communicate with the outside world, and all the information we did get was Naval UHF broadcasts. We did get “family grams” brief messages from home, screened and censored if necessary, and general news and sports. Period. Even today on deployed subs, communication out bound are very limited to avoid detection and there are no opportunities for crew to access Cell phone, e-mail or internet communications.

        This is not true of surface vessels. Carriers have their own ship’s networks and access is available. Of course, basically everyone has a cell phone, perhaps two. While Capt. Crozier did institute a “no personal communications” order, it was essentially impossible to enforce, and several of the crew had already informed family members of the covid-19 presence on board.   

        So, Capt. Crozier had a dilemma. He’d been sent to where common sense indicates he shouldn’t have gone. The result soon became evident. Second, by now he had protocols to follow which were essentially impracticable on an aircraft carrier (isolation, individual bathrooms, etc.), Third he had access to WHO and NIH protocols which made it clear he had the potential for a mind bogglingly  bad situation and no meaningful response from his immediate superior. Finally, all “expert opinion to the contrary (and by “expert” I mean persons that were once in the Navy for three or four years and now “know everything”, even if they’ve never spoken to an admiral or been kicked in the arse by one.) Note: I have had the first experience, never the second. Most of the Old Salts (in their minds) who have thrown Captain Crozier under the bus, have done so citing a compromise of Operational Security, or OPSEC. Face it, any such hope was long gone when the first sick crewman called mom as the ship sat off the coast of Guam waiting for meaningful action from NavMed and PacFleet in response to an issue which they failed to fully appreciate, and their subordinate with a small village of 4550 men and women did. One could add the obvious, which is that, in the days of hi-res satellite digital photography, it's really hard to hide an 1100 foot long 143 foot wide floating airport siting just off the coast of Guam    

        The other aggravating factor is one common to the Trump “years” and problematic. It has two parts. The first is that Trump has appointed persons to Cabinet level and other departmental position, with regulatory authority, who shouldn’t be there. Disagree? Two words Carson, DeVos, both out of their depth in public service. Far worse is the fact that since disagreement with Trump is seen as disloyalty to the President even if the oath specifies The Constitution, a large number of posts have been vacated by the firing or forced “resignation” of the appointee. In a normal administration, these vacancies would be filled by the President nominating and Senate confirming a replacement. Trump has, to a degree never seen, refused to nominate replacements, instead choosing to have an acting undersecretary fill the posts.

        For, comparison, over the previous 40 years (from Reagan to the end of Obama’s second term), the total number of days such posts have gone unfilled by Senate confirmed candidates is 906 man-days. In Trump’s partial term to date those jobs have been empty for 1,397 days, and these are just Cabinet level ones.  Trump has been happy to fill many of the positions with "acting" officials, saying it “gives him more flexibility." But it adds instability when so many departments are without permanent leaders — and acting secretaries don't go through the scrutiny and vetting that they'd get with Senate confirmation. And of course, an acting undersecretary is far less likely to "make waves"

        Seldom has this been better shown than by the disrespectful remarks made by Acting SECNAV Modly to the crew of the TR. He consequently resigned when multiple reports of his blatant disrespect were leaked by Roosevelt crewmembers. There is little doubt that the Crozier firing was directed either specifically or obliquely by Donald Trump. We do know that the CNO was originally bypassed in the process. So, think about that, the individual (Undersecretary Modly) who falsely claimed Crozier leaked operational data and violated the chain of command, did so himself by bypassing the Navy’s senior officer, Admiral Mike Gilday.

What a tangled web we weave…..