Records turned over to Congress this month reveal how top officials at the US Coast Guard engaged in a calculated plan to conceal the damning findings of an investigation into decades of sexual assault cases at the agency’s academy, going so far as to create a list of the pros and cons of being transparent.
Coast Guard officials only told Congress about the explosive probe last year after CNN started making inquiries. Dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, the multi-year internal investigation found that rapes and other sexual abuse at the prestigious Coast Guard Academy had been ignored and often covered up by high-ranking officials.
But telling Congress and the public about this scandal, leaders worried, could “risk the initiation of comprehensive Congressional investigations, hearings, and media interest,” according to 2018 internal records supplied to the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in February.
The records, which do not carry the letterhead or signature of any identifiable author, carefully laid out multiple possible courses of action, and the option to proactively brief Congress was “NOT RECOMMENDED.” Among the concerns listed were “intense scrutiny of all past to present CGA leadership,” a potential demand for all sexual assault cases to be reviewed and “extensive media coverage and investigative journalism…and suggested malfeasance.” Public scrutiny could raise questions about why actions taken over the past decade to change the academy’s culture had not improved sexual assault reporting rates, the records stated.
And in a handwritten list of pros and cons, which the Coast Guard confirmed to CNN was written by then-Vice Commandant Admiral Charles Ray, the “cons” of disclosing the investigation included “re-victimizing” and…
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