Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
March 22, 2001
Sub’s Crew Defies Odds By Accepting Responsibility
By Kerry Dougherty, The Virginian-Pilot
Once in a while you see something on the nightly news
that stops you in your tracks. You can’t believe your
eyes - or your ears. You see people squaring their
shoulders and saying things like “My mistake,” “It
was all my fault” and “I’m sorry.”
In testimony before the court of inquiry investigating
the February sinking of a Japanese fishing trawler by
an American submarine off the coast of Hawaii, there has
been some astonishing behavior. The television cameras
have recorded it all. Take this exchange: “It was only
a six-hour cruise,” one of the examiners said to the man
in charge of the Greeneville’s radar tracking.
“You got lazy didn’t you, Petty Officer Seacrest?”
“Yes sir,” Patrick Seacrest replied.
Not "Yes, but . . . "
Not “Well, it really wasn’t my fault.”
Not, “Maybe, but the civilians on board were distracting me.”
Just, “Yes sir.”
For some reason, it reminded me of a less-noble moment in
recent television history: Bill Clinton shaking his crooked
finger at the camera and saying “I did not have sex with that woman.”
We live in a country that from 1992 to 2000 saw a president
and his wife duck all responsibility for their actions. “I’m
sorry” was not in their vocabularies.
It is in the lexicon of the submarine’s skipper. Cmdr. Scott
Waddle ignored his lawyers and arranged recently to meet
privately with the families of the nine dead Japanese students.
According to the families, Waddle apologized profusely to them.
He embraced them. He wept with them. After the encounter,
the father of one of the Japanese boys said that Waddle’s
heartfelt remarks took away his anger. Somehow, seeing the tears and the pain and the grief and the guilt of the naval officer helped him realize that it wasn’t some unrepentant American behemoth that had killed his son. It was just a man.
Waddle didn’t stop there. On Tuesday, again defying his lawyers, Waddle took the witness stand. His appearance before the court of inquiry shocked observers because he did it without the immunity from prosecution that his lawyers had sought and that others had gained.
Waddle said he testified because, “It was the right thing to do.”
I’ll bet that the people who actually knew Waddle were not at all surprised.
This commander and his crew are breaking all the rules. They aren’t hiding behind their attorneys. They aren’t engaging in mass finger pointing. They don’t appear preoccupied with saving their own skins.
They do, however, seem determined to set the record straight. And to say they’re sorry. That takes guts. In the course of the inquiry it has become clear that these men made mistakes that awful day in February. A frightening series of avoidable, deadly mistakes.
But the culprits are behaving better than the Navy itself did in the aftermath of the deadly Iowa explosion. Navy brass then attempted to pin the blame on a single sailor whom the service accused of being a homosexual. The men of the Greeneville are also behaving far more honorably than their former commander in chief.
Unlike Clinton, the officers of the Greeneville will pay for their mistakes.
They could face court-martials. They may also face civil actions.
Their candid remarks will work against them later, which is why their lawyers have been trying to shut them up. They don’t seem to care.
They want to tell the truth.
The tragic story of the Greeneville is destined for the history books.
My hope is that someone, somewhere, will also record the remarkable conduct of the commander and crew in accepting blame for the accident.
One thing is certain. Though the careers of the men of the Greeneville are in tatters, their character is not.