Navy secretary rips Capt. Brett Crozier for his warning about coronavirus aboard ship
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly trashed fired aircraft carrier Capt. Brett Crozier to his former crew, saying that Crozier revealed he was either “too naive or too stupid” for command after raising concern about the coronavirus spreading through his ship.
Modly made the remarks in Guam to the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt who had cheered Crozier as a hero last week. Audio of the speech emerged after the Daily Caller published a transcript.
Modly said an email from Crozier sent last Monday raising alarms about the virus allowed the information to reach the press.
“If he didn’t think, in my opinion, that this information wasn’t going to get out into the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naive or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternate is that he did it on purpose,” Modly told the crew.
“What the f–k?” an apparent sailor says in the audio.
“He was just trying to help us!” a man’s voice protests.
The Navy secretary on Friday claimed that Crozier put the 5,000-man crew “at risk” of attack when he sent an email to at least 20 people last week raising concern about the virus sweeping through his crew after men began showing symptoms.
Modly added on Monday: “One of the things about his email that bothered me the most was saying that we are not at war. Well, we aren’t technically at war. But let me tell ya something, the only reason we are dealing with this right now is a big authoritarian regime called China was not forthcoming about what was happening with this virus and they put the world at risk to protect themselves and to protect their reputations.”
Modly continued, “The T-R has to work its way through this with grace, not panic. The T-R has to demonstrate to the citizens back home that it has its act together and that it’s knocking down this virus just like it would knock down the Chinese or the North Koreans or the Russians if any one of those nations were ever so stupid enough to mess with the Bid Stick because they thought she was vulnerable.”
In his email, Crozier wrote: “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday that 155 sailors from the ship are confirmed to have COVID-10. The fired commander reportedly is among the infected.