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Coast Guard Governmental and Public Affairs Unsound Logic

Earlier this year, CG-092 under the direction of Rear Admiral Mary Landry (now at D-8) set a course that has changed the face of Coast Guards place in the Blogosphere.  With the help of the Commandants Press Secretary, LCDR Tony Russell and LCDR Antonio Soliz, CG-092 decisions were made that would forever change the course of privately owned and operated Blogs reporting and covering Coast Guard.

The Two Tony’s Chart a Course the Profs in Athens Couldn’t Understand

Both Russell and Soliz notified Coast Guard Report that “Coast Guard” would not respond to media inquiries from CGReport because we were unfair to Coast Guard employees, and did not report factually correct information.  Both Russell and Soliz refused requests from Coast Guard Report for examples of what “we got wrong.”  Both refused to answer that question.  At the time Russell and Soliz stated we were getting it wrong, we were heavily involved in reporting civil rights violations inside Coast Guards Civil Rights Directorate.

Another Step in the Plan

Coast Guard in an attempt to prove  us wrong without responding, contracted Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) at a cost to the tax payers of over $600.000.00 to review the Office of Civil Rights programs.  The much touted review was intended to put Coast Guard Report in its place.  Starting on page 4 of the Booz Allen Hamilton report, Ms. Terri A. Dickerson makes it clear in her 25 April 2008 memorandum to DHS, that Coast Guard Report dot Org is a target of the BAH review.

The Plan Goes Wrong – Unintended Consequences

When the Booz Allen Hamilton report was released, shock waves reverberated throughout the second deck at Coast Guard Headquarters.  Before Admiral Thad Allen could fully digest what the report really said, the first shot across his bow was fired by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation.  Cummings signed out a scathing letter to Allen.  That letter was followed up by two congressional hearings, and a year long audit of Coast Guard Civil Rights by the Government Accountability Officer (the investigative arm of Congress).  At the 1 April 2009 hearing on Coast Guard Civil Rights, Congressman Cummings said:

Proximate Motivation Attacking Coast Guard Report

The proximate motivation for this request was the posting of derogatory blog entries on the web. However, as the Subcommittee has come to learn, there have long existed challenges far more central to the provision of effective civil rights services within the Coast Guard than those discussed in recent blog comments.

On 19 June 2009, at the 2nd hearing on Coast Guard Civil Rights, Cummings followed up with:

Simply Scathing

The Booz Allen Hamilton report was simply scathing. Among other criticisms, the Booz Allen Hamilton team found that: the Coast Guard’s civil rights program did not fully protect confidential personal information; the service did not conduct thorough analyses of barriers to equal opportunity in employment or develop specific plans to break these barriers down; and the service had a number of inadequately trained service providers who could not ensure the complaints management process was in full compliance with regulatory requirements.

Criticisms Repeatedly Identified

We also learned after subsequent examination that virtually none of these findings was new. Almost all of these criticisms had been identified – sometimes repeatedly – in previous third-party assessments of the Coast Guard civil rights program and in the Coast Guard’s own self-assessments.

Coast Guard Report Got it Too Right

The point is we got it so right in our investigative coverage over two years that neither Admiral Allen, Rear Admiral Landry, Terri Dickerson, and certainly not Russell and Soliz were going to tolerate it.  Their plan to marginalize this site, while promoting CGBlog was so transparent to the men and women of the Coast  Guard, that Coast Guard Report was catapulted into the number one slot, where we remain today.

CGBlog Influenced by The Two Tony’s

Coast Guard Report does not generally follow the exploits of CGBlog.org, but events unfolding in the Blogosphere today and over the past several weeks (if not months) are interesting.  We have reported several times about changes in ownership and publishers at CGBlog.  First creator and longtime publisher Peter Stinson turned over the site to LT Ryan Erickson, and then went on to create a new spin-off CGBlog.org.  Frankly, it didn’t make sense to many readers, but soon after Erickson himself turned over the site to yet a new publisher.  Erickson went on to set up a new site devoted to Coast Guard.

Who is the Publisher

This morning, www.cgblog.org is noticeably missing from the Blogosphere without explanation.  But’s what’s even more interesting is that Peter Stinson’s new Unofficial Coast Guard Blog or ucgblog.org is staffed by the original contributors at the old site; Stinson, Erickson, Dolbow and Lewis.  Just last week we were contacted by CGBlog who wanted to make sure we knew that Jim Dolbow was the publisher at the site.  It appears today that all three former publishers are now at the new site.

Next Phase of Evolution

As for the little Blog that could, we did and we owe much of our success to our contributors and on-scene leaders and lastly to the leadership of the United States Coast Guard.  Our doors are still open to collaboration with the Second Deck but the brow will soon be raised  to a new level.  Coast Guard Report will make an incredible and exciting announcement about our future place on the Internet shortly.