Bitter Passage

By Terry McCarthy and Jeannie McCabe

Dressed in his officer's whites, Commander Scott Waddle stood motionless on the grass last Wednesday, staring into the waters in front of his house inside Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Commander is an empty title at this point. Waddle was relieved of his command of the U.S.S. Greeneville immediately after the nuclear attack submarine collided with the Japanese fishing boat Ehime Maru on Feb. 9, an accident that killed nine of the people aboard that vessel. For Waddle, it has been two months of public humiliation and recrimination. Yet even after the Navy put him through a wringer of an inquiry, Navy men found a way to confer dignity on him. On Wednesday, Waddle had dressed in uniform and come out to the waters for a rendezvous.

The Greeneville's crew knew he would be standing there as they took the sub out of dry dock and to sea for the first time since the tragedy. As they approached in the narrow channel, they sounded the whistle, in tribute to their former skipper. On the bridge the replacement captain, Tony Cortese, waved to his predecessor, barely 200 yds. away. Waddle was standing on his own, his right arm raised in stiff salute. It was a sailor's leave-taking, barely noticed by anyone else on the shore. When the ship had passed, Waddle slumped, his head bowed, and turned back toward his house, his eyes teary. "That was the hardest thing I have done in my life," he said. "It was like the last nail in the coffin."

Scott Waddle's rendezvous with his submarine contrasted sharply with the celebratory reception, also in Hawaii, of another Navy man, Lieut. Shane Osborn, whose actions saved the lives of a crew of 23 after his EP-3 spy plane collided with a Chinese F-8 fighter jet, killing its pilot. With China, a budding rival for power in the Pacific, Washington adopted a hard line, waging a diplomatic battle for more than a week to avoid an apology to Beijing for a crash the Pentagon claims was caused by the Chinese pilot in the first place. The U.S., of course, apologized profusely to Tokyo over the Ehime Maru. The ship was on a harmless holiday cruise, and Japan is the main military ally of the U.S. in Asia. And so now, while Osborn is hailed for his cool-headed actions, Waddle, once expected to be a model of the Navy's new heroes, faces still more ignominy.

The official report from the three admirals who took testimony from 33 witnesses at last month's court of inquiry into the sinking of the Japanese ship has now been handed to Admiral Thomas Fargo, chief of the Pacific Fleet. On the basis of their report, Fargo must decide whether to submit Waddle to a court-martial or give him some lesser form of Navy punishment. One possibility: an administrative proceeding known as an admiral's mast, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 days of confinement to quarters, 60 days of restricted duty and forfeiture of a month's pay. At the inquiry, Waddle was informed he was suspected of dereliction of duty, improper hazarding of a vessel and negligent homicide, all of which could carry jail terms at a court-martial. In any scenario, Waddle's once brilliant career is over. And while his legal battle with the Navy may end, his battle with himself will continue.

For the past two months he has replayed the series of events surrounding the collision a thousand times in his mind. His sub had gone down to 400 ft. and shot back again in a rapid-surfacing maneuver known as an "emergency blow"--directly underneath the Ehime Maru. As it broke the surface, the Greeneville's HY 80 steel rudder, specially reinforced to punch through ice, ripped open the stern of the Japanese ship. "When I put up the periscope after the collision and increased magnification, I saw all those little people tumbling in the water. I felt disbelief, regret, remorse, anxiety, rage, denial...This was something I had no control over. I couldn't change what happened. As a man who exercised control over my ship, suddenly it didn't matter what I did--I couldn't change the outcome.

"I didn't cause the accident. I gave the orders that resulted in the accident. And I take full responsibility. I would give my life if it meant one of those nine lives lost could be brought back." He doesn't sleep much at night, and when he does, he is plagued with nightmares. His hair has turned gray, he has bags under his eyes, and he has lost weight. Every waking moment is a struggle to keep himself together. During a series of interviews with TIME last week, Waddle broke down several times, showing a depth of grief that was wrenching in its rawness. "I am not tired of apologizing," he said, tears streaming down his face as he sat in his rocking chair at home. "But I am tired of crying. It kills me that nine people died because of an accident."

The sinking of the Ehime Maru resonated around the world. It was the first major foreign policy challenge for the newly installed Bush Administration. In Japan it contributed to the fall from power of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who shocked public opinion by continuing a golf game even after he heard of the accident. The Pentagon fretted about damage to the already fragile military alliance with Japan. The Japanese families of the nine dead were left in shock and grief. But at the center of the affair has been the tragic figure of Scott Waddle, a complex character who exudes self-confidence but craves approval, a man who was trained to fight a war that could end the world, but whose own world ended when he hit a Japanese fishing boat on a leisure cruise.

As Waddle has searched for a meaning for what happened, he keeps coming back to the story of Job in the Old Testament. "Job is the closest corollary to what has just happened in my life," he says. "Satan challenged God: 'You have a servant named Job--let me put him to the test.'" The testing was severe--Job lost his family, his belongings and his health, until he cursed the day he was born. But throughout, he maintained his faith in God. Waddle too has lost much: his career and his shipmates. His savings have been eaten up by legal fees. "My test has been, 'Am I willing to compromise my integrity?'" says Waddle. "I cannot tell you how easy it would have been for me to say it wasn't my fault--that the guys who worked for me made the mistakes. But I couldn't in good faith do that."

During the inquiry it emerged that some of the crew on the U.S.S. Greeneville may have made errors that contributed to the accident: failing to realize from sonar readings that the Ehime Maru was 4,000 yds. away and closing; and neglecting to oversee the flow of information properly in the control room. And in the past week Waddle has reversed his previously benign view of the presence of civilians on board. He now thinks the 16 visitors were also a factor in the accident: "Having them in the control room at least interfered with our concentration."

The Greeneville's only reason to put out to sea on Feb. 9 was that Waddle had been told two weeks before that retired Admiral Richard Macke had put together a Distinguished Visitors' Program for the submarine that day. The program was set up by the Navy to win favor for the submarine service from Congressmen and other opinion leaders, and the Greeneville had made several such trips for visitors under Waddle's command. Not only did the visitors crowd the control room, but because Waddle spent so much time with them over lunch, the ship also fell behind schedule, giving Waddle added impetus to move quickly through the series of maneuvers he had designed to impress them.

In the end Waddle was the captain entrusted with the ship, and he and the entire Navy knew what that meant. On March 20 Waddle took the stand during the inquiry, even though he had not been granted immunity from self-incrimination. Taking command of the Greeneville was "an awesome responsibility," he said. "I have no less of a responsibility to stand up and explain the exercise of my judgment as commanding officer...I made a mistake or mistakes...These mistakes were honest and well intentioned." He then submitted to six hours of strenuous questioning from three admirals for whom the term accident was never going to suffice.

"The general opinion on the waterfront was that it was important that he stand up and take responsibility," says Commander Mark Patton, a classmate of Waddle's at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., 20 years ago, and now deputy commander for readiness in a submarine squadron in Pearl Harbor. "We wanted to see that happen. It was important for the public to see that happen. And he did that very well."

But to admit that he made mistakes, that his command was somehow less than perfect, has been a bitter journey of self-discovery for Waddle. All his career he has driven himself to excel. "I was so hungry for attention I would do almost anything to prove I was good," he says. He craved the approval of his peers and his superior officers--perhaps to make up for what he missed from his father, who was divorced from his mother when Scott was 11. He aspired to be at the top, looking down. Most of his fellow officers expected him to make it at least as far as commander of the Pacific Submarine Fleet. He had strong backing from the current submarine chief, Rear Admiral Al Konetzni. But last Wednesday, as the Greenville pulled out of Pearl Harbor without him on board, Waddle was at the very bottom.

"It is unfortunate," he muses, "that with all the time and money the Navy has invested in me that they don't need my services--that I am expendable." That is probably his most devastating conclusion of the past two months. Waddle's life goal was to be indispensable: to his country, to the military and to the men he commanded. Born in Japan, where his father was stationed as a U.S. Air Force pilot, he was brought up in England, Georgia, Texas and Naples, Italy, where he graduated from high school. Since his parents divorced when he was young, Waddle did not have much contact with his father during his boyhood. His mother Barbara remarried, to another Air Force pilot, but his stepfather, quiet and reserved, was not the model for Waddle's own personality. Says he: "I'm not like that. I am loud and opinionated--I like to be the center of attention." Even his acts of generosity take on showman quality. One Christmas Waddle used airline vouchers he had accumulated to upgrade 18 complete strangers to first class on a flight from Denver to Seattle.

Waddle didn't want to be in submarines at first. The purpose of a sub is to be silent and undetectable, not the Waddle style. He would have preferred to be a pilot like his father and his stepfather. But bad sinuses kept him out of the Air Force, and at Annapolis he flunked a vision test, which ruled out flying altogether. He then tried out for the submarine program and got in, passing the rigorous psychological testing that is designed to ensure that the men who run America's submarine fleet can endure the confines of a sub for long periods.

Academic work was never Waddle's strength, and he had to push himself hard to get through his bookwork both at school and during his time at the Academy. But no effort was too great if it meant earning the respect and praise of others. His ascent was spectacular. Very soon after he passed his engineer's exam in the Navy in 1985 and returned to his ship, the Trident submarine U.S.S. Alabama, the captain, Garnett Beard, said he was sending the regular engineer on leave and putting Waddle in charge of the nuclear reactor plant that powers the submarine. "Do you know what that did to me?" says Waddle, reliving the thrill of an old success.

That same year Waddle married Jill Huntington, whom he had met at a cosmetics counter in Silverdale, Wash. She provided the unquestioning devotion he had been seeking all his life. "She loves me unconditionally, although for the longest time I didn't appreciate that," says Waddle. "This tragedy has done one good thing--it has strengthened our bonds, when in other marriages it could have weakened them." They have one daughter, Ashley, 13.

If home life was stable, his work in the Navy was frenetically competitive. Waddle had always seen himself as destined to fight a war and told his men as much. In October 1999, in his first major sortie after taking command of the Greeneville, he took to sea off San Diego to fight a mock battle against the John C. Stennis carrier group. "They were one to two miles away, coming toward us at 18 knots--and we went up to periscope depth. I was taking my guys into the most dangerous peacetime situation. Any one of those ships could have ripped us apart. I told my men, 'We are going to engage these guys. If I go to war, you want to go to war with me, because I will put the enemy on the bottom and we will come home alive.' That's what gained me their confidence." It was typical Waddle--brash, daring, determined to succeed. He did a series of unorthodox maneuvers with the submarine to confound the carrier group. "They couldn't find us. We ran rings around them."

Waddle pushed his crew hard. Under him the Greeneville became the envy of the Pacific Submarine Fleet. This was why the Navy chose it to play host to civilians on the Distinguished Visitor Program. Commander Reid Tanaka, who was captain of the U.S.S. Charlotte, a sister submarine to the Greeneville, said he saw himself in "friendly competition" with Waddle. "I would look at his ship and think that if I could get my crew to do some of the things his crew would do--boy, that would be great."

Waddle earned the absolute trust of his crew, and had the highest re-enlistment rate--65%--of any attack sub in the Pacific Fleet. And the skipper proudly allowed re-enlisters to commemorate their return in almost any fashion they wanted. Be it parachuting out of an airplane or floating in full dive gear in the ocean, Waddle would be along for the rite of passage.

Before the tragedy, Waddle represented the "new Navy" preached by his mentor, Rear Admiral Konetzni--one with a more solicitous, flexible command style for a Navy of volunteers, not conscripts. While Waddle can be obsessively gregarious, he is also astonishingly attentive to details heard in conversation. He can remember waiters' names days after they have served him in a restaurant, and acquaintances' names from 25 years ago. He would track the lives and careers of his crew, regularly inquiring about girlfriends, family crises, career plans. "I detested the way I was treated as a junior officer early on--like a commodity--and vowed never to treat my men that way." Says First Petty Officer Dave Roberts, who served on the U.S.S. San Francisco when Waddle was executive officer in 1995: "He treats you from the very beginning with respect." Roberts was in charge of maintaining the nuclear reactor, but was having problems with the commanding officer and his department head. His morale was low. Waddle took him aside and talked to him. "He just showed confidence in me," says Roberts, who got back in the groove. "I can't speak highly enough of him."

Waddle argues, without a hint of disingenuousness, that he may have been regarded too highly by his men. Says he: "I so truly believed in my professional ability, and I believed in my men so much, and they also believed in me. It was that relationship that led to my demise. Because when I said I didn't see anything [during the periscope search for shipping before the Feb. 9 collision], there was nothing there--that was the truth for them."

That is where the tragedy began. After his fire-control technician, Patrick Seacrest, had failed to realize the Ehime Maru's proximity, and after his officer of the deck, Lieut. Michael Coen, had scanned the sea with the periscope, Waddle took the scope and did a search. "When I looked out to Oahu I could see the peaks of the mountains and then a white belt. I thought, 'That's odd--I've never seen that before.'" The white haze made the small white hull of the Ehime Maru hard to distinguish. Waddle did not linger, though, since he was eager to impress his guests. He ordered the ship to dive deep and then rocket back up to the surface. In retrospect he concedes he was pushing ahead too quickly. "I didn't give the men the time they needed to do their jobs. I was so confident in my abilities and what I had seen, I was convinced the ship was safe to carry out those maneuvers." None of his men challenged him.

This is what recurs in his nightmares--the lack of control. "I am back on the ship, but I am not captain, and there is no captain in command." Some nights he cannot sleep at all, lying awake in a cold sweat, holding his wife Jill.

During the day, Waddle is now completely at the mercy of the Navy's disciplinary system; during the night, of his own tortured memories of seeing nine people die. In the early hours of the morning he decided to testify at the Navy inquiry, Waddle opened the Bible. He had avoided reading the entire Book of Job until then. "When I finished reading Job, I knew there was something for me too. That was my most peaceful night--it was as if some inner peace had come upon me. It took me 40 years to be comfortable with who I am. I always worked hard to be accepted by my peers, and I thought it was my destiny to go to war. But maybe my battle lies elsewhere."

Scott Waddle knows his career in the Navy is over. He leaves with the taste of defeat in his mouth and a pall of sadness over his head. Like Job, he has lost almost everything. But he is still popular in the Navy--sailors he has never met on Hawaii come up to him to shake his hand and express their support for him. "When I die," he says, "I know I will be judged for all of my life, not just for one event." And he still has his dignity. He knows nobody can take that away from him, however he is judged.