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, with 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.