Front Burner (51 page)

On July 24, 1945, just six days prior to the sinking of
Indianapolis
, the destroyer
Underhill
had been attacked and sunk in the same area by Japanese submarines. Yet McVay was never informed of this event or several others, in part due to issues of classified intelligence. McVay was warned of the potential presence of Japanese subs, but not of the actual confirmed activity. After the torpedo attack, no rescue was initiated, because of the Navy's failure to track the
Indianapolis
; as she was the flagship of the Fifth Fleet, this failure amounted to gross mismanagement of the resource by the Navy.

Some 700 ships of the U.S. Navy were lost in combat in World War II, but McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed, and it was widely felt that he had been a fall guy for the Navy. Despite the fact that McVay was promoted to rear admiral when he retired in 1949, the conviction effectively ended his career in the Navy.

I learned only in early 2005 that on September 14, 1999, Senator Warner had chaired a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing into the conviction of Captain McVay. After hearing testimony from Navy admirals and
Indianapolis
survivors, as well as other evidence entered into the record, he supported exonerating Captain McVay of his court-martial. In the FY 2001 Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Clinton, Senator Warner steadfastly supported a Sense of Congress resolution on his case:

The contrasts as well as the similarities were striking. There had been no doubt about the danger and hostility from Japanese forces in the
Indianapolis
case, while
Cole
had been attacked by surprise by perfidious terrorists without any indication of hostile intent. The sinking of USS
Indianapolis
left 1,197 dead, while the attack on USS
Cole
had killed 17. Both tragedies were a great embarrassment to the Navy. In the case of
Indianapolis
, the news was not released until after the Japanese surrender and the end of the war, and it was largely lost to sight; similarly, release of the investigation into
Cole
was delayed until just before the Clinton administration left office. Threat information was not transmitted to
Indianapolis
, just as no specific intelligence concerning an al Qaeda threat was available to
Cole
prior to entering port:

CNO Endorsement: “I conclude, along with the previous endorsers, that the tools and information at the Commanding Officer's disposal on 12 October 2000, coupled with the lack of any indication of hostile intent before the attack, severely disadvantaged the Commanding Officer and crew of
Cole
in trying to prevent this attack.”

CINCLANTFLT Endorsement: “Nothing in the [Sixth Fleet Intelligence] message indicated a need for
Cole
to take a heightened security posture beyond the THREATCON Bravo measures directed by the in-theater Fifth Fleet Commander.”

“Based on the general threat intelligence available to USS
Cole
, this was a reasonable decision.”

COMUSNAVCENT Endorsement: “In fact, all of the intelligence assets of the United States and its allies, as well as the U.S. Embassy in Sana'a, did not identify the threat, let alone communicate the presence of that threat to the Commanding Officer of USS
Cole
.”

Captain McVay's superiors in the chain of command and my own both supported no punishment. In the case of Captain McVay, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz and Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance, who was McVay's immediate superior, both legendary naval heroes of war, went on record as opposed to a court-martial. In my case, CINCLANTFLT's endorsement stated that I “was not derelict in the execution of duty [and] did not act in violation of any regulation, order or custom of the Navy.”

With circumstances mirroring Captain McVay's, I was given discretion to make a judgment. I relied on the best information I had, which did not indicate an imminent attack. He exercised the same discretion in judgment. My chain of command supported me, as McVay's had supported him. A duly constituted promotion board comprised of my fellow officers selected me for promotion (even after reviewing the JAGMAN investigation in my file) and the chain of command, including the President, supported that selection.

The attack on USS
Indianapolis
was a closing salvo to World War II. The attack on USS
Cole
was the first purely military strike by al Qaeda and arguably the opening salvo to the ongoing Global War on Terror. No other military CO has had a promotion halted because al Qaeda fired on their unit.

During the course of the hearing into Captain McVay's court-martial, Senator Warner made a profound statement:

In the end, Senator Warner supported Defense Authorization Act resolution language expressing a Sense of Congress that Captain McVay's record should reflect that he was “exonerated for the loss of the USS
Indianapolis
.” President Clinton signed the resolution. This was a stunning reversal of opinion from a senator who had steadfastly supported the Navy's leadership on matters of command responsibility and accountability. Learning of the senator's change of heart in 1999, I hoped he would see the similarities with my case in 2004 and allow my promotion to move forward.

At the beginning of 2005, I still had the guaranteed support of Admiral Vern Clark, but his term as CNO was scheduled to end that summer. I learned that in April 2005, Admiral Clark met with Senator Warner once again to press the issue of my promotion. It was a contentious meeting, with Admiral Clark pressing Senator Warner with specific, detailed facts surrounding my accountability and suitability for promotion, and urging him to allow it to go forward to the Senate for constitutional advice and consent. Reportedly, Senator Warner was so incensed by this continued pressure to relent that he angrily threatened once again to hold a full hearing into the attack on
Cole
. Days afterwards, I was informed that Admiral Clark would not press my promotion issue any further. If I wanted resolution, I would have to wait until after the change of command and approach the incoming CNO, Admiral Michael Mullen, about the prospect of having him continue support for my promotion.

I did not know with certainty where Admiral Mullen stood, but I was told not to get my hopes up. Following the CNO change of command on July 22, 2005, I waited until August to request a meeting with him. Normally, a request to see a superior in the chain of command is granted within days; in this case it took almost two months. In a short meeting on October 13, Admiral Mullen, who had a very close relationship with Senator
Warner, bluntly informed me that he did not support my promotion, thought it was a mistake that I had ever been selected for promotion, and would recommend to the secretary of the Navy that my promotion not be forwarded to the Senate. He was unwilling to discuss the matter in any detail, and I was ushered quickly out of his office.

It was almost too much to grasp that Admiral Mullen thought he knew better than the previous CNO, secretary of the Navy, secretary of defense, and President. I was taken aback by the sudden reversal of support but rather than give up, decided to wait and see what happened with my paperwork. After all, it was not the CNO's promotion board. Promotion boards are under the purview and control of the secretary of the Navy.

When the entire issue of my promotion started, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England had supported my promotion nomination twice, in 2002 and again in 2004. In May 2005, he was nominated to be the deputy secretary of defense and was acting in that capacity when, the day after my meeting with Admiral Mullen, I requested to meet with him and one week later, sat in his office to review his support for my case.

When I walked in, he smiled, motioned me to a chair next to him, and apologized as he wrapped up signing some letters. He asked if I knew what he was doing, and of course I answered, “No, sir.” He chuckled and said he was signing the November birthday cards for members of Congress, “You have to make them feel good, you know.”

Immediately after signing the last card, he sat back in his chair and launched into the problem, which centered on Senator Warner and his continued threat to hold hearings into
Cole
and my promotion. Matter-of-factly, he said the Department of Defense and the Navy were unwilling to go through that sort of public exposure in pressing support for my promotion. He was aware of Admiral Mullen's feelings on the matter but demurred as to whether he would press his staunch support for me onto whoever was appointed to be the next secretary of the Navy, the position having been vacant since he became the Deputy. I walked through the talking points on why my promotion should continue to be supported but it was clear that until a new secretary of the Navy was in office, no one
would be willing to once again move my nomination forward to the Senate. My wait would continue for the foreseeable future.

Incredibly, an event related at this point only to the September 11 attacks intruded in the summer of 2005 into the growing body of evidence surrounding the attack on
Cole
. A classified data-mining program between the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency had been created in 1999 as part of an information operations campaign plan against transnational terrorism. The program, called Able Danger, was specifically designed to ascertain whether data-mining techniques and open source material from commercial business interests and front organizations were effective tools in determining terrorist activities and plans. The program had recently received a great deal of media scrutiny and attention because of assertions that several people associated with it had, in fact, detected the key September 11 planner and hijacker who flew one of the planes into the World Trade Center, Mohammed Atta, as early as January 2000 but that the intelligence community had failed to take appropriate action to investigate their findings. Even the 9/11 Commission investigated their claims, which remained unproven.

What caught my attention was that the program had also detected an expanding body of evidence of al Qaeda's presence in Yemen, specifically the port of Aden. I was quietly approached by a member of the team and, within the constraints of the program's classification guidelines and need to know, I was briefed on an important but unknown point of interest. The Able Danger team had been conducting their operations until they reached a point where a routine update of their progress was in order, and they had scheduled a meeting in early October of 2000—as
Cole
was on the way to Aden—to brief the Commander of the Special Operations Command, General Peter J. Schoomaker, U.S. Army. Rarely is the four-star commander of a combatant command briefed on the status of an experimental program. Something in Able Danger had clearly triggered this high-level meeting criterion. In the meeting, a J-2 Special Operations Command Intelligence Directorate analyst whose expertise was Yemen pointedly expressed his concern about the breadth and scope of the al
Qaeda presence throughout Yemen. In fact, his concern was so great that the issue of Yemen was moved up to become the second item discussed as part of this lengthy briefing. While not specifically commenting on the port of Aden, he reiterated again and again to General Schoomaker in the briefing that with al Qaeda already known to have attacked two embassies in the region, there was a growing need for concern and possibly action to prevent an attack within Yemen.

At the end of the meeting, no action was taken, no analysis of the dangers to U.S. forces working in the country or conducting a routine visit was made, and no change to the threat posture was transmitted within either the Department of Defense or the intelligence communities because of the classified nature of the Able Danger program. The meeting took place on October 10, 2000, two days before the attack. It was yet another piece in the puzzle of how
Cole
had been put into harm's way and the intelligence community had again failed to detect and analyze critical information that, if shared, might have given the crew and me the warning to avoid disaster. Already, the members of the Able Danger team who talked with me had been ordered into silence by the Department of Defense over concerns related to the possible detection of Mohammed Atta; the team member informed me there was no way they would be allowed to share what they had known about al Qaeda operating in Yemen before the terrorists tried to sink
Cole
.