Front Burner

by Kirk S. Lippold

  The last visit took place just a week before the change of command on March 9, 2001.

  Commander Kevin Sweeney reported to the ship as my relief two weeks earlier, and we spent some time aboard in Pascagoula before finishing the turnover process in Norfolk. Kevin was very unhappy with his situation. Just days before he was to take command, the Navy had completed the final estimate of time and money to repair USS Cole: fifteen months and $250 million. He had hoped to be back at sea in less than a year. Now it appeared as if most of his command tour would be spent rebuilding the ship, not sailing it on a deployment.

  It was also during this final week that we had to complete the last bit of unfinished business from our time in Aden—the personal awards for the crew. After our return from convalescent leave, Chris and I had gathered the department heads to discuss the criteria for each award we expected to bestow. From the beginning, we planned to make combat, not peacetime awards. While every sailor on Cole was a hero, the difficult task now was to single out those whose exceptional performance under fire warranted additional recognition.

  Just before the change of command, we completed all the awards packages and forwarded them up the chain of command—initially to Commander, Fifth Fleet, for review and adjudication, and from there to the chief of naval operations and the secretary of the Navy’s Board of Decorations and Medals, which would make the final award determinations. This would turn out to be a long and drawn-out process fraught with internal Navy politics and public affairs concerns.

  In the meantime, since there was no way to realistically conduct a command turnover ceremony on the ship in the shipyard, on March 9, the crew assembled in the Norfolk Naval Station base theater to witness the ritual. It was a high-profile event with numerous admirals and dignitaries, including my former boss, Secretary of the Navy John Dalton, and his wife, Margaret, as well as local media attending.

  The Navy, however, was worried about what I might say or do during the ceremony.

  Unfortunately, a few disgruntled outgoing commanding officers had unprofessionally used their change of command speech as a bully pulpit to lambast their superiors and blame the Navy for failing them and their ship. Even with my leadership being praised in the command investigation and after my just-concluded visits to the families, I was required to submit my change of command speech to my Destroyer Squadron commodore, Captain Gary Holst, who then forwarded it to Admiral Foley’s staff for review. Needless to say, it was a patronizing and somewhat humiliating condition, but by this point I did not care.

  Adding insult to injury, the Meritorious Service Medal I was to get for my accomplishments throughout my command tour would not be presented at the ceremony, supposedly because aggrieved family members might take it amiss. Instead, it would arrive by mail, unceremoniously stuffed into a padded envelope, several months later. Lastly, as if to also hedge their bets, Captain Holst’s staff called to inform me that in another break with protocol, my fitness report would not be reviewed and signed prior to the ceremony but only later that afternoon. They claimed it had not been finished in time. Trust was clearly a one-way street as I prepared to hand over the reins of leadership on USS Cole.

  In my change of command speech, while the attack on Cole would be a significant highlight, I planned to talk about events throughout my entire time as commanding officer. When the time came, I spoke about a crew that had attained remarkable achievements; from our scores on numerous inspections to getting the ship underway for deployment with an all-enlisted watch team. In the words that summarized their time on Cole, they had been there and done that. Finally, I broached the subject of the attack, observing that on October 12, 2000, the Navy and the lives of every sailor on board had been forever altered in less than three milliseconds. I spoke of the valiant and heroic efforts of the crew as they tirelessly worked to save their ship and shipmates. I had barely uttered those words when John Dalton jumped up from his seat, turned toward the crew, and led the entire audience in a thunderous standing ovation. The crew appeared humbled and thankful for the recognition. Thank goodness it took more than a few seconds for everyone to sit down; for a moment, I was unable to speak with the lump in my throat.

  At the end, following a centuries-old, time-honored tradition and in accordance with Navy Regulations, I read my orders to the crew and turned to my relief. Commander Sweeney rose from his chair and walked to the center of the stage. We faced each other and rendered sharp salutes.

  “I am ready to relieve you,” he said.

  “I am ready to be relieved,” I said in a very clear voice.

  “I relieve you,” came his reply.

  “I stand relieved.”

  In the days that followed the change of command, I could finally begin the process of reflection and comprehension of what had happened to my life. With orders to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the next few months I would complete the Senior Officer Course at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk. When classes started in April, I felt refreshed and on the road to achieving a sense of balance again with my life and career. Even though I was no longer the commanding officer of USS Cole, there was a lifelong connection and bond with the crew, the ship, and the families.

  But their awards had been relegated to the back burner. This became clear by comparison with the handling of awards that same spring to the crew of a Navy EP-3 surveillance aircraft who were detained for eleven days by the Chinese after the plane had to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island. It had been damaged by a Chinese fighter jet that had been harassing it and came too close, colliding with it and then crashing into the South China Sea with the loss of the pilot. The Chinese government reacted by fanning anti-American hostility, detaining the twenty-four members of the crew, and seizing all the classified radio and electronic equipment and sensitive cryptographic material on the plane. When they were eventually released and allowed to come home, the crew received a heroes’ welcome, and on May 18, just over a month later, President Bush presided over a very public awards ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base. The awards for Cole’s crew, however, continued to languish. At this point, some of the families expressed irritation at the delay and with the Navy’s failure to recognize what their dead sailors had been through. It fell on deaf ears. Everyone continued to wait.

  While it was technically no longer my responsibility, I continued to also monitor the status of the FBI’s ongoing criminal investigation into the terrorist attack, out of a sense of obligation. Without regard to the consequences, at the end of April I queried the office of the chief of naval operations on the status of the unidentified remains recovered off the ship. Even during the ongoing deconstruction process, additional remains had been recovered and added to the growing amount of material found when Cole returned to the United States in December 2000. The CNO’s office did not provide an immediate answer. I continued to follow up with queries over the next two months, to no avail. It was as if the Navy had already put the attack, the crew, and the families in the rearview mirror and was moving on as quickly as possible to distance itself from the event. Even the crew had felt a sense of being cut off when the Monday immediately after the change of command, the new commanding officer, Kevin Sweeney, walked into the ship’s detachment offices and announced that the pity party was over, and suddenly all the letters, gifts, and posters from local schoolchildren and patriotic Americans across the nation, everything, was ordered disposed of by the end of the day.

  At the end of July, duty on the Joint Chiefs of Staff started my education in the ways of the most professional military staff in the world. The officers in this organization were the best from every service. The hours were long, but the work was incredibly rewarding and never dull.

  Even in the midst of this intense environment, my thoughts turned again and again to the crew and the families I had visited with only months ago. Over the next few months, the FBI made several trips to USS Cole to recover evidence as the ship was disassembled. Additional remains were recovered by shipyard
workers and respectfully turned over in January, February, March, and June 2001.

  The unique circumstances of the explosion and the ongoing criminal investigation required a complete chain of custody throughout the recovery process. As remains were retrieved and turned over to the FBI, they would send them within days to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) to determine their morphology—whether or not that material was human or not. Usually within about two weeks the remains were turned back over to the FBI for forensic and DNA analysis. The Navy leadership seemingly did not believe that there was a possibility that remains of Cole crew members could be comingled with those of the terrorist bombers. They viewed the remains only in terms of the sailors being victims and insisted that AFIP should conduct the identifications.

  Fortunately, the FBI and AFIP understood the importance of keeping the remains segregated and properly identified. Another complicated and time-consuming factor was the requirement to have only one investigator assigned to the case to ensure continuity of the work and maintain the chain of custody. After months of detailed work, the remains of Cole crew members received identification to FBI standards and by September 25 were classified into three groups: Cole crew members, terrorist bombers, and unidentifiable material. The Cole remains were turned over to AFIP on October 4 to conduct some additional detailed DNA analysis and coordinate disposition with the Navy.

  Throughout the process, the Navy remained publicly silent on the issue of the additional crew’s remains, despite repeated queries. The longer the wait, the more difficult it was going to be for the families to deal with a continuing tragedy as many sought a degree of solace and closure in the healing nature of time. Months had gone by with no word as the families waited in silence.

  On a good note, over the summer, the Navy finally completed work on the crew’s awards. Regrettably, the attack on Cole was still not viewed as an act of war. The crew would only receive downgraded peacetime awards instead of what many families and I felt they deserved—combat awards. Almost one year after the attack, Admiral Foley held the ceremony on September 5, 2001. With USS George Washington on one side of the pier and with the opposite side flanked by USS Hawes and USS Donald Cook, the crew finally received the long-deserved recognition of having the medals they had heroically earned pinned on their chests. The eleven months it took to get to this point paled in comparison to the happiness everyone displayed. One person in particular showed incredible grit and determination, Seaman Elizabeth Lafontaine. Despite shrapnel wounds, compound fractures to both legs, several surgical operations, and weeks in the hospital, when her name was called to receive her Purple Heart, she rose from her chair and, with only minor use of a cane, proudly strode up to receive her award. Lieutenant Jim Salter looked on from the audience, remembered her rescue, and marveled at the moment.

  Only a few days later, with the attacks on September 11, the country became consumed by the Global War on Terror, and once again, anything related to USS Cole became relegated to a lower priority until a year after the attack. As part of the distribution plan for funds given to the USS Cole Fund, the portion set aside to build a lasting memorial came to fruition. Many families, including those who had lost loved ones in the attack, wanted a ceremony, open to the public and easily accessible to the media and others who wished to pay homage to and celebrate the crew’s accomplishments. Once again seeking to downplay and distance itself from the attack, the Navy chose to strictly control media access and prevent the public display many families and the crew had hoped for. Nonetheless, at least there would be a lasting memorial to the seventeen sailors and the heroic crew who had given so much to save the ship.

  October 12, 2001, was a beautiful fall day in Norfolk, Virginia, but a tense calm fell over it like a chilled blanket. It had only been thirty days since the September 11 attacks and now the nation was at war. Security and access to the naval base was tightly controlled and force protection measures were at an all-time high. As the ceremony got underway, a helicopter crisscrossed over the bay as armed patrol boats circled in the waters just offshore. All roads leading to the monument were blocked off and admittance was strictly controlled. The attack on Cole fundamentally changed how the Navy viewed force protection and with the attacks on September 11, the nation felt vulnerable.

  Over the previous months, several local contractors throughout the Norfolk area had donated time and money well beyond the funds set aside and built a beautiful ten-foot-tall monolith of mahogany-colored granite, encircled by seventeen smaller granite slabs inlaid into the ground. A tree-lined pathway leads to the site and is surrounded by tall pine trees, providing a natural seclusion and quiet area for visitors to reflect and contemplate the sacrifices made for our freedom. The site chosen by the Navy overlooks Willoughby Bay, where ships leaving and returning from sea pass by. At its top, the granite slopes forty-five degrees, a symbolic salute to passing ships and the names of the seventeen sailors killed in the attack inscribed on two brass plaques. A third plaque in between reads: “In lasting tribute to their honor, courage and commitment.”

  It was an emotionally charged day as the crew and families gathered to honor their shipmates, who had paid the ultimate price only a short year earlier. The official unveiling of the monument occurred precisely at 1118 as the names of all seventeen sailors were read aloud. There was not a dry eye in the crowd.

  Immediately following the event, as everyone was spending some time visiting with each other, a young sailor and his family approached me alone. Engineman Third Class John Thompson humbly walked up to me and introduced me to his wife, Heidi.

  Looking me in the eye, he started to choke up as he said, “Sir, I owe you an apology.” While somewhat surprised, I knew what he was talking about—the moment when he had confronted me in Aden and said I was going to get everybody killed because I wouldn’t let them go home sooner—and immediately set about downplaying it. “No apology necessary. It was a unique time in our lives and you did a great job over there.” “Well, thank you, sir, but I still owe you an apology,” he continued. It was a self-conscious moment for both us before he quickly continued, “I never should have said what I did to you. It was disrespectful and, well, I guess what I’m trying to say, sir, is that what I didn’t realize then, but I do now, is that when we were over in Aden, you had more faith in us than we had in ourselves.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t think of the right words to say, and even if I had had them, I would not have been able to get them out. His words seemed to linger in the air before we finally exchanged a solid handshake, then paused before giving each other a big hug—again. I was honored beyond words.

  While the memorial may have been dedicated, an uncertain wait continued for some of the families. An unforeseen consequence of the September 11 attacks was that the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology shifted their focus from Cole to the remains of those who had been killed in the Pentagon. The process of identifying the final fragmentary sets of Cole remains dragged on for over two months more, until finally the Institute informed the Navy on December 10 that the identifications were complete. The remains would be turned over to their families, and the fragmentary remains of the terrorists that had been found with them inside the ship were turned back over to the FBI.

  When I learned that the identification of my sailors was complete, a new fear settled into my gut when the Navy decided to notify the families just before Christmas. It may not have been my place to do it, but I pleaded with the staff of the chief of naval operations to wait until after the holidays, so the families could at least get through one Christmas without the Navy disrupting it. My thought process was that it would be better for the families to be angry about a delay in being notified than to have their holiday spoiled once again with tragic news. As I would learn from September 11 families years later, thankfully my request was rebuffed and by mid-December, the casualty assistance calls officers were knocking on doors and asking the families to decide what they wanted to do with the remains
. The sense of helping them achieve closure and deal with the knowledge that their loved ones had been finally identified was more important than any holiday.

  The families, however, were not told that the Institute still retained a mass of genetic material that could not be identified because it was too heavily contaminated by fuel, oil, salt water, and exposure to the elements during the transit back to the United States. There was no way to isolate individual DNA material based on current technology and these remains undoubtedly contained some of the remains of the bombers.

  Since World War II, the Navy had followed a long-standing tradition of taking commingled, unidentifiable remains and burying them together in a common casket or urn at one gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery. This pattern was consistently followed as remains were repatriated from excavation sites around the world. On September 12, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld presided over a burial service of unidentifiable remains from the Pentagon rubble at Arlington National Cemetery. In a single flag-draped casket, cremated remains from the Pentagon rubble that could not be identified, symbolically representing all 184 victims of the attack on the Pentagon, were buried with full military honors. After hymns, Scripture readings, and speeches from military leaders, relatives and friends paid their respects as the casket was carried by a horse-drawn caisson to a hill within view of the repaired Pentagon. A four-foot five-inch granite marker bearing the 184 names was eventually placed over the shared gravesite.2