Navy Whistle-Blowers Face Transfer, Pay Cut

Four sailors-turned-whistle-blowers on the nuclear aircraft carrier Nimitz may no longer work on a nuclear vessel, and they face reassignment as well as a salary cut, Navy officials said Wednesday.

Family members, awaiting the ship’s arrival here Friday, countered that the Navy has made scapegoats of the men instead of adequately investigating their complaints.

The sailors told a Seattle television station earlier this month that crew members aboard the Nimitz, based in Bremerton, Wash., had flouted safety regulations, and the four threatened to sabotage the vessel’s reactors to draw attention to their complaints.

After an investigation, Navy officials acknowledged that several sailors cheated on exams covering their technical knowledge of the carrier’s nuclear reactor procedures. But they quickly added that the cheating was not widespread and did not endanger the ship or its crew.

“A handful of guys admitted they looked on their buddies’ test paper during one exam,” said Lt. Cmdr. Bob Pritchard, a Navy spokesman. “But the reactors are operating safely and the crew is well qualified.”

Because the four sailors did not use military hot lines to air their concerns and neglected to bring their complaints to supervising officers, the Navy lost confidence in the sailors and revoked the credentials that allow them to work on a nuclear vessel, Pritchard said.

With disguised voices and obscured faces, the sailors told television station KIRO that crew members cheated on exams to compensate for their inadequate training, that faulty hardware had been installed aboard the vessel and that test results for radiation leaks were fabricated.

Rima Puma, mother of one of the four, Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Steven Puma, said:

“Are they doing this in order to cover up their own safety inadequacies? Are they saying my son is unreliable? Because they did something wrong, they are going to try and shove it off on my son.”