Acting Secretary of the Navy James McPherson has asked for a "deeper" review before he makes a decision regarding the reinstatement of the USS Theodore Roosevelt's former commander Capt. Brett Crozier.
McPherson's decision comes days after senior Navy leadership -- after conducting their own review -- recommended the captain be reinstated.
Crozier was dismissed as captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt on April 2 in what is now a well-known saga.
Former Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly dismissed Crozier over a letter the captain wrote pleading for help with the growing COVID-19 outbreak aboard the TR. The letter leaked, Modly dismissed Crozier, then spent a quarter of a million dollars to fly to the USS TR in Guam to make a speech defending his decision over the vessel's speaker system. The speech was not well-received by sailors onboard. Modly submitted his resignation days later.
Just last Friday, four weeks after Crozier's dismissal, Navy leadership announced that -- following their investigation into the chain of events that led to Crozier's decision to pen the letter -- they believed the former captain should be reinstated. In a surprise move, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper delayed the reinstatement, asking for more time to consider before making a decision.
SECDEF delays reinstating dismissed USS Theodore Roosevelt captain, reports say
Now, McPherson is following Esper's lead and further delaying the decision in order to deepen the "preliminary inquiry" senior Navy officials used to make their recommendation.
"After carefully reviewing the preliminary inquiry into the events surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, provided me with his recommendations," McPherson said in a statement. "Following our discussion, I have unanswered questions that the preliminary inquiry has identified and that can only be answered by a deeper review."
At McPherson's orders, Gilday will conduct a "follow-on command investigation" which will build on the "good work of the initial inquiry" in order to provide a more "fulsome understanding of the sequence of events, actions, and decisions of the chain of command" aboard the vessel.
Just this week, the USS TR concluded testing of 100 percent of its crew -- an effort that began at the beginning of April. The number of COVID-19 cases on board peaked near 1,000 but today -- for the first time -- the number of active cases on the USS TR has decreased, signaling that more sailors were deemed recovered overnight than were newly diagnosed.
Efforts to return the USS Theodore Roosevelt to sea are underway with sailors returning to the vessel from their temporary isolation quarters on Guam. Meanwhile, the USS Kidd is now facing a growing outbreak onboard with 64 confirmed cases as of Wednesday -- its first case was identified six days ago.
Is the USS Kidd the next USS Theodore Roosevelt?
The USS Kidd has pulled in to port in San Diego and testing is ongoing. Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said last week that "lessons learned" from other cases were being applied in the USS Kidd's response to this early-phase outbreak.
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