Out of Touch, Tone Deaf and Part of the Problem
Since the 1876 foundation of the the Coast Guard Academy, there has never been a Commandant commissioned via any other university, college, academy or program.
Since the 1980s, the unqualified and misguided Coast Guard Academy staff have been the root source of the embarrassingly low quality of the USCG officer corps. Failing to hold USCG Academy cadets to a military standard has resulted in a disciplinary culture where rape, racism, alcoholism, and academic cheating are common, overlooked and covered-up.
Simply put, Coast Guard officers are taught to never accept responsibility, and to always blame others for their own faults… This is literally the Coast Guard’s “prime directive”.
Admiral Linda Fagan, USCG Commandant Kept in the dark and fed shit by her staff.
Poisonous Fly Agaric Mushroom Kept in the dark and fed shit by a farmer.
“Don’t just talk about it, do something about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris
Source: 2022 Leadership Survey — NGSI / Human Resources Segment
USCG inflatable positioning to interdict a rowdy Swan pedal-boat in the Tidal Basin.
In the Department of Defense military services, senior leaders also make mistakes. However, senior leadership are not judged on their mistakes but on how the mistakes are corrected. The Coast Guard - unwilling to place blame on their criminally incompetent senior officer corps - is incapable of correcting their long history of certainly improper, often illegal and always arbitrary discipline of junior enlisted personnel.
The All-Coast Guard Memorandum on the right followed a Senate budget hearing where Coast Guard Commandant Fagan “was excoriated for her service's failure to investigate, prosecute or report assaults and rapes at its service academy -- and then failed again to discipline the perpetrators in a subsequent investigation into the incidents.”
According to CNN, the earlier investigation, dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, was initiated in 2014 when an academy graduate said her allegation of rape decades before was never investigated. The five-year investigation found 60 substantiated cases of rape, sexual assault and harassment by cadets or at the academy from1988 through 2006. But most of the alleged perpetrators were not criminally investigated, and those who remained in the service went on to become senior officers.
On the flip side, many of the victims, "left the academy after reporting their assaults" and watching the Coast Guard do nothing in response. The failure to investigate the allegations at the Academy came on the heels of another investigation into the Coast Guard’s inaction in response to a plethora of cases of rape and sexual assault on U.S. flagged ships, that go back decades. The Coast Guard is responsible investigating misconduct and crimes on U.S.-flagged vessels. Yet, despite 25 criminal investigations into sexual assaults on U.S. merchant ships in the past decade, there have been no successful prosecutions for more than 30 years.
Amazingly, during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee hearing, Commandant Fagan said she learned of the extent of the Operation Fouled Anchor investigation through CNN reporting based on Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the news media outlet .
Senator Maria Cantwell, Chairwoman of the full committee, and no fan of the Coast Guard, said the Coast Guard’s inaction was "heartbreaking, maddening, frustrating and intolerable." She further stated that: “We cannot have the media be the policemen on the beat. If I could pass one bill in the entire Congress, it would be the Cantwell-Boozman bill that supports journalism, because I think journalism gets us competition, perfect information and is a watchdog. But that is no excuse for the Coast Guard not having a handle on this, and it's not the way you should receive information."
One of her Republican colleagues on the panel, Senator Dan Sullivan, also blasted the service academy: "The Coast Guard Academy's handling of the sexual assault allegations in the 1990s is deplorable, unacceptable and can't happen again. The fact that the organization knew that this had happened years ago but didn't tell anyone is also unacceptable."
Fagan issued a statement to members on June 30, 2023 about the sexual assault cases and how the service failed to address them. She told the Senators that it was clear that as recently as 2021, that the service had a "culture in areas that is permissive and allows sexual assaults, harassment, bullying and retaliation." She called this "inconsistent” with the Coast Guard’s “core values." She further stated that: "Everyone in our service has the right to a safe workplace and I encourage any workforce member who experienced or is experiencing harassment, bullying, retaliation, assault or other abuse to seek assistance immediately.
Commandant Fagan inherited responsiblity for this debacle from former Commandant Schultz, who failed to share the investigation’s findings with Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, and the public of a history of rape and sexual assault at the Coast Guard Academy. His deceitful tenure as commandant ended on June 1, 2022, and he retired later that day. Yet, he was delusioinal enough to attend the 40th year reunion for the Coast Guard Academy Class of 1983 following the surfacing of the cover-up, demonstrating his continued laissez-faire attitude regarding sexual assaults. He did this even after Senator Richard Blumenthal, referring to retired Admiral Schultz, and his successor, Commandant Fagan vowed to hold past and current Coast Guard leadership accountable. After listening to four women describe being sexually assaulted as USCG Academy cadets in front of th United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommitee on Investigations that was probing the Coast Guard’s "culture of cover-up" , Senator Blumenthal said: "We're going to pursue those two individuals and others."
Disgraced former Commandant, Admiral Karl Shultz
USCG Academy Class of 1983
The Coast Guard’s core values delineated below are meant to serve as guiding principles for every USCG member, both professionally and personally.
Honor: We uphold uncompromising ethical conduct and moral behavior in all our actions. We are loyal and accountable to the public trust.
Respect: We value our diverse workforce and treat each other and those we serve with fairness, dignity, respect, and compassion. We encourage individual opportunity, growth, and creativity through empowerment. Together, we work as a team.
Devotion to Duty: As professionals—whether military or civilian—we seek responsibility, accept accountability, and are committed to achieving our organizational goals. We exist to serve with pride and dedication.
However, as has been dramatically demonstrated over the past 30 years, these ageless and powerful values - Honor, Respect, and Devotion to Duty - are of little to no import to today’s Coast Guard members, who continue to ignore regulations and federal laws as they see fit. The problem - a void of professional and personal ethics - originated at the USCG Academy in the early 1980s, is now manifested by the most senior Coast Guard officers, and has infected the service as a whole.
“Trying to identify a potential Coast Guard commandant is like panning for gold in a sewer.”
- F. Carl Benson, USCG Commandant Nominations Panel / Commerce Committee Senior Staff