Navy cover-up

When public officials say something is a tragedy, watch out. That’s what they called the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the plane collision off the Chinese coast, the shooting down of a missionary plane in a U.S.-Peruvian patrol operation, and now the deadly collision of the U.S. Navy submarine Greeneville with a Japanese fisheries training vessel.

“Tragedy” in officialese means no one is really to blame, nothing is fundamentally wrong with the operations that led to the disaster, and, essentially, it’s just one of those things, very sorry.

The affair of the submarine collision has pretty well ground to a halt, with the sub commander let off with voluntary resignation with his full rank, timed so that he will get lifetime retirement benefits. He now can choose from among several attractive job offers. And the Navy’s practice of entertaining civilian VIP guests on cruises and maneuvers remains in place and practically unquestioned. The 16 guests who were crowded into the control room, with a Texas oil executive at the controls at the time of the collision, were not even called as witnesses at the naval court of inquiry.

Why weren’t they questioned? Circumstances at the court of inquiry suggest an explanation. Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle and his lawyer, Charles W. Gittins, managed to deliver strong hints that if the Navy decided to put the commander on trial in a court-martial, the role of the visitors program would figure prominently in the defense. The visitors program is a favorite public relations device, a means of promoting Navy interests in getting bigger budgets and new ships and weapons. The 16 visitors on the Greeneville included oil company executives and their wives in a tour arranged by a retired admiral, Richard C. Macke, now an executive of a telecommunications company.

Mr. Gittins, in an unexpected aside in his closing remarks after 12 days of hearings, ruminated as to whether anyone involved in the civilian visit might have obtained some business benefit.

Also, Cmdr. Waddle and another witness reversed their positions on the question of whether the visitors were a factor in the collision. The commander testified twice that the presence of the civilian guests did not interfere with operations as he prepared to surge the submarine up to the surface – right under the trawler, as it turned out.

Later, Time magazine quoted Cmdr. Waddle as having changed his view, saying, “Having them in the control room at least interfered with our concentration.” And his lawyer was quoted in The Honolulu Advertiser as saying that Mr. Waddle had changed his mind and now believed that the presence of the visitors had interfered with the crew’s concentration.

Petty Officer 1st Class Patrick T. Seacrest also reversed himself, but in the opposite direction. His duty as fire control technician was to plot positions of other ships on paper, taking the place of a monitor screen that was found to be out of order. He had told a preliminary inquiry that the presence of the visitors kept him from crossing the control room to post his findings. Later, under a grant of immunity, Petty Officer Seacrest denied that the civilians had interfered with his work. He accepted the remark by an admiral, “You just got lazy, didn’t you?”

So the commander got off relatively easy, there will be no court-martial, and the visitors program may escape any full-scale scrutiny. It deserves a thorough examination to determine whether it should be continued.