THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 1997 TAG: 9702120451
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 128 lines
Determined to root out hazing on their ship, senior officers and the top enlisted man on the attack submarine Los Angeles decided in October 1995 to make an example of a promising young machinist's mate fireman, Dennis B. O'Brien Jr.
The sailor had not engaged in any hazing - in fact, he was a victim.
But the zeal and tactics his superiors employed in investigating his case, a case O'Brien himself considered too trivial to warrant a formal complaint, ended up getting him killed, his parents charged Tuesday.
Mary and Dennis O'Brien Sr. said their 21-year-old son's death, officially a suicide, has never been explained to their satisfaction by the Navy. And they complained that none of the military branches has established clear and fair procedures for investigating hazing incidents.
The O'Briens and U.S. Rep.Curt Weldon, R-Pa., also said their efforts to get to the bottom of the case have been frustrated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and by officers all the way up the chain of command in the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
A series of investigators strove ``to protect the leaderships' butts,'' Mary O'Brien said, rather than help the couple learn about how the Los Angeles' executive officer and the Chief of the Boat, the senior enlisted man aboard, pressured the young sailor to rat on his shipmates.
``Whether he pulled the trigger himself or someone else pulled the trigger, the hazing investigation killed him,'' Mary O'Brien said.
Weldon said he intends to press the O'Briens' case during a House National Security Committee hearing this morning with Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In particular, he wants the Pentagon to account for incomplete and sometimes contradictory responses the Navy made to the O'Briens' repeated requests for information about the case, Weldon said. In at least one instance, he charged, someone in the NCIS apparently altered an investigative report, which was furnished to the couple, to omit information concerning the hazing.
A senior Navy official said the service agrees that O'Brien's superiors on the Los Angeles made mistakes in investigating the hazing and that the sailor's case has sparked action to prevent such problems in the future.
Just last month, the official noted, Adm. Jay L. Johnson, the chief of naval operations, ordered the service's personnel office to provide the chain of command with written guidelines on the proper treatment of harassment and hazing victims. Periodic instruction on those topics has been made part of the service's ``leadership continuum,'' a periodic training regimen officers must complete.
But with national attention focused on hazing after stories this month on a Marine Corps ritual called ``blood pinning,'' Mary O'Brien said she and her husband ``are deathly afraid of. . . a knee-jerk reaction'' throughout the military.
``Some other parent is going to lose a child,'' she warned, as officers and senior enlisted leaders try to impress their superiors by moving too aggressively against even minor incidents.
EVEN THE NAVY NOW ACKNOWLEDGES that that's what happened to Dennis O'Brien Jr., whose death aboard the Los Angeles as it sat by a pier at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, came just four days after the highlight of his 19 months in the service.
Investigative reports and other Navy documents furnished to the O'Briens indicate that the young sailor's troubles began after the Oct. 13 ceremony at which he received his silver ``dolphins,'' the pin signifying his qualification as a submariner.
In the hours just after that ceremony, perhaps a dozen of O'Brien's shipmates approached him and tapped or punched the pin into his chest, a hazing ritual called ``tacking on.'' The blows bruised O'Brien but did not break the skin; he later told superiors he had no complaint about them.
Around noon that day, the reports say, the Chief of the Boat, Michael A. Norris, who had a history of conflicts with O'Brien and whose leadership style had been the subject of repeated complaints by other enlisted men, noticed that O'Brien's new dolphins were bent.
Quizzed by Norris about hazing, O'Brien refused to say who had punched him. He also declined to submit to a physical exam for his injury and was told he would be charged with disobeying an order.
After Norris used the ship's intercom to announce that an investigation was underway, two of O'Brien's shipmates volunteered that they had tapped his pin but insisted it was done too lightly to cause any bruising. Both later received administrative punishments.
The following Monday, O'Brien met privately with the ship's captain, Cmdr. John S. Boulden III, and later was given a Captain's Mast hearing, a quasi-judicial proceeding the Navy uses for offenses that fall short of crimes. Boulden dismissed the charge of disobeying orders but lectured O'Brien on the importance of following orders and on loyalty, according to the documents.
Boulden left the ship for a long-scheduled leave shortly after that, but Norris and the ship's executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Charles K. Harris, continued pursuing the case. In a meeting with Harris, O'Brien said he was refusing to cooperate out of loyalty to his shipmates and a fear that he might be in physical danger if he turned them in.
Around 5 that evening, the reports continue, Harris announced that beginning the next day, all liberty would be canceled until the investigation was concluded. Sailors suspected of being involved in the hazing were interviewed throughout the day. Officers decided to put O'Brien to work washing dishes beginning Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, the investigators received word that O'Brien had promised to talk to some of those involved and tell them to come forward on their own or he would turn them in. None did however, and O'Brien was sent topside to stand watch, enforcing the lock-in sparked by his refusal to talk.
As part of that duty, he was issued a gun, a .45-caliber automatic. He used it to fatally shoot himself around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, investigators concluded.
The O'Brien case has been a topic of concern at the highest levels of the Navy for more than a year. It was among the last items Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda, the late chief of naval operations, discussed with top aides before his suicide last May.
A senior official interviewed Tuesday said that a 3-inch-thick report on the investigation has been placed in the permanent records of several of the officers involved, each of whom also was subject to administrative penalties.
And Norris, the former chief of the boat, has been stripped of the rating that allowed him to hold that job and assigned to shore duty.
``The Navy has worked very closely with the family,'' the official said Tuesday, ``and we share their concerns regarding this tragedy.
``Their son was a fine sailor and his death was a tragic loss.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
ASSOCIATED PRESS
O'Briens fault the Navy's investigation into a hazing incident for
their son's death, ruled a suicide.
Navy Fireman Dennis B. O'Brien Jr. died in October 1995. His death,
ruled a suicide, followed an investigation into hazing. He was
forced to squeal on his shipmates, his parents say.
KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVY SUICIDE HAZING