Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly on Monday visited the coronavirus ravaged crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and told them to their faces their just-fired commanding officer, Capt. Brett Crozier, was “too stupid” to helm their ship, as CNN reported.
Modly fired Captain Crozier after a letter Crozier sent to his superiors desperately asking for help with the then-100 or more sailors infected by the coronavirus leaked to the press. The number has skyrocketed to 173 or more, and Crozier on Sunday was diagnosed with COVID-19 as well.
Captain Crozier, Modly told the crew, was either “too stupid or too naive to be a commanding officer of a ship like this,” according to a transcript (below).
Last week after Modly fired Crozier, the crew gave a dramatic and supportive sendoff, cheering him and chanting his name in thanks.
Crozier’s letter was “a betrayal of trust with me, with his chain of command, with you, with the 800 to a thousand people who, with your shipmates on shore right now, like you [are] busting their asses,” Modly told the sailors Monday.
He also told the sailors to never go to the press.
“I’m gonna tell you something, all of you,” Modly warned, “there is no, no situation where you go to the media.”
The media has “an agenda,” he claimed, which they use to “embarrass” the Navy “and to embarrass you.”
Capt. Crozier’s letter to his superiors in part stated: “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.”
Ward Carroll, the former editor of Military.com, now at an independent forum known as the US Naval Institute posted a transcript of Sec. Modly’s remarks: