Acting Navy Secretary Slams Fired Captain as ‘Stupid’

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today: The military’s handling of the coronavirus has cost both the captain of an aircraft carrier and the head of the Navy their jobs. Eric Schmitt on the crisis inside the Navy.

It’s Wednesday, April 8.

Eric, tell me about this letter.

So this letter dated March 30, 2020, is written by Captain Brett Crozier. He’s the commander of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier that’s been in the Western Pacific. Several of his sailors have come down with the virus, and he has been doing all he can to get the entire crew, nearly 5,000 sailors —

Wow.

— off the ship. This letter — it’s really an act of frustration. In fact, let me just read you from the letter.

“Subject line: Request for Assistance in Response to Covid-19 Pandemic.”

First paragraph reads, “BLUF” (bottom line up front): “If required, the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt would embark all assigned sailors, set sail, and be ready to fight and beat any adversary that dares challenge the U.S. or our allies.

“The virus would certainly have an impact. But in combat, we are willing to take certain risks that are not acceptable in peacetime. However, we are not at war. And, therefore, cannot allow a single sailor to perish as a result of this pandemic unnecessarily. Decisive action is required now.”

And he then goes on, in the next three or four pages, to explain why it’s so difficult aboard an aircraft carrier. The cramped quarters, the fact that everybody’s eating in the same dining halls and sharing the same restrooms. And they’re going up and down the ladders of this ship, and they can’t but help but being very close together. In other words, it’s a social distancing nightmare.

Right.

In fact, he ends the letter with this: “Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the T.R. (Teddy Roosevelt), is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those sailors entrusted to our care.”

He’s basically saying the most important thing here, since they’re in peacetime, is the health of the crew. Get them off. Get them safe. Get them well. And in his view, the Navy is not helping him fast enough with enough supplies to do that.

Help me understand that. What exactly prompted this captain to write this letter to his superiors in the Navy?

So we need to go back to early March. The Theodore Roosevelt was scheduled to make a port call in Da Nang, Vietnam. Vietnam borders China. So there was concern by Captain Crozier and many of his staff about the obvious impact of the Covid-19 virus there.

But in checking with Navy health officials, they told him that there were very few cases in Vietnam at that time — at the beginning of March — and they were mostly in and around Hanoi and in northern Vietnam, several hundred miles north of Da Nang, where the U.S.S. Roosevelt would go. This was an important show of American military strength at a time when China is reasserting itself militarily in the South China Sea. It was important for the United States to follow through on its strategic commitments, and demonstrate to the government of Vietnam that it was willing to go ahead with this visit.

So this ship showing up at a port in Vietnam is considered strategically important for United States national security.

That’s right. So despite Captain Crozier’s concerns, the Roosevelt docks in Hanoi, and nearly 5,000 sailors and crew members pour into the city of Da Nang, going out to restaurants, going out to bars, going out to what sailors do in port calls. Now at the end of their port call, the sailors and crew get back on the ship. And so as the Roosevelt pulls out of Da Nang, Captain Crozier is still concerned. Because even though his crew has shown no open signs of infection, in his mind a clock is ticking — roughly a 14-day clock in which the symptoms could appear. After which, they’ll feel they’re more or less in the clear. And as they approach the end of the 14 days, Captain Crozier and his top aides believe they’re almost clear. And literally on the last day of that period of time that they’re watching, the first two sailors test positive for the virus. And the captain knows he has a huge problem on his hands.

So the first two sailors who are infected with the virus are immediately flown off the ship. Captain Crozier, realizing that the infection is probably spreading silently through the crew, speeds up a scheduled visit to Guam, which is the home of a major naval base, a major naval hospital.

And it’s over these next four days that the captain, working with his immediate boss and admiral on board the Roosevelt, as well as others up his chain of command, are doing all they can to follow through on the guidance that we now know. How many sailors can we get off this ship into some kind of quarantine basis? He wants to have proper social distancing. And, obviously, he wants to treat the sailors who are increasingly in numbers testing positive. But by March 30, we know Captain Crozier feels the Navy is not moving fast enough to help him. All his pleas, while they may have delivered some aid and some relief, they’re not getting the crew off fast enough. They’re not getting supplies to the ship quickly enough.

And so he writes this letter, and he sends it over an unclassified email to about 20 other people, all naval personnel. But by sending it over an unclassified email and not the usual classified system the Navy has, the captain almost certainly knows somebody will leak it to the media. And that’s probably what he wants. Some kind of outside force to apply pressure to the Navy to respond faster to what he believes is essential.

So what happens after Crozier sends this letter?

So the letter is sent, and within a day, it’s leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, and it causes an immediate firestorm. The Navy Secretary Thomas Modly is outraged. First of all that this letter has leaked. And he had just had a conversation with Captain Crozier the night before, basically asking, have you got everything you need? Do I need to do anything more? And according to Modly, the captain said, you know, I’d like things to go faster, but I realize you’re doing as much as you can. So I think Modly feels a little bit blindsided by this. And the next day on April 2, he calls a press conference.

Secretary Modly reads a statement saying he is dismissing Captain Crozier.

Wow.

Basically says he’s lost confidence in him.

He may be a great officer most of the time. He may be well beloved by his crew. But in this case —

— he’s blown it.

And so by the next day, back out in Guam, Captain Crozier is packing up his things. And as he walks down the gangway off the ship to an awaiting car, and it’s a scene — it’s just remarkable, Michael. And the whole crew that’s gathered, hundreds in this huge hangar bay are chanting and cheering for the captain.

Captain Crozier. Captain Cozier.

Captain Crozier.

They’re thanking him, because by now, they’ve read the letter. They know what’s happened here. And this is kind of his valedictory as he leaves, and gets into the car, and drives off to this really stunning ovation.

And this only makes the Navy brass back in Washington even angrier.

We’ll be right back.

Eric, the scene you just described on the U.S.S. Roosevelt, I mean, it seems very clear from that that the Navy is not just at odds with the captain of the ship, but with its own sailors there. So how did that huge gap form between the top brass and the rank and file?

So in part, that division is created essentially by the priorities that the military overall has. What the military’s job is, it’s first to be ready for combat. The secretary of the Navy, the defense secretary — they have to worry about threats and how they would respond to them. Whereas the captain’s immediate view is that he is worried about the health of his crew. But there’s another important factor in all of this, and that’s President Trump.

For these civilian leaders back in Washington at the Defense Department and the Navy, they’re worried of how President Trump is going to view this. And they’ve got good reason to worry.

The president has actively meddled in criminal investigations in the military.

Has intervened on the behalf of accused war criminals.

And overturned their punishments repeatedly.

In fact, the last Navy secretary was fired —

— in trying to deal with one of these interventions that the president did. And so the president has gotten into the heads of civilian leaders, including the Navy.

So what Mr. Modly said, in fact, was he worried that the president had seen what had happened about this letter being released. The president would intervene and order the captain to be dismissed before the Navy could even act on it. And that would be further embarrassment to the Navy. Mr. Modly was basically trying to preempt the president from doing what he feared he might do.

So what happens after the Navy secretary, possibly preempting the president, fires Crozier?

So on Monday, Mr. Modly, trying to tamp down the furor of his dismissal of the captain, flew 8,000 miles to Guam to address the crew.

Aboard the ship, he gets on the intercom system, and in a 15-minute obscenity-laced tirade —

— criticizes Captain Crozier.

And then he rebukes the crew —

— for cheering this guy.

He tells them how much he respects them and will never throw them under the bus. And then finally he says —

— under no conditions and in no situation should you go to the media with your complaints.

And of course, the irony is that the audio of Mr. Modly’s speech was almost immediately leaked to the media, which is why you can hear it now.

And this did not go over well. You had a number of retired Navy officers, lawmakers reacting, outraged that he would not just criticize the captain, which he’d already done, but criticize the crew. This was just too much. And by Monday night —

— the president is asked about it.

And for the president, who had initially supported Captain Crozier’s firing, now he seems to be having second thoughts.

Trumps says maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all.

And so there’s a hint that the president may once again intervene in this case.

But not the way that the Navy secretary feared. In the opposite way.

That’s right, and maybe reinstate the captain. That’s when shortly after that —

— Mr. Modly issues this late night apology.

And by late Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Modly resigns.

And it just kind of underscores the turmoil within the ranks of the Navy right now. But it also kind of shows the turmoil within the Pentagon overall, in this kind of revolving door, because remember, Mr. Modly’s an acting secretary. He replaced a guy who was fired last November. And he in turn will be replaced by another acting secretary. So the Navy leadership now has gone through three different secretaries in just a few short months.

Eric, you’ve been covering this from the moment that letter became public, and you have been covering the military for years. And what do you make of this entire episode?

It is extraordinary. And I think what you have here is a conflict between, in many ways, the kind of storied history of the United States military, specifically the United States Navy, with its hierarchy — its chains of command — set against a very unusual enemy, this once in a century pandemic, and also a very unusual and unpredictable president. And caught in the middle of all this are the sailors. The sailors aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, with pandemic spreading through their ranks, even as they sit on the docks in Guam. And it’s those sailors who are kind of looking both to their captain, their now departed captain, and to Washington for some help. How do we get out of this? And how do we get back to our mission safely?

What’s the answer? I mean, what has happened to these 5,000 sailors on the U.S.S. Roosevelt?

Well, roughly half of the sailors have come off the ship. Some are in quarters on the naval base in Guam. Some have been put up in private hotels. There are more than 150 cases of sailors who’ve tested positive. So this process will go on for no doubt weeks until the crew is healthy enough, and the ship is clean enough again for the crew to get back on and go on its way and continue its mission.

Eric, it sounds like Captain Crozier pretty much got what he asked for. The military is more or less emptying this ship and putting people in quarantine, right?

I think you’re right. And most important, he got the Navy to focus its attention even more on these sailors, which is what he wanted all along.

What do you expect is going to happen to Captain Crozier?

Well, Captain Crozier right now is in quarantine in Guam. He actually tested positive for coronavirus himself.

So he is waiting. Friends say he’s doing OK right now. But otherwise, the Navy has said he would be reassigned to his desk job in San Diego.

But with all the twists and turns of the last few days, the man who fired Crozier has now been fired himself. And there’s talk that Captain Crozier could possibly be reinstated. There’s a petition going online with more than 250,000 signatures demanding that he be reinstated. So the fate of Captain Crozier is still to be decided.

Thank you, Eric.

Thank you, Michael.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. China has ended its lockdown of Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus epidemic began, allowing residents to travel in and out of the city for the first time in 76 days.

The news was greeted with chants and singing in Wuhan, where 50,000 people were infected with the virus and more than 2,500 died from it.

And on Tuesday, President Trump removed the federal official overseeing how trillions of taxpayer dollars from the coronavirus stimulus package are spent by his administration.

The stimulus bill specifically required such oversight, prompting Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on CNN, to immediately denounce the president’s move.

Finally, thousands of Wisconsin voters headed to the polls on Tuesday at the height of the pandemic, after Republican lawmakers blocked an attempt by the state’s democratic governor to postpone the election.

Many voters expressed fury over the situation, saying that they should not have to choose between their health and their right to vote.

The results of the election, including the presidential primary, are not expected until Monday.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.