Why the <i>USS Roosevelt</i>’s Captain Had To Be Relieved

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The decision of the American Navy to relieve the captain who warned publicly of coronavirus on his nuclear-powered aircraft carrier strikes us as the right move. We get that it’s a sad setback for an officer in an incredible command. The minute we read the captain’s letter about the crisis on United States Ship Theodore Roosevelt, though, we saw it as a breach on a matter that should have been kept within the chain of command.

That’s easy to say, we understand, for a newspaper whose landlubber of an editor can’t go to Jones Beach without getting seasick. We’ve followed the reports that Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee reckon relieving the captain, Brett Crozier, is an “overreaction.” They called it a “destabilizing move that will likely put our service members at greater risk and jeopardize our fleet’s readiness.”

Captain Crozier himself was cheered by hundreds of sailors on the decks of the Roosevelt as, after being relieved, he departed the vessel, according to a dispatch in the GI daily Stars & Stripes. That is no small thing. The Associated Press, though, quoted the acting Navy secretary, Thomas Modly, as saying that Captain Crozier had “demonstrated extremely poor judgment.”

It wasn’t so much that the captain sent an urgent memo to the brass. It’s that Captain Crozier copied the memo to so many persons, something like 20. The memo promptly leaked — to the San Francisco Chronicle. The way the Navy sees it is that Captain Crozier should have gone directly to his superiors. The most immediate of them, according to Mr. Modly, was actually embarked on the Roosevelt — and was just down a passageway.

The Navy says that it was already acting on the crisis, and reckons that the captain of the Roosevelt, as the AP characterized it, created a panic by suggesting 50 sailors could die. The AP reported that more than 100 of the 5,000 men on the Roosevelt have tested positive for Covid-19, but none has been hospitalized so far.

So Capitain Crozier’s memo, Secretary Modly said, “undermines our efforts and the chain of command’s efforts to address this problem and creates a panic and creates the perception that the Navy is not on the job, the government is not on the job, and it’s just not true.” Plus, he said, the capitan sent the memo to persons outside his chain of command via what the AP called “a non-secure, unclassified email.”

Mr. Modly said that the captain’s ability to react professionally was overwhelmed by the challenge of the virus, “when acting professionally was what was needed most.” The Navy, he added, should “expect more from the commanding officers of our aircraft carriers.” The secretary didn’t suggest it was the captain who leaked the memo. Yet had Captain Crozier communicated only with his leadership, Mr. Modly said, he’d still have a job.

What struck us as particularly off in the captain’s letter was his statement: “We are not at war.” He added that “sailors do not need to die” and that “if we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our sailors.” The Navy, though, doesn’t need to be instructed on the value of its own sailors. Plus, too, under our system it’s not carrier captains who decide whether we’re at war.

The good news is that the Navy has, as it contends it would have absent a public letter, started moving crew off the Roosevelt and onto Guam. Better, by our lights, that were done with as much secrecy as possible. Even total secrecy. We may not be at war at the moment, but if our enemies find out that a weapon like the Roosevelt is lying at anchor with but a skeleton crew, as is now widely reported, who knows what could happen?

________

Third edition, including for footage of sailors on the Roosevelt cheering Captain Crozier as he departed the vessel.


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