It was not until Captain Brett Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) aircraft carrier effectively blew the whistle by writing a letter to the Pentagon warning that the novel coronavirus was spreading among his crew that the former allowed the captain to quarantine the crew in Guam.
Two days after writing the letter, and now that his crew is being safely quarantined, the captain has been relieved from duty.
The removal of Captain Brett Crozier, first reported by Reuters, was announced by acting U.S. Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who said the senior officer of the nuclear-powered vessel of 5,000 crew members had exercised poor judgment in the way he “broadly” distributed his letter. [...]
“I have no information nor am I trying to suggest that he leaked the information,” Modly told a news conference. “He sent it out pretty broadly, and in sending it out pretty broadly, he did not take care to ensure that it couldn’t be leaked, and that’s part of his responsibility.”
“It raised alarm bells unnecessarily.”
It "raised alarm bells," Trump appointee Thomas Modly says, but it seems to me that allowing the virus to spread unchecked on board a crowded ship and eventually infecting most of the crew would have been far more alarming than the captain's letter. As it stands, the ship is still operational, but it may not have been for long if the captain wasn't allowed to offload infected crew members.
Captain Crozier was cheered by his crew as he stepped off the ship last night.
It has not been that long since Trump pardoned an actual, convicted war criminal.