Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned today as pressure mounted on President Trump’s administration to take action in the wake of Modly’s profanity-laced tirade to the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Modly submitted his resignation letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper this morning.
‘This morning I accepted Secretary Modly’s resignation,’ Esper said in a statement. ‘He resigned of his own accord, putting the Navy and the sailors above self so that the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and the Navy as an institution can move forward.’
In an effort to contain the fallout from Modly’s action, Esper emphasized the health and safety of the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt come above all.
Esper taped Acting Undersecretary of the Army, James McPherson, to succeed Modly as acting secretary of the Navy until a replacement can be nominated.
McPherson is a retired rear admiral and was the former judge advocate general of the Navy.
Several lawmakers were furious when Modly relieved Captain Brett Crozier of his command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after a letter the captain wrote berating the Navy for its handling of a coronavirus outbreak on the ship went public.
But that fury reached the boiling point after Modly flew 8,000 miles to Guam over the weekend to address the crew of naval aircraft carrier, which was docked there so sailors could be treated for virus.
In a 15-minute speech, blasted over the ship’s PA system, Modly went on a tirade against Crozier, calling him ‘naive’ and ‘stupid’ for writing something that ended up being leaked to the media.
After Modly called Crozier ‘naive,’ a person on the ship is heard shouting ‘shut the fuck up,’ on an audio recording of the address.
In a scathing memo to Navy officials, Crozier pleaded to be able to take the Roosevelt to dock to try and contain the growing out break of coronavirus on the ship.
‘We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,’ Crozier wrote in the four-page missive.
Many sailors on the Roosevelt praised Crozier for his actions and for being a leader when the sailors needed him.
‘He had legitimate concerns about his sailors, asked for help in a respectful and honorable way, and then they relieved him of duty’ one Roosevelt sailor told The Wall Street Journal.
‘Seriously, that’s crazy. If anything the guy deserves a promotion. That’s the type of leadership they lack, but the type they need,’ another said.
As of today, 230 crew members of the Roosevelt had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Navy officials.
There are over 5,000 sailors on board.
Officials say they are still working to trace the origins of the outbreak on the ship and have not positively determined whether it began in Vietnam.
Data from the Vietnamese Ministry of Health suggests that the number of COVID-19 cases in Vietnam doubled during the five days the Roosevelt was docked at Tien Sa port in Da Nang.
But sailors were largely unfazed by the virus as they went on shore leave in Da Nang, even as the number of cases across the world skyrocketed.
Two Naval Academy classmates of Crozier who remain close to the family revealed that he had tested positive for COVID-19 to The New York Times on Sunday.
The classmates said Crozier began to show symptoms of the disease before he was relieved of his command.
A spokesperson for the Navy told the Times on Sunday that the captain has been reassigned to the headquarters of the Naval Air Forces Pacific command in San Diego.
Before resuming his duties, however, Crozier must complete a quarantine period.
News of Crozier’s diagnosis comes on the heels of a report claiming that the top US military commander and the most senior naval officer were opposed to Crozier’s dismissal but were overruled by the Trump administration.
General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, believed that the Navy should have allowed an investigation into the letter written by Crozier to run its course.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper initially sided with the officers, according to The Washington Post.