The Shark Mutiny

by Patrick Robinson

  Admiral Greening picked up the phone to Admiral Dixon, who was already on the line to Arnold Morgan. It was merely a matter of waiting for the press to get hold of the details, from any one of the hundreds of Navy men, and women, who now knew all about it. But the media would not be looking, and it might take them a while. Though they’d sure as hell make up for their lateness when they did find out.

  Admiral Morgan’s wishes were very clear: Lt. Commander Headley and his lawyer were to be given every assistance in their case to prove that Commander Reid was in no fit state to run the SEAL escape and rescue from the Burmese island. It was the only way out of a scandal that would surely engulf not only the senior service, but also, possibly, the administration itself.

  In fact it took five days, and even then only half of the story was published. On its front page, the San Diego Telegraph ran a double-column item, toward the top of columns four and five, under the two-deck headline MYSTERY OF NAVY SEAL RESCUE OFF BURMA.

  To the connoisseur of such matters, it was plain the writer knew more than he dared print. But the newspaper printed enough:

  The United States Navy last night refused to comment on a report that a U.S. Navy SEAL assault team, out of Coronado, came under direct attack from Chinese helicopters while escaping from a mission on a Burmese island.

  It is believed that at least two of the SEALs were killed and that others may have been wounded. There were no details available as to the nature of the mission, and a Navy spokesman would only say, “All Special Forces operations are highly classified, and this one is no different.”

  Five weeks ago reports from Rangoon stated that a new Chinese Navy base on the island of Haing Gyi in the delta of the Bassein River, western Burma, had been badly damaged by a massive explosion inside a geothermal electricity generation plant.

  The Navy spokesman would neither confirm nor deny that the SEAL team had been involved in this destruction.

  Further reports suggest there was an American nuclear submarine in the area of the Bassein Delta on or around June 7. There was no information available as to the identity of the ship, but an insider told the Telegraph last night that the Sturgeon-Class nuclear boat USS Shark, under the command of Commander Donald K. Reid, was operational in the Bay of Bengal at the time.

  Last night Commander Reid could not be reached. His Executive Officer, Lt. Commander Dan Headley, would not comment on any part he may have played in the rescue of the surviving SEALs.

  He would only say, “Throughout Shark’s recent Middle East patrol, I carried out my duties as a U.S. Naval officer to the best of my abilities.”

  Accompanying the story was a single-column picture of Commander Reid, under which was the caption “Unreachable.” There was also a picture of Lt. Commander Dan Headley, beneath which was the caption, “I carried out my duties.”

  The story was just signed Geoff Levy, staff writer. But he had plainly been briefed about the entire scenario, either by a member of the submarine’s crew or by a San Diego resident SEAL. However, young Geoff had been unable to obtain any official confirmation, and he wrote only what he thought was more or less safe, given the fact that he was trespassing in a top-secret military area.

  The Navy’s high command, in Pearl Harbor, San Diego and Washington, glowered at the report as the e-mails were downloaded from computers all over the fleet and its executive offices. The media’s high command, almost shrieking with glee, set about pinning the story down. But they made little headway, because essentially reporters needed to be in San Diego where most of the crew and SEALs were stationed.

  And once more Geoff Levy’s source delivered and on Wednesday night, July 25, the San Diego Telegraph went to bed with end-of-the-world-size type stacked in two decks, clear across the top of its front page: NAVY COURT-MARTIALS SUBMARINE EXECUTIVE OFFICER FOR MUTINY ON THE HIGH SEAS. Beneath the headline was the subhead “Heroic U.S. Officer Who Saved the SEALS Is Accused.”

  Someone had not only blabbed. Someone had blabbed in spades; leaked the court-martial recommendation from Captain Sam Scott, and suddenly Geoff Levy was a media star. And Admiral Arnold Morgan held his head in his hands as the young San Diego journalist said on national television, “I’ve been on the Navy beat for my newspaper for three years now, and I have never known such outrage. There are a lot of very furious guys in the U.S. Navy right now. Most of ’em think Dan Headley should be given the Medal of Honor.”

  “Holy shit,” groaned the CNO.

  By midday on July 26, the fertilizer was clogging the bilge pumps. The Navy Department in Washington was under siege from the media. The San Diego base switchboard was jammed by phone calls from newspapers and television. All lines to the command office of the SEALs in both Coronado and Virginia were occupied by journalists, researchers and columnists.

  And the questions were all the same…What really happened out there in the Bay of Bengal?…And why is the hero of the operation being court-martialed by his own Navy?…Where is Lt. Commander Headley?…Can we speak with him?…If not, why not?…Do the SEALs agree Lt. Commander Headley should be court-martialed?…What has he actually done to deserve this?

  Photographers were camped in groups at the main gates to the base. They were massed outside the Pentagon, outside the base at Coronado and at Little Creek, Virginia. By late afternoon, infuriated by the lack of cooperation of the U.S. Navy, they swung their attention to the White House, demanding a statement either from the National Security Adviser, the Defense Secretary or the Commander-in-Chief himself, the President of the United States.

  In the opinion of both Arnold Morgan and Admiral Alan Dixon, there was absolutely nothing to be gained by saying one word to any of them. “No comment” would send them into a frenzy. “We are unable to confirm anything at this time” would drive them mad. “All matters such as these are highly classified, and in the interests of national security we will say nothing.” That last one would have been a red cape to a fighting bull.

  What national security? Are you saying the SEALs attacked that Burmese island? How many of them died? Why are members of the crew saying Lt. Commander Headley rescued the survivors? What’s he done wrong? If he mutinied, why did he mutiny? Did the CO blow it or something?

  To hold a press conference, or even to issue a press statement, would be to open the floodgates. Better to let them get on with it, block all calls at the switchboard, or the automatic answering machines, and let the cards fall where they may.

  Where they fell was all over the place. In the following three days, right up until the last editions of the Sunday tabloids were on the presses, it was as if no other story in the entire country mattered. The inaccessibility of the Navy bases and the personnel involved seemed only to fan the forest fire of leaked knowledge. There was even a posse of photographers outside the locked wrought-iron gates of Bart Hunter’s farm in Lexington, Kentucky, trying to catch a glimpse of the SEAL leader’s father. Local journalists even managed to interview Bobby Headley, Dan’s father, when he mistakenly answered the telephone late one evening.

  But the Navy said nothing. And the media slowly pieced it all together in various forms. The general scenario put forth was that the SEALs had attacked the Chinese base in some kind of retribution for China’s capture of the island of Taiwan. They had been caught and attacked on the way out, and there had been an altercation between the Commanding Officer of USS Shark and his Executive Officer.

  The CO had been overruled by the XO, supported by the majority of the officers on board, and Shark went in to save the SEALs. This mission was accomplished, and now the Navy was charging the Lieutenant Commander who masterminded the rescue with mutiny. It was obvious to everyone that almost every officer and enlisted man in the U.S. Navy was up in arms about this. And almost every commentator in the entire country, newspaper, radio or television, was of the opinion that the Navy, the government and presumably the President, the C-in-C of all the armed forces, had, collectively, gone mad.

  The New York Times, w
ith a searing inside “exclusive,” revealed that the entire high command of America’s most elite troops, the Navy SEALs, had threatened to resign en masse if the court-martial proceedings were not called off.

  All this was achieved without one single identified source inside the U.S. military. It was as Admiral Morgan had forecast, the outrage. That’s what binds people together, a shared grievance, a communal anger. And there sure was profound anger at this ensuing court-martial of Lt. Commander Dan Headley.

  Nonetheless, media or no media, the legal wheels turned relentlessly inside the Navy’s Trial Service Office. The trial Counselor was duly appointed, Lt. Commander David “Locker” Jones, a 46-year-old lawyer from Vermont, who had attended the Naval Academy but left the service for the law after three years in a surface ship. Ten years later he returned after a messy divorce involving a client’s wife. For the past four years he had been an extremely able Naval lawyer, much admired throughout the legal department both on the West Coast and in Washington.

  David Jones was a broad-shouldered ex-athlete of medium height and thinning fair hair. He wore the nickname “Locker” with good humor; Davy Jones’s locker being, of course, seamen’s slang for the bottom of the ocean, the final resting place for sunken ships, articles thrown overboard or burials at sea. And Locker Jones was renowned not so much for his thoroughness as for his grasp of the very finest points of law, an ability to cut a swath through evidence and make it irrelevent, a knack for nailing the one salient fact that could make a case swing one way or the other. Lieutenant Commander Headley could hardly have been dealt a more deadly opponent.

  The Judge Advocate, who would sit in on the case, ensuring that the significant points of law were followed, was the veteran Atlantic destroyer commander Captain Art Brennan. He was a tall gray-haired former lawyer from Rhode Island, again a man who had joined, left and then rejoined the Navy. He was a traditionalist with a wry sense of humor, and a surprisingly irreverent way of looking at the world. On the face of it, you would put the 54-year-old Captain Brennan in the corner of the wronged CO. But those who knew him better suspected he would keep a careful watch on the rights of Lt. Commander Dan Headley.

  The defense counsel was a matter for agreement between the Trial Service Office and the accused officer. And they chose easily the best man available to them—the sardonic, dark-haired Lieutenant Commander Al Surprenant, whose career, thanks to a wealthy father, had gone: Choate School, Harvard Law School, excellent degree, boredom with law, United States Navy, commission, rapid promotion, missile director battle cruiser Gulf War, U.S. Navy lawyer, Norfolk, then San Diego after he married a Hollywood actress.

  Lieutenant Commander Surprenant was generally regarded as the one man in the U.S. Navy who could nail Commander Reid, and bring in a “not guilty” verdict for Dan Headley. He would prove thorough in his preparation, single-minded about the innocence of his client and brutal in his treatment of the CO, whom he knew beyond any doubt had left one man to die and had been about to leave another eight to the same fate.

  The date of the court-martial was set for Monday, August 13. It would be the first such trial for mutiny in a U.S. Navy warship, ever. It would take place deep inside the San Diego base, in the Trial Service courtroom, which was much like a civilian courtroom, except for the fact that it was all on one level, no raised dais for the men who would sit in judgment on the submarine’s XO.

  The panel would consist of five men, three Lieutenant Commanders and one Lieutenant, all serving under the President, an ex-submarine CO, Captain Cale “Boomer” Dunning. This particular officer would bring strong combat experience to the deliberations of his team, and, to those who knew him, a genuine appreciation of the split-second flexibility required in the command of a nuclear ship on a classified mission.

  By anyone’s standards, the U.S. Navy was giving Lt. Commander Headley every possible chance of a sympathetic hearing—perhaps more in their own interests than in those of the hero of the Bay of Bengal.

  Meanwhile, the media continued to worry the life out of the story. They had no official information, but they were getting a ton of unofficial leaks. It seemed that with each new breakthrough, each new snippet of possible truth, there was a counterattack. One television network came up with an entire career study of Commander Reid, citing his exemplary record. No sooner had this aired than a newspaper came blasting out onto the streets with the story that he had allegedly left a combat SEAL to die.

  It went on day after day…WAS THE HORSEMAN FROM KENTUCKY A RECKLESS GAMBLER? DID THE LIEUTENANT COMMANDER OWE THE SEAL CHIEF MONEY? HAD COMMANDER REID LOST HIS NERVE? WAS THERE A FISTFIGHT IN SHARK’S CONTROL ROOM? IS THE U.S. NAVY OUT OF CONTROL?

  Day after day, the media bore into the events that surrounded the mutiny. But still the Navy would reveal nothing. Not even the date of the court-martial. And the press seethed with indignation, not because of a potential miscarriage of justice but because this story about the wronged hero had captured the imagination of the American public, and the press were unable to get a serious grip on the facts. Nor would they ever.

  The day of the court-martial dawned bright and warm. Shades in the white-painted courtroom were down, and the air-conditioning was humming. The long, curved mahogany table at which the panel would sit formed a shallow well in the room. And the deadly serious nature of the case was highlighted by twin flags of the United States of America, set immediately behind the five oak captain’s armchairs.

  Between the flags, hung at an angle, was a ceremonial Naval sword, which would be used especially at this court-martial, reviving an old tradition. Its gold-plated brass hilt was set around a white fishskin-covered grip. The backpiece was surmounted by an eagle-head pommel. The 31-and-a-half-inch steel blade was encased in a hand-stitched black rawhide scabbard, with brass fittings.

  Before the verdict was announced, it would be removed from the wall, unsheathed from its scabbard and placed upon the table. If the verdict was to be guilty, the sharp end would point directly at the accused officer. If he was to be judged innocent, it would be pointed away from him, toward the wall.

  Aside from the five-man panel that would sit in judgment, there would be the two opposing lawyers, plus the observing Judge Advocate. Also permitted to sit in on the trial were the SEAL Commander-in-Chief, Admiral John Bergstrom, plus the Pacific Submarine Fleet Commander, Admiral Freddie Curran. There would be two regular court stenographers, officially recording the proceedings. Two armed Navy guards would be on duty at all times, with two more outside the door. Witnesses would be called into the courtroom but would not be permitted to remain after their evidence had been presented. No outsiders, public or media, would be permitted within a mile of the place.

  At 0900 sharp, Lt. Commander Headley arrived with his defense counsel. They took their seats at the table set up for the accused man and began poring over the trial papers. In the following 30 minutes the witnesses arrived and were seated in a large anteroom along the corridor. Two Naval lawyers plus two guards were detailed to ensure that there was no discussion about the case, no possibility of corroboration between interested parties.

  At 0930 the three Lieutenant Commanders, plus the much younger Lieutenant, walked into the courtroom from a private door behind the long table and took their seats. Captain Dunning, like his colleagues, in full uniform, arrived three minutes later, carrying a large leather binder, and sat in the center chair.

  He wished everyone a formal “good morning” but wasted no further time. “Gentlemen,” he said, “please proceed with the case against Lieutenant Commander Headley, charged this thirteenth day of August with making a mutiny on the high seas, while serving in the nuclear submarine USS Shark on the morning of June seventh, in the Bay of Bengal…. Lieutenant Commander Jones…perhaps you would outline the case for the benefit of the court.”

  The prosecuting counselor rose from his seat, a look of obvious concern upon his wide, frank face. He hesitated for a few moments, and then said, firmly, “Sir,
it gives me no great pleasure to prosecute this charge, because I do not believe any of the parties acted in any way through self-interest. On the one hand we have a dedicated, experienced commanding officer concerned with the safety of both his ship and his men. And on the other we have an equally dedicated Lieutenant Commander desperate to save a team of U.S. Special Forces that was under attack.

  “The facts are not in dispute. The Navy SEALs transmitted a cry for help, citing their Chinese attackers in hot pursuit with helicopters and heavy machine guns. Commander Reid’s view was that the helicopters were almost certainly ASW aircraft, and at least one of them would be armed with rockets, and that to bring USS Shark to the surface was tantamount to suicide, because of the threat both to the submarine and the crew. It was, in a sense, one of the oldest quandaries any CO can face—will I sacrifice a very small number of men, in this case eight, in order to protect one hundred ten men, plus a very expensive nuclear ship?

  “Gentlemen, Lieutenant Commander Headley thought not. He thought he could save the SEALs, and he rallied the senior officers to his cause. Despite the protests, indeed the orders, of his Commanding Officer, he seized control of the ship. He arrested the CO under Section one-zero-eight-eight of Navy Regulations and had him marched off under escort to his cabin, where he was incarcerated. And then the XO went in and successfully saved the SEALs under the most gallant circumstances.

  “But I submit we are not here to assess gallantry; we are here to assess right and wrong. And I quote now the regulation that governs the actions of Lieutenant Commander Headley on that most fateful morning.

  “Naval Regulations, one-zero-eight-eight. The Relief of a Commanding Officer by a Subordinate:

  1. It is conceivable that most unusual and extraordinary circumstances may arise in which the relief from duty of a commanding officer by a subordinate becomes necessary, either by placing the CO under arrest, or on the sick list. Such action shall never be taken without the approval of the Commandant of the Marine Corps or the Chief of Naval Personnel, as appropriate. Or the senior officer present, except when reference to such higher authority is undoubtedly impracticable, because of the delay involved, or for other clearly obvious reasons.