The commander of the U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday tried to assure skeptical and frustrated U.S. senators that she is not trying to cover up the branch’s attacks. failure to properly handle cases of sexual assault and harassment at the service academy in Connecticut.
Admiral Linda L. Fagan said she is committed to “transparency and accountability” within the Coast Guard and is trying to cooperate with Congressional investigations and provide requested documents while respecting the constraints of an ongoing Cabinet investigation of the Inspector General and concerns about the privacy of victims.
“This is not a cover-up. I am committed to providing documents in good faith,” she told the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during a 90-minute hearing in Washington. “This is an incredible organization… I am committed to moving the organization forward and making the cultural change it needs.”
Both Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, chairman of the subcommittee, and Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, ranking member, expressed frustration with the lack of documents provided to senators to date, as well as the strong wording of documents that have been provided .
“This is not full transparency,” Johnson said, as he flipped through pages with large sections of text hidden.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which is conducting a similar investigation into the Coast Guard, sent a letter Tuesday to Fagan complaining that it had received 8,338 pages of potentially 1.8 million pages requested nearly a year ago.
“This situation demands relentless truth-telling,” Blumenthal said. “Follow the evidence where it leads and be willing to face that truth, even though it may be embarrassing to friends, colleagues, predecessors and current leadership.”
Tuesday’s hearing came shortly after the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Sexual Assault Response Coordinator posted a letter online that accuses the Coast Guard of using her as part of a “cover-up” of the Operation Fouled Anchor internal investigation. . Conducted from 2014 to 2020 on dozens of cases of sexual harassment and assault at the academy from 1988 to 2006 that were not properly investigated by the Coast Guard, the report was not widely disseminated, including to Congress.
Shannon Norenberg said in the Sunday night statement that she felt “morally and ethically compelled to resign” from her position at the academy, a position she has held for 11 years. She accused the Coast Guard of reneging on a plan to offer victims included in the Operation Fouled Anchor report a government form that would allow them to receive sexual trauma services through the Veterans Administration. Inserting dozens of assault cases into the academy, she said, “would have been seen by everyone, but especially by Congress.”
Norenberg said he also believes the Coast Guard did not offer the form to victims because it did not want them to have any proof that their cases existed or were ever investigated.
“We gave them absolutely nothing in writing, and that was deliberate,” she wrote in her letter. “At the time, it didn’t occur to me that all of this was being done to hide the existence of Operation Fouled Anchor from Congress.”
Norenberg, who said she was initially unaware of the Operation Fouled Anchor investigation and was sent across the country to visit the victims, publicly apologized to them in her letter.
Asked about Norenberg’s comments, Fagan said Tuesday that she had not yet read the letter but was aware of the allegations. Fagan, who praised Norenberg for making “an incredible difference” at the Academy, said he was assured Monday that Norenberg’s allegations will be part of the Office of Inspector General’s investigation.
Lawyers representing some of the victims accused Fagan of failing to provide concrete answers to the senators’ questions.
“We are talking to survivors of sexual violence at the Coast Guard Academy almost daily. At today’s hearing, they were hoping for answers and for the Coast Guard to take responsibility,” said Christine Dunn, partner at Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP. “Instead, the commander delivered platitudes with no real substance or plan to bring justice to the survivors.”
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