‘A deep moral rot’: Coast Guard chief to be questioned at hearing on cover-up of senators’ sexual assault

CNN
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At a contentious hearing on Tuesday, senators sharply criticized the head of the US Coast Guard, accusing her of fostering a “culture of cover-up,” withholding important information from congressional investigators and failing to hold leaders and perpetrators accountable for serious misconduct.

“Our investigation has shown that the Coast Guard has become deeply morally rotten,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s permanent investigative committee, which is looking into the Coast Guard’s past mismanagement of sexual violence cases. “One that prioritizes nepotism over accountability and silence for survivors.”

Blumenthal and other members of the subcommittee told Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan that their investigation found that sexual assault remained a “persistent and unacceptably widespread” problem throughout the Army, despite Fagan’s initial assurances that it was a problem of the past.

Nearly 40 whistleblowers have contacted the subcommittee in recent months, lawmakers said. At the hearing, Fagan was asked what specific steps she was taking to ensure that people who commit serious misconduct, as well as those who cover up their crimes, are removed from the service.

“Are you aware that there are more survivors leaving the Coast Guard than there are perpetrators?” asked Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Coast Guard Academy is based. “This problem is not a thing of the past. It is real and present … and the proof is not in my voice, but in the voices and faces of the whistleblowers … they are, in my view, the heroes of this story.”

The hearing was sparked by CNN’s coverage of the results of a secret investigation called Operation Fouled Anchor, which was quietly shut down and kept secret from Congress and the public even though it confirmed dozens of sexual assaults previously mishandled at the prestigious Coast Guard Academy. At an earlier hearing led by the same subcommittee, four sexual assault victims testified about how they were silenced, retaliated against and struggled with severe psychological trauma while the alleged perpetrators continued to thrive within the Coast Guard.

“We are taking action, the work is not done … we have not waited,” Fagan said, repeatedly promising to change the culture but saying she needs more time and resources to do so. “I want to stop creating victims, but as far as the victims we have in the organization, I am 100% committed to fully supporting them and their needs.”

Fagan had previously stated that she only learned about the “entirety” of the so-called “fouled anchor” investigation through a request from CNN, but that she had heard about it because she had previously taken steps to remove a commanding officer involved in the investigation.

When senators asked her on Tuesday how much she knew about the investigation before she took over as head of the agency in 2021, she acknowledged that she learned about it “officially” when the agency’s leadership council was briefed in 2018. She also said, “When we concluded the investigation in 2020, there were conversations about whether or not we should disclose it.”

Fagan would not say whether she believes her predecessor, Admiral Karl Schultz, was behind the final decision to keep Fouled Anchor’s findings secret from Congress after the investigation concluded. She said she had “no direct evidence of wrongdoing” related to that decision, even though senators minutes earlier had put up a giant poster with a handwritten list from Schultz’s deputy that included “pros” and “cons” arguments that raised questions about whether the investigation should be transparent with lawmakers and the public. Schultz had not previously commented to CNN about Fouled Anchor.

Tuesday’s hearing came at a time when Fagan was already facing tremendous pressure as new controversies and increased congressional scrutiny have shone a light on how sexual assault continues to plague the agency. That includes explosive allegations from the academy’s longtime head of sexual assault prevention, Shannon Norenberg, who recently announced her resignation and said that senior leaders instructed her to lie to sexual assault victims and Congress, making her an unwitting accomplice in the Fouled Anchor cover-up.

Several lawmakers seized on Norenberg’s allegations, particularly that she was prevented from providing survivors with important materials that would help them access veterans’ benefits available to survivors of sexual violence. Fagan said she could not comment on the specifics of that allegation, as well as other issues raised by the senators, because of an ongoing investigation by the inspector general. That prompted Blumenthal to criticize her for using the investigation as a shield, which earned her applause from the audience.

“You are the leader, these decisions are yours,” Blumenthal said.

Fagan said she had not read Norenberg’s full statement, only the CNN article about it.

Senators also focused on an email claiming it covered up a recent assault. That email was deleted from Coast Guard servers and went viral. Also leaked was an internal memo showing that Coast Guard officials recently worried that releasing statements from assault victims “could further exacerbate the narrative … that the Coast Guard is currently in a sexual assault crisis.” Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, argued that the “reluctance” to release the videos “indicates a real failure of leadership” and a lack of understanding of the current sexual assault problem at the agency.

Throughout the hearing, MPs pressed Fagan for a lack of transparency and cooperation in the investigation.

“The only way to change the culture is to solve the problem through truth, transparency and accountability,” said Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and the subcommittee’s ranking member, adding that he believes subpoenas are necessary. Johnson flipped through page after page of the Coast Guard-produced documents, which were almost entirely redacted.

A group of bipartisan lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee, who did not attend the hearing but are conducting their own investigation into the agency’s handling of a range of offenses, including sexual assault, racism and harassment, joined the criticism, sending a letter to Fagan on Tuesday saying that the Coast Guard has so far provided less than 1% of the records identified as potentially relevant to the requests.

They also said they had heard from whistleblowers who had “exposed additional cultural deficiencies and alleged incompetence and misconduct by current and former leaders” who may have “intentionally withheld evidence relevant to criminal investigations” and “misrepresented material facts to Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) investigators in order to conceal the extent of the culture of misconduct and the identities of other potential suspects.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Fagan said the Coast Guard was cooperating fully with the subcommittee’s investigation, but senators said it appeared the documents it classified as “sensitive” and refused to release were withheld out of fear of further public exposure.

“The Coast Guard is being asked right now to make an uncompromising commitment to telling the truth and following the facts and evidence wherever they lead, even if they are embarrassing to former or current members of the Coast Guard,” Blumenthal said.

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