Aircraft Carrier Stricken by Coronavirus: Navy Captain Fired

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

The accusation was that the Captain emailed a letter on an "unclassified" email system, but no evidence that he actually leaked the letter to the Press.

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The Navy removed the captain of the stricken aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt on Thursday, only days after he implored his superior officers for more help as a coronavirus outbreak spread aboard the ship.

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I learned on my first day in the Marines that having the courage to speak truth to power is grounds for respect not grounds for relief,” Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Marine, wrote Thursday afternoon on Twitter. “This is far from the first time in the last several years that Congress is going to have a lot of questions for Navy leadership — on leadership.

Read in its entirety: Navy Removes Captain of Aircraft Carrier Stricken by Coronavirus

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Even stars and stripes is treating him like a hero. I suspect that it will come out that he did go up the chain of command and did not get a satisfactory response. They have acknowledged that he made his leadership aware on Sunday, ahead of the letter being sent on Monday. Since his own supervisor was aboard his ship, and some sick sailors had already been offloaded, it's likely they knew ahead of that.

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3 hours ago, sirI said:

The accusation was that the Captain emailed a letter on an "unclassified" email system, but no evidence that he actually leaked the letter to the Press.

If you were to send protected health information to 20 or 30 individuals using your personal email, and it was leaked to the press by someone else, do you hold any responsibility? Even though you didn't actually leak the information yourself?

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On Thursday, Modly said he felt Crozier showed “extremely poor judgment in the middle of a crisis” by sending his memo to between 20 and 30 people, and that created doubts about the Theodore Roosevelt’s ability to deploy if needed

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/uss-theodore-roosevelt-captain-fired-coronavirus-letter

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.
7 minutes ago, chare said:

If you were to send protected health information to 20 or 30 individuals using your personal email, and it was leaked to the press by someone else, do you hold any responsibility? Even though you didn't actually leak the information yourself? 

Definitely.

And, for me personally, that would be the condemning crux of the accusation as it relates to PHI/HIPAA, etc.

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I don’t see anywhere in these articles that he divulged any protected information...what am I missing?

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The full 4 page letter is online. He didn't divulge anything.

7 hours ago, fakebee said:

I don’t see anywhere in these articles that he divulged any protected information...what am I missing?

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

UPDATE

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The military has long adhered to a rigid chain of command and tolerated no dissent expressed outside official channels. Capt. Brett E. Crozier, the skipper of the aircraft carrier, knew he was up against those imperatives when he asked for help for nearly 5,000 crew members trapped in a petri dish of a warship in the middle of a pandemic.

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Colleagues say the downfall of Capt. Brett E. Crozier was charging headlong into the Trump administration’s narrative that it had everything in the coronavirus pandemic under control.

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On Sunday, Captain Crozier was in quarantine in Guam, the American territory in the Pacific, dealing with a dry, raspy cough, say people who know him. At least 400 sailors from the Roosevelt who have tested negative for the virus ...

Read in its entirety: He Led a Top Navy Ship. Now He Sits in Quarantine, Fired and Infected.

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Thomas B. Modly, the acting Navy secretary, resigned Tuesday following his bungled response to an outbreak of the virus aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt engulfed the Navy in a public relations disaster, Defense Department officials said.

Mr. Modly’s departure marks the latest in a string of events that began last week, after The San Francisco Chronicle published a letter in which the Roosevelt’s commander, Capt. Brett E. Crozier, pleaded with the Navy to help contain the virus that had spread rapidly through his ship.

[...]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/world/coronavirus-updates-news-live.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20200407&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=headline&regi_id=104150041&segment_id=24214&user_id=5ac8387bbc7c3ac1d67cdaa18a91ecad#link-670ebadf

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

Thank you for the update, @chare

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Specializes in ICU/Burn ICU/MSICU/NeuroICU.
On 4/3/2020 at 4:31 PM, fakebee said:

I don’t see anywhere in these articles that he divulged any protected information...what am I missing?

Whats missing here is what a Naval Ship is. It is a war fighting machine. Any and all info regarding the condition of the crew is likely classified. And if the capability of the ship is reduced due to the crews issues, I know that's classified. Our enemies always look for an "in".

Example? Lets say they had a total of 10 generators and 5 were down for repair. That would be classified traffic (info communicated). We would never tell our enemy we had repair issues. We did that in WWII to perform a psyop (psychological operation) on the Japs, but that is about the only time (during a psyop).

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On 4/3/2020 at 10:33 PM, Naturally Brilliant said:

Reuters reported that there's a Change.org petition that had more than 120,000(!) signatories saying he should be reinstated. And yes, I signed:

https://www.change.org/p/usn-istandwithcaptcrozier-captcrozier-cvn71-reinstate-captain-crozier-as-commanding-officer?recruiter=15364860&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&recruited_by_id=4ec72870-bf10-012f-0738-4040b09128dc&share_bandit_exp=abi-21296307-en-US&share_bandit_var=v3

I'm not a military person, but the concepts of duty, honor, and integrity are ingrained in the military. I would guess the captain was torn between what was right for the navy, and what was right for the men he was responsible for. His job as a military professional was to act in a way that was in the best interest of the nation. He chose to act in the best interest of the men he commanded. An awful choice to make.

I wouldn't sign a petition to reinstate him.

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