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Wow. Appreciate the context, fellow Mottizen, and after that I'd agree that it'd be a great top-level post. I was divorced enough from the Culture Wars at that time of the fire to only be aware that there were allegations of sabotage and that the prosecution of Mays was total bullshit, and this is the first time I've seen any of that detail. I am guilty in this case of cross-referencing Wikipedia, despite being well aware of their general biases, again because I wasn't aware of a connection to the culture wars. As you say, Mays' name is on the wiki 5 times, while McGovern's name is completely absent from the page. If even the NYT and CBS are covering that angle then I know it's bad! And I wish I could say that the Navy's behavior surprised me, but honestly, that sounds way too much like SOP these days.
The Navy's investigation and prosecution should end many careers, including permanently tarnishing the head of the Navy who apparently signed off on it. But it won't. The Navy's initial suspicions were almost certainly correct and all available evidence pointed to the BLM sailor who was interviewed 4 times with contradictions and lies piling up and so that sailor, Elijah McGovern, tried to kill himself. He failed and was administratively separated from the Navy only a few days after the suicide attempt which is, uh, about 10x faster than normal even in very straight-forward typical cases.
Then the Navy, laughably, quickly claimed it therefore had no jurisdiction to hold him which is completely ridiculous because the Navy has repeatedly and routinely throughout the last few decades at least court martialed retirees from the Navy not to mention civilian contractors, terrorists, and everything in-between. It's just a complete lie to claim the Navy couldn't continue the investigation, bring charges, imprison the "retired" sailor, and convict him because he was administratively separated in what appears to be an obvious cover-up.
And even then, they couldn't just cover it up and give slaps-on-the-wrist to the shoddy leadership directly implicated in the disaster, they had to frame and destroy the life of seemingly the only sailor in the entire story who acted commendably before and especially during the crisis.
And that's the US Military for you.
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