Worldandnation: Sentries on 'Cole' had unloaded guns

WASHINGTON -- The sailors on sentry duty aboard the USS Cole when it was bombed last month did not have ammunition in their guns and were not authorized to shoot unless fired upon, according to members of the ship's crew.

Even if the sentries had recognized the threat from a small boat approaching the guided missile destroyer in a Yemeni harbor on Oct. 12, their "rules of engagement" would have prevented them from firing without first obtaining permission from the Cole's captain or another officer, the crew members said.

Petty Officer John Washak recalled that shortly after the small boat blew a 40-by-40-foot hole in the destroyer's side, killing 17 sailors, he was manning an M-60 machine gun on the Cole's fantail when a second small boat approached. Washak said he pointed the machine gun directly at the boat to warn it off. But, he recalled, a senior chief petty officer ordered him to turn the gun away.

Washak protested, fearing that the ship was still under attack. But even in the aftermath of the bombing, "with blood still on my face," he said, he was told: "That's the rules of engagement -- no shooting unless we're shot at."

The rules of engagement aboard a U.S. warship are set by its captain following Navy guidelines. Pentagon officials have declined to discuss publicly the specific rules in effect aboard the Cole, but senior officers said in congressional testimony that the ship had filed a detailed security plan, which they believe was followed.

Interviews with about 20 members of the ship's crew in recent days also revealed several other previously undisclosed aspects of the bombing:

The Cole may have been boarded and surreptitiously surveyed by Islamic militants, possibly including one of the suicide bombers, as it passed through the Suez Canal a few days before the attack, crew members said they have been told by FBI investigators.

The FBI also has been questioning crew members about the behavior of the Yemeni pilot who guided the Cole into port, which some described as "agitated." In addition, some crew members think Yemeni harbor workers acted suspiciously.

The boat that exploded may first have attempted to tie up to the Cole's stern, then moved around to the side of the ship after being ordered away.

As the FBI tries to determine who was behind the suicide attack, the Defense Department and congressional committees are searching for broader lessons about how to protect U.S. ships. Overwhelmingly, crew members dwelt on the limitations placed on their ability to defend the Cole, especially in the paradoxical situation of visiting a supposedly friendly port during a time of tension in the Mideast.

When it sailed into the Yemeni port of Aden, the ship was operating under "Threat Condition Bravo," the second lowest on a scale of four threat conditions. Under this posture, crew members said, the ship had a few guards on deck, but no one was posted on big machine guns near the bow and stern.

"It wasn't supposed to be a high-threat port," said Nathan Bair, a fire controlman on the Cole.

Kevin Benoit, a gunner's mate, said the sailors "weren't given any kind of instruction that it was dangerous" to refuel in Aden. "Nothing like that was put out. ... It wasn't a big deal," he said, adding that he been surprised that the ship even had armed "rovers" patrolling the deck.

"I thought it was kind of far-fetched," he said.

Even now, members of the Cole's crew say they are hard-pressed to think of what they would have done differently as the small boat approached with no outward sign of hostility.

"If we had shot those people, we'd have gotten in trouble for it," said Petty Officer Jennifer Kudrick, a sonar technician. "That's what's frustrating about it. We would have gotten in more trouble for shooting two foreigners than losing 17 American sailors."

"It's kind of hard to say what we should have done," added Washak. "In the military, it's like we're trained to hesitate now. If somebody had seen something wrong and shot, he probably would have been court-martialed."

Benoit, who issued weapons for the security patrol during the refueling, confirmed that the guns were not loaded. He said that he issued 9mm pistols to two sailors assigned as roving guards during the refueling and that those sailors each carried two rounds of ammunition but did not load the weapons. "You can't fire unless fired upon," said Benoit. "We were in no kind of threat-con where we would fire."

But one of the Cole's officers added that the guards could have loaded and fired quickly if the threat had been more clear. "They were prepared to fend off any attack had it been apparent," said Lt.j.g. Robert Overturf. "They have a load that takes a second, and then they're ready to fire."

The threat from the small boat, however, was anything but apparent. Crew members who saw it approaching said "it looked like the boats that had assisted in the mooring" of the Cole to a refueling station in the middle of the harbor, according to Overturf, who was not on deck at the time. "We thought they were one of the boats we had hired."

Even after the attack, crew members said, they were told they should fire only warning shots in the air if strange boats approached.

The Cole's captain, Cmdr. Kirk S. Lippold, has declined to be interviewed since coming back to the United States with the unwounded members of his crew Nov. 3.

But according to the Washington Post, a Pentagon official who has spoken with Lippold said one reason for the order to fire only warning shots was that boats were approaching the stricken warship to offer help. "You didn't want sailors shooting up those boats," he said.

Crew members also disclosed that the boat that exploded may at first have attempted to tie up to the Cole's stern. Several sailors said they were told by a shipmate, Russell Dietz, that a small boat with two men aboard pulled up to the stern, where Dietz was working and keeping an eye on a larger scow that had made several trips to haul away the Cole's trash.

Dietz, who shipmates said was injured in the explosion, could not be reached for comment. But he told others on the Cole that he had asked the two men on the smaller boat what they were doing.

The men said they had come to help with the trash, and they may have tried to throw a line to Dietz, one sailor said. Dietz called the bridge, which told him to send the boat away. He did, and the boat quickly "veered away" to the port side of the ship, where it blew up, Nsilo Greene, an electronics technician, said he was told by Dietz.

Almost every member of the crew who was interviewed had heard talk that the Yemeni pilot who guided the destroyer into port was extremely anxious and tried to leave the ship earlier than usual. "I was told the Yemeni pilot was pretty much trying to jump ship before it was tied up," said Bair.

Paul Riddle, an operations specialist who worked in the Cole's combat information center, said he was told that the pilot "was real agitated and getting in arguments with the captain." The pilot was prevented from leaving the ship on the orders of an officer, several crew members said.

Kudrick, who met the pilot when he first arrived on the ship, said that he seemed "kind of huffy" but that she just assumed he did not like working with female sailors.

Along the same lines, many members of the crew believe that Yemeni harbor workers on the fueling station near the Cole ran into a cement hut just before the explosion. Kathy Lopez, a petty officer who was involved in the refueling operation, also said that in retrospect, she thinks it is suspicious that Yemeni workers conducted the refueling with unusual speed.

"They were pumping a whole lot faster from the fuel barge than they had for the last ship," said Lopez. In fact, she added, "They were pumping a lot faster than we thought they were capable of pumping."

On the other hand, no one who was interviewed claims to have actually seen the harbor workers run away or the pilot demand to leave the ship, so it is possible that those accounts may be no more than rumors that passed through the Cole in the traumatic days after the attack.

If the accounts are correct, however, they would indicate that knowledge of the impending attack was widespread and would raise questions about whether any Yemeni government officials knew of the attack and failed to stop it.

State Department spokesman Philip Reeker declined to comment on reports of tension between the FBI and the U.S. Embassy in Yemen over the possible involvement of well-connected Yemenis. According to the reports, which surfaced last week in the Arab-language daily Al Hayat, the FBI wants to broaden the investigation to include people close to the Yemeni government.

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Susan Taylor Martin

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Sentries on 'Cole' had unloaded guns

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