USS COLE Commander says it is wrong to blame him for 2000 attack

Some military officials and family members of victims believe he deserves punishment.
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
SHARPSBURG, Md. -- Last October, as he had done on the same day in each of the four previous Octobers, a middle-aged man with an upright military bearing approached a gravesite at Antietam National Cemetery.
The man stood in silence for a minute, then lowered his head in tribute to a fallen seaman: Patrick Howard Roy, one of 17 sailors killed when al-Qaida operatives blew a huge hole into the USS Cole in the Yemen port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.
The man who attended Roy's grave, Kirk Lippold, was his commanding officer on the Cole. While Lippold's punishment has not been made public, he is the first commissioned military officer or civilian official to be held accountable, since George W. Bush became president, for failing to prevent an act of terrorism against the United States.
Bush has been criticized for not holding more people to account, particularly in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, faulty prewar intelligence and poor war planning. In recent days, he has defended Donald Rumsfeld against withering attacks from retired generals angry over the defense secretary's handling of Iraq.
But now some are questioning whether the White House and Congress, in denying Lippold's Pentagon-approved promotion to the rank of captain, have nailed the right man.
Silence broken
Breaking his silence for the first time, Lippold, now 47, says the system is wrong to blame him for the attack on the Cole.
"If you want accountability, there was one accountable officer on that ship, and that was me," Lippold said during a three-hour interview. "But if you want to blame me for allowing that attack on my ship that killed 17 of my sailors -- that is essentially putting me as a U.S. military commander in the war on terrorism on the same level as Osama bin Laden, and I believe that's wrong."
Retired Navy Cmdr. Bob Brogan puts it more succinctly.
"Our friend has gotten a royal screwing," said Brogan, who was Lippold's ROTC instructor at Carson City High School in Nevada. "He went into that port completely blind."
Not everyone agrees Lippold should escape responsibility. Some military officials and family members of Cole victims believe he deserves punishment. So, apparently, does Republican Sen. John Warner, who as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is the man most responsible for scuttling Lippold's promotion, though he is doing it behind closed doors.
"They told us he deserved a medal for saving his ship and preventing his crew from drowning," said Anton Gunn, whose brother, Seaman Cherone Gunn, perished on the Cole. "Well, what about saving my brother and his 16 shipmates from dying? What did he do to prevent that?"
More to the story
Yet there is more to this story. In particular, there are questions about why Lippold didn't know, prior to his refueling stop in Yemen, that two separate Defense Department intelligence programs had found signs of a possible attack on U.S. interests in the Middle East in the days before the Cole bombing.
One of them, a secret program now known as Able Danger, had identified Yemen as one of five "hot spots" of al-Qaida activity believed to be targeting U.S. interests. Two Able Danger analysts briefed Gen. Peter Schoomaker, then head of U.S. Special Operations Command, on their findings. The date was Oct. 10, two days before the attack on the Cole.
Nothing about the briefing reached Lippold. Nor was he told that U.S. embassies in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East had been closed for fear of violence.
"There was no time-sensitive, actionable intelligence made known to me that would have allowed me to defend my ship," Lippold said.
At a time when no high-level official has been punished for failures in the war on terror, the controversy over Lippold's failed promotion puts him at center stage.
"The Senate Armed Services Committee might be holding Lippold accountable, but it is not holding anyone else accountable," said John Hutson, a former Navy judge advocate general and dean of the Franklin Pierce Law School in Concord, N.H. "Kirk has become a pawn in this greater game dealing not only with questions of accountability, but also with our response to terrorism."