HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Former top Coast Guard officials hid a yearslong investigation into sexual assault and harassment at the service's academy from both Congress and the public after leaders debated the fallout from a potential disclosure, according to a U.S. Senate committee report released Friday.
Coast Guard officials also took steps to remove references to the investigation, named Operation Fouled Anchor, from records submitted to Congress, according to the report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The report followed similar findings released last week by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
“Today’s report confirms and provides additional powerful evidence that the cover-up of sexual assault in the Coast Guard was deliberate and purposeful and longstanding,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the committee, said Friday. “The public deserves an explanation. So do the survivors.”
A Coast Guard spokesperson released a statement Friday evening.
“The Coast Guard is keenly aware of and is aggressively responding to the unacceptable activities underpinning the report — namely sexual assault and sexual harassment,” the statement said. “The Coast Guard is working proactively to prevent and reduce these devastating crimes, secure justice for survivors and provide the care and support victims need and deserve.”
Messages to officials at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, were not immediately returned Friday. The Coast Guard previously apologized for how it handled sexual misconduct complaints and said it has made numerous improvements.
Operation Fouled Anchor ran from 2014 to 2019. The investigation reviewed more than 100 allegations of sexual assault at the academy made from the early 1990s to 2006 and how they were handled. Coast Guard officials, however, did not fully disclose its existence to Congress or the public until last year. The existence of the investigation was first reported by CNN.
The investigation found that dozens of sexual assault and harassment cases involving academy cadets had been mishandled by the school, including the prevention of some perpetrators from being prosecuted.
When the investigation did become public, it sparked calls for reform and accountability for offenders and those who protected them. They also resulted in multiple government investigations and formal complaints by more than 20 former cadets who said they were sexually assaulted.
Friday's subcommittee report alleged that in 2018, Admiral Karl Schultz, the Coast Guard commandant at the time, made the decision to not publicly disclose Operation Foul Anchor, on the grounds that the investigation was not yet complete.
That decision came after the vice commandant at the time, Admiral Charles Ray, who like Schultz has since retired, discussed the “pros and cons of going external.”
The subcommittee said a handwritten note by Ray said the pros of disclosing the investigation publicly included “rip the band-aid off,” being proactive and purging “cultural guilt.” The cons, Ray wrote, according to the congressional panel, included investigations without end and revictimizing people. Ray also wrote the “problem is one of the past,” according to the subcommittee.
Other Coast Guard officials presented three scenarios for how to handle Operation Fouled Anchor, with a recommendation to only discuss it if asked by Congress, the subcommittee said.
The officials recommended against fully notifying Congress, writing that “any affirmative Congressional or external communication, especially if briefed under a singular investigatory moniker with a colorful title, vice separate investigations, will risk the initiation of comprehensive Congressional investigations, hearings, and media interest,” according to the subcommittee.
Phone and text messages left at a listing for Schultz were not immediately returned Friday. Contact information for Ray could not immediately be found.
Schultz told CNN in an interview last week that he withheld the investigation from Congress because he was concerned elected officials would not protect victims' privacy. He also denied allegations of a coverup and said he believed there was no legal obligation to give the investigation report to Congress.
Schultz and Ray became the top leaders of the Coast Guard in 2018. The previous leaders told the subcommittee that they had intended to disclose Operation Foul Anchor to Congress and the public.
Friday's report also said the Coast Guard drafted at least 17 versions of a final report for Operation Foul Anchor. The longest, at 26 pages, detailed assaults at the academy. The final version was six pages and omitted much of the information in earlier drafts, the subcommittee said.
The subcommittee's report also accused Coast Guard officials of repeatedly failing to comply with the panel's investigation including by failing to produce documents, “aggressively” redacting documents and erroneously claiming some documents were privileged.
The Coast Guard responded that it has undergone an extensive effort to provide requested documents to Congress, including examining more than 1.8 million pages of emails, and has complied with congressional requests for information “to the fullest extent.”
The Senate subcommittee said its investigation is continuing.
“With the decision to keep Operation Fouled Anchor from Congress and the public, the Coast Guard failed itself and its members who survived sexual assault and sexual harassment during their time in the service,” the subcommittee's report said.
FILE - The United States Coast Guard Academy is seen, Sept. 14, 2020, in New London, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)
A large number of mysterious drones have been reported flying over New Jersey and across the eastern U.S., sparking speculation and concern over where they came from and why.
In response, the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday and Thursday temporarily banned drone flights in 22 areas of New Jersey and 30 areas in New York, mostly in and around New York City and on Long Island, where critical infrastructure is located. FAA officials said federal security agencies requested the flight restrictions, which are effective through mid-January.
The FBI, the Homeland Security Department and state agencies have been investigating, but officials say there has been nothing so far to suggest any drones have posed a national security or public safety threat. Authorities say many of the drone sightings have actually been legal drones, manned aircraft, helicopters and even stars.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday night that there appears to be nothing nefarious about the flying objects.
Despite federal officials' comments, many state and municipal lawmakers have called for stricter rules about who can fly unmanned aircraft — and for the authority to shoot them down.
Federal government agencies have the authority to track and disable drones deemed to be threatening, but that power was set to expire at midnight Friday. A temporary spending bill was approved by the House on Friday, which would extend that power to March and avert a government shutdown, with approval in the Senate expected to follow.
Dozens of witnesses have reported seeing drones statewide since mid-November, including near the Picatinny Arsenal, a military research and manufacturing facility, and over President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has said drone-detection equipment supplied by the federal government has yielded little new information. He declined to describe the equipment except to say it was powerful and could even disable the drones, though he noted that’s not legal on U.S. soil.
Murphy urged Congress to give states more authority to deal with the drones. On Thursday evening, the state's Democratic-led Assembly passed a resolution calling on the federal government to conduct a “rigorous and ongoing” investigation into the drone sightings in the state.
Meanwhile, federal and local authorities are warning against pointing lasers at suspected drones, because aircraft pilots are being hit in the eyes more often. Authorities also said they are concerned people might fire weapons at manned aircraft that they have mistaken for drones.
The growing anxiety among some residents is not lost on the Biden administration, which has faced criticism from Trump for not dealing with the matter more aggressively.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Monday that the federal government has yet to identify any public safety or national security risks.
“There are more than 1 million drones that are lawfully registered with the Federal Aviation Administration here in the United States,” Kirby said. “And there are thousands of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones that are lawfully in the sky on any given day. That is the ecosystem that we are dealing with.”
The federal government has deployed personnel and advanced technology to investigate the reports in New Jersey and other states, and is evaluating each tip reported by citizens, he said.
About 100 of the more than 5,000 drone sightings reported to the FBI in recent weeks were deemed credible enough to warrant more investigation, according to a joint statement by the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense.
Speculation has raged online, with some expressing concerns the drones could be part of a nefarious plot by foreign agents or clandestine operations by the U.S. government.
Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said it's unlikely the drones are engaged in intelligence gathering, given how loud and bright they are. He repeated Tuesday that the drones being reported are not being operated by the Department of Defense.
Asked whether military contractors might be operating drones in the New Jersey area, Ryder rebuffed the notion, saying there are “no military operations, no military drone or experiment operations in this corridor.”
Ryder said additional drone-detecting technology was being moved to some military installations, including the Picatinny Arsenal.
Drone activity in the past week led to an hourlong closure of runways at New York’s Stewart International Airport, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Manhattan, a four-hour closure of air space around Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and the arrests of two men in Boston accused by police of flying a drone too close to Logan International Airport.
Trump has said he believes the government knows more than it’s saying.
“Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!” he posted on Truth Social.
U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, said he has heard nothing to support the notion that the government is hiding anything. He said a lack of faith in institutions is playing a key part in the saga.
“Nothing that I’m seeing, nothing that I’ve engaged in gives me any impression of that nature. But like, I get it, some people won’t believe me, right? Because that’s the level of distrust that we face," Kim said Monday.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut last week called for the drones to be “shot down."
A Senate bill that would expand federal agencies' authority to track and disable drones has been pending since last year. It also includes a pilot program that would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to monitor and disable drones, under supervision by federal authorities. A similar bill in the House was introduced in June.
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; Michael Casey in Boston; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Tara Copp in Washington.
FILE - In this image taken from video provided by MartyA45_, several drones appear to be flying over Randolph, N.J., on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. (MartyA45_ /TMX via AP, File)
FILE - This photo provided by Brian Glenn shows what appears to be multiple drones flying over Bernardsville, N.J., on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024 (Brian Glenn/TMX via AP, File)
