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The next week I met with the new commodore of our squadron, Captain Mike Miller. A very earnest and hard-working naval officer, he truly believed in letting commanding officers run their ships. While I was very concerned about how he might perceive the replenishment incident, I also wanted his guidance. “Well, Captain, how do think this came to happen and what do you think needs to be done to fix it?” he asked. I described my plan of holding not just the enlisted men but also the officer accountable for their mistakes. While knowing that taking an officer to captain's mast for this offense might end his career, I also knew that the safety of the ship and crew was paramount. This incident had crossed an inviolate professional standard of conduct and endangered the crew.

While initially uncomfortable with my decision to punish everyone, the commodore backed me 100 percent. Nevertheless he encouraged me to ensure that I was on sound legal ground before proceeding. One week
later, I held my first captain's mast, first for the two enlisted personnel and then the officer. Quite frankly, the crew was stunned to see me actually punish an officer. Immediately after imposing the non-judicial punishment, levying a punitive letter of reprimand for the officer—who then felt he had no chance of making the Navy a career and later left the service—and a reduction in rate and pay grade, a fine, and a thirty-day confinement to the ship for the others, I separately met with the chief petty officers and officers to explain my rationale and decision. To both, I made it very clear that I would never tolerate anything endangering the ship or crew. All of us had an enormous responsibility to safeguard that national asset and ensure that it was maintained at peak operating condition in the safest manner possible. I would be unforgiving if this responsibility was not taken seriously.

Having affirmed in action the importance I had set forth in my command philosophy and goals and expectations for the crew, I had clearly established a benchmark for my expectations of professional performance. As the crew moved inexorably toward deployment overseas, they grew more comfortable with the goals for the ship and developed a sense of personal accomplishment in reaching them. During weeks of intensive training with other ships in our squadron from mid-October of 1999 to mid-February of 2000, despite the demanding drills and exercises needed for certification, I had no disciplinary issues requiring the imposition of captain's mast. The chain of command below me dealt with minor problems, and the officers and chiefs were able to resolve all of them before they reached my level, which for me was a tribute to the officers, chief petty officers, and senior petty officers running the ship.

Two events stood out that best captured the essence of how well the ship was operating. One of the most challenging exercises involved our towing another ship. It was an overcast day, and the wind had created a very difficult situation. As the ship to be towed drifted in the open ocean—we were down in the Caribbean—
Cole
had to maneuver in very close ranges of less than 100 feet to pass a towing line and then remain in position while the other ship safely rigged it in place. The winds kept blowing us away and I found it very difficult to hold our position. I finally decided only one more attempt would be tried and then I would stop the exercise
for safety reasons. During this last attempt,
Cole
began to drift away again, and I ordered the ship to reverse engines in an attempt to not open the distance between us. Unfortunately, the towline slipped from the other ship, dipped into the water just astern of us, and in a matter of seconds wrapped around the port propeller shaft.

I ordered the engines stopped and immediately shut down to prevent any damage to the ship or injury to those on board who were working near the towline. We were in water shallow enough to drop anchor, and after we notified the destroyer squadron we waited for a diving team to fly out to the ship by helicopter to free the towline from the shaft. They were able to do that within two hours, and determined that no damage had been done.

While skill had prevented anyone from being injured, to my mind, we had also been extremely lucky. As we got the ship underway from anchorage and proceeded to the next exercise, I gathered the crew and the towing team to discuss the day's events. The first thing I made clear was that the responsibility for the towline's getting wrapped around the shaft was solely my fault as captain. It had been my judgment that had failed them, and we had been fortunate to not damage the ship or injure any crew members. In detail, we broke the exercise down into short time intervals and covered every aspect including communications, maneuvering the ship, wind and sea conditions, engineering actions, and the consequences of each decision. In the end, while it cost us the expense of replacing the towline, the experience created a more mature and experienced crew. It was better for them to understand the consequences of my decision to continue to press forward and complete the exercise despite clear indications that should have caused us to delay or cancel the exercise.

A few days later, late in the afternoon, after we had successfully completed the series of towing training exercises, we were told we could conduct another few hours of training with the other ship. I declined the offer and instead told the other ship we needed to conduct some internal training for the next few hours. Once that ship had sailed away, I told John, “XO, let's come to all stop and have the engineers shut down the main engines.”
He raised his eyebrows, wondering what I was up to next, but the lightbulb came on as I told him, “Get on the 1MC [general announcing system] and get a boat in the water with a duty gunner's mate. It's time for the crew to enjoy their first swim call.”

We were off St. Thomas. Swimming in the ocean in crystal-clear water with the sea floor 3,000 feet beneath is very different from being in the deep end of a pool where the bottom is only twelve or fifteen feet down. It is a beautiful and humbling experience. Looking up at the ship, feeling the immense power of the sea swells, makes you realize how small and insignificant you are in the larger scheme of nature. We had swim call for about an hour and twenty minutes. I took every safety precaution, managing the risks from many angles: a nearby boat contained a trained sharpshooter to guard against shark attack; all the ship's engineering equipment was set to keep anyone from possibly getting sucked underwater into an intake; and a rigorous check-in/check-out routine was in place to make sure that everyone who went overboard got back on the ship. The crew was thrilled by what for many was a once-in-career experience, and they talked about it for days afterward.

About this same time, I received a message from the Navy's Bureau of Personnel reporting that a permanent command master chief (CMC) had been ordered to the ship directly from the Senior Leadership School in Newport, Rhode Island. As was his nature, Master Chief Abney was graceful when I told him, and looked forward to turning his duties over to his relief. In November 1999, Command Master Chief James Parlier arrived on board. With a medical background as a fully qualified hospital corpsman, he had a knack for talking with the crew and soon took a keen interest in conveying their views to me.

When he came aboard he was hard charging and eager to do well in his new position. Initially, he had some hesitation about embracing the concept of being part of the CO-XO-CMC triumvirate running things on the ship. He had conceived of his role as being more a command representative of the crew than full-fledged member of the leadership team. Quickly though, he embraced being an integral part of my long-range vision for the ship and its crew.

He spent some time figuring out how he wanted to work with the XO and me, as well as lead the chief petty officers in being the real deck-plate role models and leaders on the ship. As the leading master chief on the ship, he had to assert himself not only in making sure the chiefs were doing their jobs and staying active with the crew, but in creating a bond with the chiefs so that they would approach him to confidentially relay any difficulties they were having up the chain of command. As good a ship as USS
Cole
was, crews always have a few folks who don't quite embrace the tempo of the organization and resist moving along as fast as they should. The command master chief's job is to keep those people and the chiefs supervising them motivated. Master Chief Parlier did just that by walking all around the ship and talking with the crew, on watch or down in their berthing compartments, rather than by sticking close to his office. He had his finger on the pulse of the crew's morale, and his insights were of priceless value to me.

The last change to the command team came in December 1999, when John was relieved as the executive officer by Lieutenant Commander John Christopher Peterschmidt. “Chris” Peterschmidt was an intense and extremely focused officer. We quickly hit it off and he seemed destined to be a perfect match for the ship. As we got to know each other better over the next few months, each of us realized that we had previously met in the Pentagon, where he had worked for the admiral in charge of the Navy's Surface Warfare directorate, which was responsible for the manning, training, and equipping of Navy ships and crews, while I was working for the secretary of the Navy.

As Chris and I continued to prepare the ship for deployment, we came to know each other's strengths and weaknesses and, with the command master chief, worked to make
Cole
the best ship on the Norfolk waterfront. Steady progress became our hallmark. There was about a 3 percent turnover of the crew every month, normal for the Navy, but we wanted to achieve something unprecedented in its scope and impact. Over the next few months, we wanted to qualify all enlisted crew members to man each of the watch stations on the sea and anchor detail—the stations that have to
be manned when the ship is entering or leaving port. We hoped to qualify members of the crew who were not officers to be certified to perform every one of those duties by the time the ship's combat-ready deployment started, including positions normally filled only by experienced officers—officer of the deck, helm safety officer, after steering helm safety officer, and conning officer.

While filling these four critical roles may seem relatively easy, it actually took a great deal of coordination between the watch teams to free up the needed senior petty officers or chief petty officers to allow them the time and experience in the watch station to earn their added qualifications. This often resulted in extra work by other crew members standing additional watches normally filled by these personnel, but they accepted it with a professional poise that had become their hallmark. This goal would have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the crew in the not too distant future.

As part of the nuclear-powered USS
George Washington
aircraft carrier battle group, USS
Cole
was to be deployed to the Mediterranean and Middle East along with USS
Normandy
, an Aegis guided-missile cruiser; USS
Donald Cook
, like
Cole
an Aegis guided-missile destroyer; USS
Simpson
and USS
Hawes
, both guided-missile frigates; USS
Pittsburgh
and USS
Albany
, nuclear-powered attack submarines; and USS
Seattle
, a fast combat logistics ship. The battle group's aircraft wing was Carrier Air Wing 17, which consisted of various fighter, attack, electronic warfare, and surveillance aircraft, as well as helicopters.

Over the next several months, the ship completed the last two phases of training to be certified as combat ready. Throughout this entire period, the emphasis on damage control drills—exercises to prepare the crew to repair damage and handle casualties in the event of hostilities—continued unabated both in port and underway.
Cole
's damage control assistant, Lieutenant (junior grade) Nathaniel Fogg, had spent the last year pushing, prodding, and leading the crew to become experts in damage control techniques and capability. In retrospect, he cast the die for success in saving the ship after the attack that was to come.

T
HE FINAL PHASE OF TRAINING included force protection measures—security precautions—to be taken against unauthorized approach or boarding of the ship. The only contingency we trained for while based in Norfolk was a threat from ashore—unauthorized boarding by intruders coming from the pier while the ship was tied up in port. Although a broad spectrum of threats existed, especially in this new era of terrorist attacks, with limited resources and time the Navy had not incorporated how to defend against them into the training and intelligence programs for battle groups and ships preparing for deployment.

Prior to deployment of the battle group, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet scheduled an anti-terrorism/force-protection exercise for May 3 to 5, 2000. The primary objective was to train shore and afloat commanders and personnel to operate and deploy forces under any threat condition. Specifically, the drill was “not designed as an inspection but rather an opportunity for commands to practice . . . procedures and assess capabilities to provide adequate protection for personnel, facilities and assets.” During the exercise, we learned, unauthorized persons would try to get aboard every ship at least once during the week. How and when this would occur we were not told, putting everyone on edge, prepared for the
worst. Typical for this type of exercise, the ships almost all focused on countering any incursion that might be made over their in-port quarterdeck, the position on the main deck at about the middle of the ship, between the two superstructures where the watch team was normally stationed.

Throughout the week, crews from each ship in the battle group were assigned to try to penetrate the security perimeter of others in the squadron by pretending to be crew members, or bluffing that they had been authorized to do work on board. Most of these amateur penetrations failed. But when ships faced more sophisticated types of intrusions carried out by Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agents acting on behalf of the Atlantic Fleet staff, failure was the standard for almost every one of them.