Leaked Navy emails show top officers struggling with how to handle a former governor ensnared in scandal
By Dan Lamothe May 31 at 12:53 PM
The year was just beginning when a Trump administration official contacted the Navy with a question about former Missouri governor Eric Greitens, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who had resigned from office amid a sex scandal and criminal investigation.
Joseph D. Kernan, a retired admiral and Navy SEAL, knew Greitens from their time in the military. Now the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Kernan wanted to know if there was a way in which Greitens could return to military life, according to documents and emails obtained by The Washington Post.
It was not a simple question for the service.
Greitens, 45, admitted to having an extramarital affair, but denied accusations that he coerced the woman involved into a sexual act and threatened to publicize a photo of her partially nude if she ever went public with their relationship.
The charges were dismissed amid allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and Greitens had a decorated past that included hunting al-Qaeda in combat, founding the well-regarded veterans nonprofit the Mission Continues and publishing a best-selling book that discussed his service.
Four months later, the Navy is still weighing what to do with Greitens and how it should handle other cases involving alleged misconduct in the future.
While the door has been opened to Greitens continuing to serve, the Navy has not yet decided whether it will allow him to take a position outside of his home state that he might desire, three Navy officials said, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Greitens’s potential reemergence in the military, first reported by the Kansas City Star, has left the Navy facing questions about its judgment in an era in which sexual assault statistics in the military have drawn outrage. But in a move that has not previously been reported, the case also has prompted the chief of naval operations, Adm. John Richardson, to call for a new 30-day review of how the service handles personnel cases involving personal misconduct allegations, including Greitens’s.
Richardson, writing May 26 in an email to other admirals, said the “recent events involving the transition of Mr. Greitens” have “excited a persistent frustration of mine that I want to address more comprehensively.” The Navy’s policies and practices for addressing personal misconduct are “too cumbersome and slow,” creating situations where officials end up retaining people “we’d rather see dismissed from our ranks.”
Such decisions, Richardson concluded, weaken “the ethical fiber of our Navy” and put the service “in a situation that is hard to explain to ourselves, and even more difficult to explain to the American people.”
In an interview with The Post, Richardson acknowledged sending the email and said he wants to know if the Navy needs more agility to handle cases of alleged misconduct that fall short of criminal matters.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/navy-review-launched-after-missouri-governor-who-resigned-amid-scandal-gets-new-military-assignment/2019/05/31/0b0f4742-8221-11e9-95a9-e2c830afe24f_story.html?utm_term=.a469617d4bb6
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