Unusual …. but I wish for the crew of the COWPENS and her new CO that they have a top-shelf CMDCM and XO to help them mend the ship and move forward.

“Cruelty and maltreatment” and got fired for it, eh?

Well, with the Navy’s track record – you may be looking at Congress(wo)man Graf any day now!

There’s a comment here: http://tinyurl.com/yexc2st

It implies that she laid hands on a subordinate. That’s why she got Mast, instead of just relieved.

I’ve had, um… “emphatic” discussions with officers before, in the field (and usually, hidden in the turret, away from the children) and there was no lasting fallout from it. And I’ve seen a 2LT almost come to blows with a CPT (I dragged my 2LT away by force). But a CAPT laying hands on someone? That might be a bit much.

URR:

I assume you are speaking metaphorically; sad to say, in the world in which we live, others may not. Recommend you make it crystal, just a little advice from one who considers himself your friend.

It would seem the Captain has a history, from the comments at “I Like the Cut of His Jib”.

Bad Captains happen. An ISIC’s unhappy duty is to kill or cure them. At four stripes, remediation is hard to obtain, justifiably, IMHO. If needs must, it ’tis best done early in the tour and quickly, lest more troops suffer, not to mention the Navy’s good name, such as it is in these difficult times.

This case seems to have come late, but some things inevitably trigger the landslide.

Curiouser and Curiouser.

I knew Graf at the Academy and served with her when she was XO. The events stated in NT were no surprise to me. My question is, “What took so long?” She was mean and sadistic. She did not care about the crew and she held grudges. Life was a living Hell. She made sure of it. I could tell stories for hours. She needs to leave the Navy and fade away.

As one who witnessed my best friend go through her CDR CMD ride, I ask the same question Kirk did. What took so long? Her time was marked by absolute misery by all hands, and a major engineering casualty I had hoped would lead to her dismissal but sadly didn’t. She has a long history of getting a pass that would kill most anyone else, I can’t imagine why.

Oh, and if anyone thinks that imperfections in Command selections are a new thing – perhaps you should get a copy of The Arnheiter Affair.

URR: I think you’re leaping to a conclusion. There have been other officers relieved for misconduct and command failures over the last few years but I don’t think you would claim the Hartford incident, for example, was the result of blatant sexism, even though Navy policy on the manning of submarines has been *explicitly* sexist.

CDR S has the right of it: no one really knows, at this point, what the higher-ups knew about it and none of the former subordinates trashing her after the fact will acknowledge they did anything to make their superiors aware of her failings back when it would have mattered. It’s entirely possible that admirals were looking the other way in order to have a female success story but, given the apparent seriousness of the charges, I find it hard to believe that any admiral who was aware of the problem would not see a time bomb waiting to go off at the worst possible moment.

There are plenty of female officers to choose from and, when and IF affirmative action rears its ugly head, the pass is usually given to someone who is incompetent but thankfully inoffensive. Not loose cannons who might really embarrass you down the road.

An interesting line of inquiry would be: how do junior officers and senior enlisted men warn the admiral about a captain whom they consider substandard or even dangerous? How would the admiral go about confirming the accusation? This is a tricky issue; I think that blaming affirmative action off the cuff evades serious analysis.

James,
Just to nit-pic a bit on a point missed quite often. You stated:
“There are plenty of female officers to choose from and, when and IF affirmative action rears its ugly head, the pass is usually given to someone who is incompetent but thankfully inoffensive. Not loose cannons who might really embarrass you down the road.”

Very true. I do not know if this was the case here – odds are it was not. However, as a point of order, let me remind all of this.

In a zero sum game that is Command Selection, when you give something to one, you take away from another. If you give to some with lower indications for success in order to gain a superficiality, then you get that result – lower performance in command for a greater presence in the superficiality you are selecting for.

With a lower indications of success – you play the odds that something can go wrong. Doesn’t mean it will, but is skews the odds. When things go wrong in Command, people can get killed, ships can be run aground and careers can be destroyed. When you gain a popular superficiality, Senior Leadership gets to make friends with the right people and have nice photographs to show the right people so they get invited to the right parties and exciting speaking engagements.

Pick your priorities, and reap the results – when you wake up in the morning though, just make sure they guy looking back in the mirror understands the reasons for the decision you make.

But you are leaving out a key element: what is the “track record?” Did the ships score badly in performance reviews? Was there an incident (a grounding, a desertion, an injury) that required an inquiry? Or were there a lot of grumbling sailors that never made their complaints known (or had no means to do so)?

The conclusion you reach requires that the admirals knew that she was a poor officer but did nothing about it. Since action has now been taken it seems clear that they are, in fact, willing to relieve a female officer for incompetence and dreadful leadership skills. So…if they are willing to fire a bad female officer, which evidence is in plain sight, why now and not earlier? More to the point: here they are wrecking the career and reputation of an allegedly coveted and protected female officer AFTER she has done all the damage she can do. Her tour was over; a new commander was already on board; she was on the track to become an admiral. But, at the very last minute, they decided to hang a charge on her. That’s the damndest favoritism I ever heard of.

A more logical conclusion, and one that concerns me even more, is that it remains possible for a Captain Queeg to rise to the rank of captain, to command two large ships in the Navy, without anyone in the chain of command ever knowing what the environment is like aboard her ship. That they really didn’t find out until her relief got on board and started getting to know the sailors she been harassing for the previous two years. That admirals are so far removed from the day-to-day that they never hear the rumors of a mad captain, or don’t have the energy or the means to investigate without tarnishing the careers of the innocent.

We are both arguing that there was/is a systemic command failure, I think. Your argument is that of favoritism while mine is that her superiors were clueless. I think what we know right now, and it’s worth repeating that we really don’t know a hell of a lot, indicates the admirals were caught by surprise.

And with all due respect to Brad, a sergeant has a much better view of a company than a general does.

I certainly took no offense. But URR anticipated my response. I don’t expect an Admiral to know the mood in a division or department. But he alone is accountable for his subordinate commanders. And he alone is responsible for knowing what is going on with them.

Was CAPT Graf the recipient of a “diversity” bump? Probably. But I’ll let URR make that line of argument. My own view is that the Navy (and to some extent, the other services) have spent far to much effort teaching management, and not enough leadership.

Certainly there might be subtle tells of a distressed ship’s company but it is not implausible that in a technology-obsessed Navy the admirals are more interested in paper reports than the JO rumor-mill. I can believe that very easily.

I can believe it as well. But I can’t excuse it.

Another interesting thread on this topic:

http://navycaptain-therealnavy.blogspot.com/2010/01/number-two-in-our-countdown-is-captain.html

I’ve seen a few different blogs on this topic, with probably over 100 total comments, including 20 or so who claim to have served under Capt Graf. Every single one (except for Graf’s BFF Lori near the top of this page) confirms a picture of Graf as self-centered, incompetent, bullying, verbally and physically abusive, and utterly unconcerned about the welfare of her ship or of her crew, except insofar as they might facilitate her next promotion.

Too bad the Navy couldn’t publicly strip Graf of her commission and retire her as, say, an E-2. It would be a nice gesture of apology to the thousands of sailors she has mistreated, screwed over, forced out, or otherwise damaged in her 25 years of service.

You folks are surmising what the cause was without a shred of evidence to its accuracy. Assault and /or battery is a different article under the UCMJ. She was found guilty of cruel and maltreatment and conduct unbecoming an officer. That characterization implies a more serious condition that she may have been playing mind games, cruelly using her position to either control people or to purposely stress them out until she either broke their will or mental health or caused them to go AWOL to get away from the situation. I think in time, sailors will start to reveal exactly what went while she was CO.

I think you’re seeing a pattern involving this incident and that of Lt Hultgreen fifteen years ago. I’m seeing a pattern with the Hartford and the Port Royal, both ships that had serious marine incidents whose investigation led to assertions of a poor command environment of which the admirals were apparently unaware until hundreds of news cameras were trained on them.

Assuming off the starting line that this was a case of favoritism gone wrong requires that we ignore other recent incidents of command failure; it also requires that we ignore the fact that Graf’s vest was not, in the end, bulletproof. Her career is bleeding out right in front of us even though she didn’t crash her cruiser onto the rocks and attract international media attention. The problems were, in the end, uncovered by the Navy itself and are being dealt with in the Navy way.

Why did it take so long? On this point Brad and I seem to agree. I am concerned that the admirals are out of touch with what’s happening on board the ships. The flagship might only be a few miles away but that can be the far side of the moon. The general lives a great deal closer to the men on the base; the admiral must make an extra effort. I am very skeptical of the blanket assertion that every time a woman screws up it is a result of “diversity gone wrong.” There are a million ways to screw up in the Navy and women aren’t the only ones doing it.

I think Ultimate Ratio is wrong. I believe he has it confused with an Article 32 investigation, which is a bit like a Grand Jury proceeding, to determine if there is sufficient evidence to warrant an indictment and a court martial. Article 15 (NJP)is an alternative to courts-martial. Under NJP a commanding officer may determine guilt or innocence and assess punishment accordingly without reference to higher authority. The Manual for CourtsMartial outlines all this clearly in Part V. (http://www.jag.navy.mil/documents/mcm2008.pdf p429 following.) An accused must agree to submit to NJP (that is s/he may demand Court Martial anytime before punishment has been ordered). NJP is intended for minor offenses, and cannot be increased after the proceeding, even if appealed. That’s why most people will take NJP if offered, if they are guilty. Even a flag officer is quite restricted in punishments to a commissioned officer beyond a letter of admonition or reprimand as follows:
(A) By any commanding officer—restriction to
specified limits, with or without suspension from
duty for not more than 30 consecutive days;
(B) If imposed by an officer exercising general
court-martial jurisdiction, an officer of general or
flag rank in command, or a principal assistant as
defined in paragraph 2c of this Part—
(i) arrest in quarters for not more than 30
consecutive days;
(ii) forfeiture of not more than one-half of
one month’s pay per month for 2 months;
(iii) restriction to specified limits, with or
without suspension from duty, for not more than 60
consecutive days.
So, in general, if you’re guilty of a serious offense, you can avoid the possibility of loss of rank, of seniority, or dismissal by taking NJP instead of a Court Martial. By the same token, if you’re not guilty, you get a lot more rights in a Court Martial, and a jury trial of your peers.
Practically speaking, NJP takes care of a minor problem, delivers a slap and moves on. The punishment for an officer seems minor–but even a non-judicial Letter of Admonition is enough to derail an officer’s career. A non-judicial Letter of Reprimand usually means no more promotions or choice assignments–ever. So, it’s pretty severe. But it is NOT dismissal from the service or reduction in seniority. That requires a Court Martial.
I think I can assure you that the decision to resort to NJP was not made solely by the local flag officer. This thing had to have been kicked up the line all the way to CNO and SecNav. Avoiding a show trial with all that entails was probably one of the primary elements in the decision. CAPT Graf’s career is effectively over. As noted here, the real tragedy is that her crews paid a fearful price for her tenure in command–and her superiors didn’t act to end it earlier. It is the same failure that the Army must recognize in passing the shrink along to another command rather than investigating properly. Often, the person reporting is subjected to greater scrutiny by his/her superiors than the object of the report, because it’s embarrassing to the institution. So no one reports what is painfully obvious, lest the messenger be killed.

And I will answer again: he would have been tolerated if his superiors were clueless about what was going on. I mention recent events because they support my thesis that the admirals didn’t seem to know much about the problems on board the ships; it follows that they were unaware of just how bad things were on the Cowpens or, for that matter, her previous command. You maintain as an article of faith that her superiors MUST have known and simply REFUSED to do anything. I continue to argue that there is no *must.* The few miles of water separates the flagship from the destroyer can be a very long distance for an admiral who allows himself to be distracted by material issues to the detriment of the human factor.

The despicable conduct you mention remains mostly rumor. She was apparently a CO that screamed at her subordinates a lot but, once again, that is not enough to remove a captain. It’s poor policy and it makes everyone uneasy who hears about it, but the ship passed inspection and turned in its paperwork and even a admiral that suspects a problem is left grasping for something solid. It is HARD to relieve a captain, as it should be. Various complaints about style won’t do it. You have to have something firm; a violation of regulations you can prove.

CDR S’ reference to Arnheiter is instructive. He was a strange man the crew despised but, in the end, he was relieved not for any deficiencies in his relationship with his crew, but for misappropriating mess funds to buy a speedboat to chase sampans. That was what his superiors found to hang him with and no doubt they were mightily relieved to find it. What they found aboard the Cowpens seems to satisfy the requirements for removing her and, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, her membership in an allegedly protected class is apparently of no use to her.

Graf was, by all accounts, a poor officer and her removal is long overdue. But she’s not the only poor officer in the Navy, and not even the only poor captain, and not even the only poor captain removed in the last few years. The commentary that greeted the relief of the captains in other incidents was sober by comparison, focusing on lessons learned. This has been a gleeful, poisonous, and destructive free-for-all that suggest to every disgruntled subordinate, whether his complaint is valid or not, that his female superior has a “bulletproof vest” that prevents him obtaining redress through ordinary channels. For all your protests to the contrary, this amounts to an attack on every single female officer as a beneficiary of special favors.

I simply don’t believe that’s true and your circumstantial evidence for it is far weaker than you claim. Perhaps more will come out that proves your case but right now you are offering little but bitter assumptions.

In NJP, there is a finding of guilt (or not, theoretically), but there is no conviction, hence, the non-judicial part of it.

Roger all. Clearly “guilty” has a legal meaning beyond common convention, at least for lawyers. A finding of fact that the object of the hearing has committed an offense under the UCMJ is the basis for NJP punishment. Like a lot of other people here, I administered NJP for a long time–eight years of commands–and followed the prescribed language. Two or three appeals, no reversals. However, I contend that NJP is not merely administrative action. It can award quite significant punishment to enlisted personnel, as you know. It is “field justice” that deals quickly and decisively with minor offenses under the code–or those that need to be disposed of quickly for other reasons.