[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 1, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1665-H1667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          INVESTIGATION OF CIVILIANS ON NAVY SHIPS CALLED FOR

  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, the terrible tragedy that led to the loss of 
Japanese lives when one of our submarines surfaced and crashed into a 
ship obviously consists of the loss of those lives and the trauma of 
the other people involved, both on the submarine and on the Japanese 
trawler. But there is another disturbing aspect of that, although it 
is, of course, far less disturbing than the loss of life. But we cannot 
do anything about the loss of life. However, we can do something as a 
House of Representatives, which we are not doing, about the kind of 
circumstances that led to that.
  It is clear that those lives would not have been lost were it not for 
the Navy's program of bringing civilians along on military activities 
for the purposes of lobbying the Congress of the United States. Now, 
that is true at one level without debate. That submarine would not have 
left port if it were not for the need to take 16 apparently well-
connected, politically influential civilians for a ride. As the New 
York Times points out, that purpose was to build support among these 
civilians so they will lobby the Congress for more money.
  In addition to the excursion for the 16 civilians being the sole 
reason for that particular submarine going out, we have questions that 
the Navy refused to even ask, and certainly to have answered, about the 
extent to which the 16 civilians on board a very crowded submarine 
might have contributed to the terrible tragedy.
  We have a commander who was ordered to take the submarine out for the 
purpose of giving the 16 civilians a ride, who has ended his career. 
That is a sad thing. He appears to have been a very able, very 
dedicated man. We have other sailors who may be disciplined.
  No one appears to be dealing with the policy by which the Navy sent 
those people into that difficult situation, surfacing the submarine in 
an area where ships would be around, with 16 civilians present, and the 
investigation conducted by the Navy which led ultimately to the 
resignation of the commander appeared designed not to get to the bottom 
of these questions.
  As the New York Times reported on April 22, one of the sailors who 
had initially indicated that the presence of the civilians was a 
problem, changed his testimony. Indeed, it appeared that the pressure 
was on him from the Navy to change his testimony. ``It was very 
dramatic, recalled Jay Fidell, a lawyer and former Coast Guard judge 
who followed the proceedings as a commentator for the Public 
Broadcasting System,'' the New York Times reports. ``There was this 
long pause, and then he said `no' '' to the question about whether or 
not the civilians had interfered. He previously said ``yes.''
  What bothers me now is that this House of Representatives, with 
oversight responsibilities, appears to be ignoring what went on in that 
situation. The policy of the Navy of scheduling trips solely for the 
edification of civilians in the hope that they will become political 
lobbyists appears to be nothing we are going to challenge.
  I do not think any other agency in the Federal Government guilty of 
this practice would be let off so easy. We are told that we do not have 
enough money in the budget for training missions, but we had enough 
money in the budget for a mission that had nothing to do with training, 
was not required for training, but was required to show off for 16 
civilians.
  We do not know who the 16 civilians were. Were they contributors? I 
did not think it was a good idea to let contributors sleep in the 
Lincoln bedroom under President Clinton. But we did not build the 
Lincoln bedroom solely to let them sleep there. We did not undergo any 
expenses to let them sleep there.
  Letting people sleep in the Lincoln bedroom seems to me to have 
probably less of a negative impact than sending out a submarine into 
waters where there are civilian ships, just to make 16 civilians happy. 
I would rather those 16 civilians have got 16 nights in the Lincoln 
bedroom than to have a submarine go out there.
  Now, it is no one's fault that this led to the loss of life. No one 
wanted that to happen. Everyone is genuinely sad. A career of a very 
distinguished officer has, unfortunately, been lost to this. But we did 
allow a submarine to go out there, knowing that this is a dangerous 
thing.
  So I hope my colleagues in the House with supervisory 
responsibilities will

[[Page H1666]]

look into this policy. I believe we ought to say to the Navy, look, it 
is one thing if you let people observe something that is going to be 
happening anyway; but scheduling complicated military events, 
potentially dangerous ones, just so you can show off to people who will 
become political lobbyists? Do not do that anymore.

                [From The New York Times, Apr. 23, 2001]

     Despite Sub Inquiry, Navy Still Sees Need For Guests on Ships

                            (By John Kifner)

       Honolulu, Apr. 23, 2001.--The Navy's inquiry into the 
     submarine Greeneville's collision with a Japanese fisheries 
     training vessel has sidestepped one factor in the fatal 
     crash: a program hugely popular with the Navy brass in which 
     thousands of civilians, many wealthy or influential, are 
     invited on excursions aboard warships in hopes of bolstering 
     support for the services and, ultimately, their financing.
       Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, 
     acting on the report of a three-admiral court of inquiry, is 
     expected to recommend a review of the visitors program and 
     suggest a few rules--some of which were already in place and 
     violated by the Greeneville--but the program is regarded as 
     so vital, not only by the Navy but by all the services that 
     it is likely to continue virtually unchanged, military 
     officials say. ``There is very strong support for this 
     departmentwide,'' a Navy official at the Pentagon said. 
     ``There is no chance that bringing civilians to Navy units is 
     going to stop. By no means.''
       The role of the visitors program in the accident that 
     killed nine people aboard the Japanese vessel, the Ehime 
     Maru, on Feb. 9 is still unclear for several reasons:
       The court of inquiry was convened specifically because it 
     was one of the few military panels that could compel civilian 
     testimony, but one of the 16 civilians aboard the submarine 
     were called before it.
       The chairman of the panel, Vice Adm. John B. Nathman, said 
     that part of his charge from Admiral Fargo was to look into 
     ``implementation of the distinguished visitor embarkation 
     program,'' but there was little testimony about it.
       Two targets of the inquiry--the Greeneville's captain and a 
     sailor who failed to manually plot the location of the 
     Japanese ship--have reversed their accounts on whether the 
     presence of civilians in the control room was a factor in the 
     crash.
       ``In my opinion the investigation is not complete,'' said 
     Eugene R. Fidell, the president of the National Institute of 
     Military Justice, in Washington. ``Never to summon 16 
     witnesses jammed into that control room is bizarre. ``The 
     Navy, I think, is collectively desperately concerned not to 
     give up the distinguished visitor program,'' Mr. Fidell 
     added. ``They don't even want to talk about this. This is a 
     real big deal to the Navy. ``It absolutely has to do with 
     funding, weapons programs,'' he said. ``They compete like 
     crazy with the other branches.'' Last year, the Pacific Fleet 
     welcomed 7,836 civilian visitors aboard its vessels. There 
     were 21 trips aboard Los Angeles-class nuclear attack 
     submarines like the Greeneville, with 307 civilian guests, 
     and 74 trips to aircraft carriers, with 1,478 visitors.
       Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, embarrassed by the 
     incident, said at the time that he would order a review of 
     the program. Mr. Rumsfeld made his statement after 
     disclosures that the sole reason for the Greeneville's cruise 
     on the day of the incident was to give a tour to the 
     civilians and that a Texas oil company executive was at the 
     controls when the submarine shot to the surface, striking and 
     sinking the Ehime Maru. Mr. Rumsfeld put a moratorium on 
     civilians' handling controls, but otherwise the programs are 
     continuing in all services. A Navy official said that no 
     review orders had yet been issued by the Pentagon and that 
     the Navy was conducting a review on its own. The submarine's 
     skipper, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, is not expected to be court-
     martialed. Instead, Admiral Fargo, acting on the court of 
     inquiry's report, is expected to announce an administrative 
     punishment on Monday, under which Commander Waddle will 
     resign from the Navy, ending his career at his current rank 
     with an honorable discharge and a full pension.
       On March 20, Commander Waddle's civilian lawyer, Charles W. 
     Gittins, seemed to shift direction as he was winding up a 
     rambling closing statement at the end of 12 days of hearings. 
     Mr. Gittins raised the question of the 16 civilians with the 
     retired admiral, Richard C. Macke, who made the arrangements 
     for the submarine tour. Most of the civilians had been 
     planning to take part in a golf tournament, which was later 
     postponed, to raise money for restoration work on the U.S.S. 
     Missouri, the World War II battleship on which the Japanese 
     surrendered in 1945. Among them were oil executives, their 
     wives and a Honolulu couple. Mr. Gittins also wondered aloud 
     about whether there was a business benefit for anyone 
     involved in getting the civilians aboard. Admiral Macke, once 
     a four-star commander in the Pacific, lost his job after he 
     made remarks deemed insensitive, saying that three marines 
     stationed on Okinawa, Japan, who raped a 12-year-old girl 
     in 1995 were stupid because they could have simply hired a 
     prostitute. Although he is retired, Admiral Macke remains 
     active in social affairs related to the Navy, and he is 
     prominent here as an executive of a telecommunications 
     company based in Reston, VA. To some people here, it 
     seemed an implied threat that, if Commander Waddle were to 
     go to a court-martial, Mr. Gittins would raise the 
     presence of civilians as part of his defense and might 
     produce embarrassing material about the visitor program.
       Commander Waddle, in his testimony--given voluntarily after 
     he had been denied immunity--said the 16 civilians crowded 
     into the control room did not interfere with operations. 
     Asked twice by different admirals if the civilians were a 
     factor in the accident, Commander Waddle each time replied, 
     ``No, sir.'' But last Monday, the main article on the front 
     page of The Honolulu Advertiser quoted Mr.. Gittins as saying 
     that Commander Waddle had changed his mind and now believed 
     that the presence of the civilians broke the crew's 
     concentration at a crucial time. The article also noted that 
     the visitors program ``could figure prominently in the 
     unlikely event of a court-martial and prove an embarrassment 
     for the Navy.'' That same day, Time magazine published an 
     interview with Commander Waddle that said the skipper had 
     ``revised his previously benign view of the presence of 
     civilians on board.''
       Time quoted Commander Waddle as saying ``Having them in the 
     control room at least interfered with our concentration.'' 
     But Petty Officer First Class Patrick T. Seacrest changed his 
     account in the opposite way. Petty Officer Seacrest was the 
     fire control technician, whose job involves keeping track of 
     nearby ships as potential targets for a submarine's 
     torpedoes.
       On the day of the accident, an important piece of 
     equipment, essentially a television monitor that displays the 
     sonar soundings, was discovered to be broken soon after the 
     submarine left Pearl Harbor. With the monitor down, Petty 
     Officer Seacrest's old-fashioned plotting of the positions of 
     vessels on paper became the crucial substitute. He was to 
     have gotten up from his chair and gone to a nearby bulkhead 
     to mark the positions on a scrolling device visible to the 
     officer of the deck at intervals of about three minutes, a 
     former submarine commander said. But some of the visitors 
     were crowded into the narrow path between his post and the 
     plotting paper, and he did not push through them to update 
     the positions. Petty Officer Seacrest told the National 
     Transportation Safety Board investigators and the preliminary 
     Navy inquiry that the presence of visitors had interfered 
     with his task.
       John Hammerschmidt, the chief N.T.S.B. investigator, said 
     Petty Officer Seacrest reported that ``he was not able to 
     continue his plotting.'' But when Petty Officer Seacrest 
     appeared before the court of inquiry, testifying under a 
     grant of immunity, he said the civilians had no effect on his 
     task.
       ``It was very dramatic,'' recalled Jay M. Fidell (the 
     brother of Eugene R. Fidell), a lawyer and a former Coast 
     Guard judge, who followed the proceedings as a commentator 
     for the Public Broadcasting System. ``There was this long, 
     long pause and then he said `No.' '' Under questioning, Petty 
     Officer Seacrest agreed when one of the admirals told him, 
     ``You just got lazy, didn't you?''
       The main note on the visitors program was struck in the 
     testimony of the submarine fleet commander, Rear Adm. Albert 
     H. Konetzni Jr., a strong advocate of using the program to 
     gain support for more nuclear submarines at a time of 
     shrinking budgets. Admiral Konetzni remarked that attack 
     submarines were named for cities rather than for fish because 
     ``fish don't vote.'' His views were echoed by the other 
     admirals. ``The visitors program is the whole thing that's 
     driving this,'' said Mr. Fidell, the former Coast Guard 
     judge. ``Every flag witness said the same thing. It was like 
     something out of `The Manchurian Candidate.' They are 
     desperate to protect this program.''
                                  ____


               [From The Washington Post, Apr. 21, 2001]

                      Accountability and the Navy

       A decision by the commander of the Navy's Pacific fleet not 
     to court-martial Cmdr. Scott Waddle or other crew members 
     responsible for the collision of a Navy submarine with a 
     Japanese fishing trawler in February is consistent with the 
     recommendations of the three admirals who conducted a court 
     of inquiry, a fourth admiral who investigated the incident 
     and the record of handling previous accidents at sea. 
     Unfortunately, it is also in keeping with the Navy's pattern 
     of avoiding full disclosure or accountability for its 
     failures.
       Two weeks of hearings by the court of inquiry last month 
     showed that Cmdr. Waddle violated procedures and failed to 
     take proper safety measures while seeking to impress 16 VIP 
     visitors abroad the USS Greeneville. Among the other things, 
     the veteran skipper took the submarine deeper than allowed, 
     did not order a key piece of equipment fixed and spent only 
     80 seconds on a periscope search that should have taken three 
     minutes. What followed was a collision that killed four young 
     Japanese fishing students, two teachers and three crewmen 
     aboard the Ehime Maru trawler. While accepting those 
     findings, Adm. Thomas Fargo is expected to conduct a private 
     disciplinary hearing for Cmdr. Waddle and allow his honorable 
     discharge from the Navy with a full pension.
       The Navy's attempt to justify this decision began even 
     before it was made. The acting secretary of the Navy, Robert 
     B. Pirie Jr., told reporters more than two weeks ago that he 
     sympathized with Cmdr. Waddle and worried a court-martial 
     might hurt morale among Navy officers. He praised Cmdr. 
     Waddle's record; other officials pointed out that

[[Page H1667]]

     officers have not been prosecuted for past accidents and 
     argued that an end to the commander's Navy career punishment 
     enough. Said Secretary Pirie: ``I think this incident is 
     really tragic because of the possibility that the Navy will 
     have lost Scott Waddle's services.''
       But the real tragedy is the loss of nine lives because of 
     poor conduct aboard the submarine. And while that conduct may 
     not have risen to the criminal, the Navy admirals who drew 
     that conclusion had strong political incentives to do so. 
     Ever since the accident occurred, Navy officials have tried 
     to deflect public attention from the guests aboard the 
     Greeneville and the larger program of hosting civilians 
     aboard ships. At first the Navy refused to disclose the 
     civilians' names; though the board of inquiry was 
     specifically charged with investigating the guest program and 
     the role of the civilians, none of the VIPs was called to 
     testify during 12 days of public hearings. There are 
     conflicting and still-unresolved accounts about whether the 
     civilians distracted the Greeneville's commander and crew, 
     but one fact is undisputed: The submarine's excursion that 
     day and the emergency surfacing exercise that led to the 
     collision were conducted solely for the benefit of the 
     visitors, many of whom had earned the trip by raising money 
     for a memorial to the World War II battleship Missouri.
       Cmdr. Waddle's attorney made clear that his court-martial 
     defense would have focused on the Navy public relations 
     program, a tactic that might have produced just the 
     embarrassment the Navy has tried to avoid. Did that prospect 
     play a role in Adm. Fargo's decision? Yes or no, the absence 
     of a court-martial means the only examination of the civilian 
     guest program will be buried in the 2,000-page report by the 
     court of inquiry. News reports have suggested that Adm. Fargo 
     will recommend a review of the Navy visitor program and a 
     halt to the practice of conducting excursions solely for the 
     benefit of visitors. Those sound like appropriate 
     conclusions. But if the Navy has its way, the reasons for 
     reaching them, and the role played by the visitors program in 
     the Ehime Maru tragedy, will never get the full airing that a 
     court-martial would have provided.
                                  ____


                    [From USA Today, Apr. 23, 2001]

                          Navy Ducks Scrutiny

       As the Pacific Fleet commander today metes out punishment 
     against the captain of the sub that collided with a Japanese 
     fishing boat Feb. 9, the disciplinary action is secondary to 
     a more critical point: That the Navy itself is likely to get 
     off unscathed.
       The commander already has decided to forgo a court-martial, 
     according to news reports. That means Cmdr. Scott Waddle 
     won't be imprisoned for the botched procedures and cut 
     corners that contributed to the deaths of nine Japanese 
     passengers. Even so, he faces punishment short of jail time.
       Not so for the Navy, which ducked self-scrutiny during the 
     public hearings into the collision and is now poised to do so 
     again.
       During a 12-day court of enquiry into the deadly 
     transgressions by Waddle and his crew, the Navy failed to 
     question any of the 16 civilian guests for whom that day's 
     sub ride was conducted. And it did so despite the enquiry's 
     written mandate to probe civilian-guest programs. The Navy 
     thus obscured the degree to which its improperly organized 
     public-relations outings distract crew from more important 
     duties, and harm the service's reputation.
       It will use the same obscuring tactic today, reading Waddle 
     his punishment behind closed doors in a brief ``admiral's 
     mast'' proceeding rather than a court-martial. The latter 
     would have been public and lengthy, and might have triggered 
     an appeal during which any dirty laundry from the Navy's 
     guest program might have come out.
       Regardless of the merits of the court-martial decision, no 
     valid interest is served by the Navy's failure to confront 
     hazardous practices. The Navy had until last week to call 
     more witnesses to prove more deeply the civilian guest 
     program. It did not do so.
       There's still opportunity for a full accounting. The Navy 
     could report on what went wrong with its civilian visit. 
     Among the questions that remain unanswered are whether the 
     visitors distracted the crew, as some members initially told 
     the National Transportation Safety Board; why the unscheduled 
     civilian ride was held, against guidelines; whether guests 
     were favored because of personal connections; and how 
     pervasive such problems are.
       If the Navy stays true to form, such a public accounting 
     won't be forthcoming. It'll be left to the Department of 
     Defense Inspector General or the NTSB to draw conclusions. 
     But these are unlikely to satisfy public and congressional 
     questions as fully as the Navy could, and should.
       Shortly after the accident, Waddle publicly took 
     responsibility for it. It's high time his superiors 
     demonstrate the same sense of duty.

                          ____________________