U.S.

Civilians On Board

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 14, 2001 / 6:56 PM EST / CBS

The accident involving the USS Greeneville has shed light on a largely unknown Pentagon campaign to woo the influential and powerful by allowing them privileged access to military machinery, reports CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr.

U.S. Navy officials are now talking of criminal charges possibly being filed against the captain of the Greeneville for conduct that led to the sub ramming and sinking a Japanese trawler during an emergency surfacing drill. Nine people are still missing from the trawler.

Confirming that 16 civilians were aboard the sub when the accident occured, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral Craig Quigley said Tuesday that, "Both submarines and surface vessels routinely take guests to sea."

Retired Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll says the armed services have been showing off hardware and readiness to the well-connected for decades.

Civilians have been invited to fire guns and pilot ships. Sometimes, it's family members who get on deck. More often, the VIPs are politicians, lobbyists and reporters.

VIPs routinely rode along when Carroll commanded the aircraft carrier Midway.

"On the carrier I had them steering the carrier," he said. "It's to bring influential members of the community in, give them a very positive impression of the armed forces at work and then send them home to spread the word."

By the Navy's own count, last year subs from the Pacific fleet made 50 trips with civilians aboard, carrying more than 1,300 people. In 1999, 238 ships cast off with more than 11,000 civilians.

The pursuit of public relations has cost the Navy before. The USS Houston, the same nuclear sub used in the movie The Hunt for Red October, snared the line of tugboat and sank it just before filming began in 1989. A tugboat crew member was killed.

However, accidents are rare. The military defends the public relations effort as a bottom line necessity. Civilian trips are usually timed to coincide with scheduled training, and VIPs often pay they're own way.

As for the Greeneville incident, a senior Naval official who did not want to be identified told the Los Angeles Times the civilians were sitting at two of three key positions in the control room when the surfacing procedure took place.

The official said one visitor sat at the helmsman's seat, and was told to hold the steering wheel steady so that the submarine's rudder and bow plane, which control forward and sideways motion, would not move. The official added that a second civilian was at the ballast controls which regulate up-and-down motion and was told to push buttons that expel water from the submarine's ballast tanks, causing it to rise to the surface.

Navy Cmdr. Bruce Cole, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said on Tuesday that a civilian seated at the controls would not have affected the course of the submarine once the decision had been made to send it to the surface in what submarners call a "main emergency ballast blow."

Cole said it is not unusual for guests to sit at work stations that control steering and diving, but always under constant supervision by a crew member.

The Navy has declined so far to release the names of the civilians on board the submarine.