
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 26, 1990                   TAG: 9005290195
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IOWA EXPLOSION

NOW HEAR THIS: The Navy isn't admitting any mistakes, but it's reopening its investigation into the USS Iowa explosion of April 1989. Previously the service had blamed the blast, which killed 47 sailors, on alleged sabotage by a suicidal member of the gun-turret crew.

The Navy's procedures were sloppy and suspect from the start. The ship's captain, Fred P. Moosally, was pressured to take early retirement. The investigation led into blind coves, at one point speculating that some of the suspects had financial difficulties if not homosexual relationships.

Several months ago, the service concluded that Gunner's Mate Clayton Hartwig of Cleveland, described as a loner, had "most probably" set off the blast to kill himself because he was despondent about the breakup of a friendship with another sailor.

The Navy had nothing but circumstantial evidence, and even that was dubious. "Foreign material" - bomb fragments - supposedly were found in one of the battleship's 16-inch guns. But in further testing sought by a congressional committee, the FBI said its laboratory could locate no bomb parts. That, responded the Navy, was an inconclusive finding.

In the best bureaucratic style, the Navy now makes it seem as if its own assiduous efforts led to reopening the case. It cites "follow-up testing which the Navy has been doing periodically as new theories were brought forward." Sandia National Laboratories says the explosion could have been caused by over-ramming of the gunpowder bags, which suggests an accident due either to crew error or faulty training.

Brass hats eager to get this matter behind them could have shunned those "new theories" but for pressure from Congress and Hartwig's family. "This is what we've been saying all along," said Earl Hartwig, father of the gunner's mate. "My son is not guilty."

He surely should not be considered guilty until proven so. Based on the flimsy evidence the Navy produced last year, he is not. The affair smells of an effort to scapegoat a dead man. The Navy needs to clear the cloud it has cast over its own procedures. As it reinvestigates, it knows now that it will be carefully watched.

by CNB