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Admiral calls for censure for ex-Enterprise captain, superiors
http://hamptonroads.com/...ptain-superiors
By Corinne Reilly
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 5, 2011
NORFOLK
To many aboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise, the now- notorious videos known as "XO Movie Night" were hilarious. Crew members vied to star in them. Master chiefs got a chuckle.
With that popularity came more profanity, more sexual innuendoes, more slurs. A handful on the ship said they raised concerns to the videos' mastermind, Capt. Owen P. Honors Jr., but he brushed them off. They never went over his head to object.
The result, an investigation into the videos has concluded, was a broad failure to uphold the Navy's core values.
One flag officer, Rear Adm. Ron Horton, was relieved of command Thursday as a result, and the admiral in charge of the investigation is recommending that the Navy take punitive steps that would significantly affect the careers of several others.
Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., head of Fleet Forces Command, announced the investigation's findings, as well as details about actions he has taken in response, on Thursday. Most notably, he said, he has recommended that the secretary of the Navy issue punitive letters of censure to four people involved, including Honors, who was removed in January from his post as the carrier's commander.
Harvey also has recommended that Honors, a decorated fighter pilot, should have to show cause for why he should remain in the Navy. He said the investigation's findings only confirmed what he'd concluded after watching the videos the day after they became public two months ago - that they were "a significant departure from expected standards of personal behavior and professional leadership in the Navy."
Speaking about Honors, Harvey said, "He went low early when he needed to stay high all the time."
If approved, the other letters of censure would go to Capt. John Dixon, who succeeded Honors as executive officer; and to the two officers who served as the carrier's skipper during Honors' tenure: Rear Adm. Larry Rice, now at the Norfolk-based Joint Forces Command, and Horton, who was fired Thursday from his position as commander of a Navy logistics group in Singapore.
Harvey said the investigation found that Rice and Horton knew about the videos and failed to stop them, while Dixon continued them when he became executive officer.
Recommending the letters is the most serious step Harvey could have taken aside from convening court-martial proceedings. If issued, they would almost certainly mean the officers will never again be promoted. They could also set in motion far more severe consequences, including reductions in ranks and pay grades and - as happened in Horton's case - removal from commands.
Harvey also said he has issued nonpunitive letters of caution to the two admirals who served as strike group commanders when the videos were being shown: Rear Adm. Ray Spicer, who has since retired, and Vice Adm. Daniel Holloway, who now heads 2nd Fleet in Norfolk. Harvey has also requested that a copy of the investigation be put into their records, which could prevent Holloway from advancing.
All of the officers either declined to comment to the newspaper or could not be reached. Honors' civilian lawyer, Charles Gittins, didn't return phone calls.
Thirty-two other officers and enlisted sailors who knew about or participated in the videos also received nonpunitive letters of caution, Harvey said. They included chaplains, lawyers, staff officers and public-affairs officers.
Two others, Rear Adm. Gregory Nosal and Rear Adm. Clifford Sharpe, the then-air wing commander and destroyer squadron commodore, received lesser, written counseling.
Harvey praised Rear Adm. Richard O'Hanlon, who recently retired as head of Naval Air Force Atlantic, as one person who did the right thing during the months the videos were being shown. O'Hanlon became aware of the videos on one occasion and immediately brought them to the attention of Honors' superiors as inappropriate, Harvey said.
Honors produced the videos and broadcast them aboard the Norfolk-based Enterprise from late 2005 through 2007, when he was the ship's executive officer, or second-in-command. He became commanding officer last year but was fired after the videos came to light in early January. Honors starred in them, wrote the scripts and recruited subordinates to work on them, primarily while the ship was deployed. The videos were shown weekly across the ship on closed-circuit TV.
They were first made public by The Virginian-Pilot after someone gave three episodes to the newspaper.
In its initial response, the Navy called the videos "humorous skits" and said that Honors had been told in early 2007 to stop making them.
Honors and his lawyer later disputed that. In a written statement to investigators, Honors said several of his superiors knew about the videos but no one ordered him to stop.
While the investigation confirmed that, it did find that Honors was counseled about the videos' content. "Yet even this specific intervention did not cause him to alter course," Harvey wrote in his endorsement of the inquiry's findings. "The video skits continued to spiral downward, as if the only purpose was to see how low the bar could be set."
In the course of the investigation, the Navy collected about 55 "XO Movie Night" videos, 25 of which contained "objectionable" content.
Of all of it, Harvey said what he found most upsetting was not the sexually suggestive shower scenes, sailors dressed in drag or officers pretending to masturbate. Instead, he said, it was Honors' on-tape comments belittling crew members who raised concerns about the videos and called them offensive. At the beginning of one movie, Honors says, "Over the years I've gotten several complaints about inappropriate materials in these videos, never to me personally but, gutlessly, through other channels."
Harvey also responded to Honors' argument that the videos were a harmless means to entertain the crew, teach them important lessons about shipboard life and build morale during long, difficult deployments. "The implication that our sailors only respond to crude humor is demeaning to them and degrading to the Navy's standing as a professional military force," he wrote in his endorsement of the investigation's findings.
And in response to criticism from Honors' supporters that he should not have been removed from the Enterprise for making videos no more offensive than what's on TV every night, Harvey wrote, "The Navy does not measure its standards of behavior based on what is produced by the commercial entertainment industry."
Days after Honors was removed from the Enterprise, it left Norfolk for a six-month deployment under the command of Capt. Dee Mewbourne, once the top officer aboard the carrier Eisenhower.
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