B (3:30)

That's an incredible story. Now, a 40 foot hole in a ship and you were able to stabilize it. How did you do that?

C (3:38)

Well, one of the things we had done prior to pulling in was actually a damage control. And something you do every time you have an event like this where you're in a higher state of readiness because of the threat is we implement what's called a higher degree of watertight integrity. In this case, all the compartments below the main deck, or what they call the damage control deck, were all sealed and compartmented off. What that did was two things. Number one, when the blast went off exterior to the ship and penetrated inward, number one, it prevented progressive flooding. Kind of like if you remember Titanic, you went from compartment to compartment to compartment. What that did was it prevented and contained the flooding within a few major compartments. The second thing that it did that was really beneficial is because of that compartmentalization, it dissipated the force of the blast. I mean, the pressure wall from the explosives that went off the traveled at about 25,000ft per second. So the damage, the extensive damage that you see throughout the ship occurred in less than 3 milliseconds. But because of that compartmentalization that we had put into place, that's what really minimized the extent of the damage, controlled the flooding, mitigated some of the horrific injuries that we saw. But nonetheless, it was one of those events where the announcing system failed. Nobody could tell the crew what had happened, where to go, what to do. They fell back on their training and then accomplished what they needed to to save our ship and shipmates so in my mind, true heroes that this documentary will point out.

B (5:18)

Now, this happened before 9 11, pretty shortly before 9 11, less than a year. What was the degree of awareness about the threat of terrorism at that time?

C (5:28)

Well, it's very interesting. We knew that terrorism existed because obviously, I mean, I personally had experienced it earlier in my career. I in the embassy In Beirut in 1983, just a few days before they blew it up. I lost a Naval Academy classmate in the Beirut barracks bombing that fall. Of course, we had Khobar Towers in 1996, World Trade center one in 1993, and then of course, the embassy bombings two years before. Coal in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Nairobi, Kenya. So Al Qaeda had a pattern, especially with World Trade Center 1 and the embassy bombings. What we didn't know, and the documentary points out, is that the FBI had actually interviewed one of the surviving Al Qaeda members from the terrorist attack against the embassies. And when they interviewed him, he flat out told them, al Qaeda is going to target Navy ships pulling into Aden. We never got that intelligence on the ship. We never had any idea, and I have no idea if the Navy leadership ever had access to that intelligence or ever did anything with it to prepare us prior to pulling into port.

B (6:38)

Wow. Now, one of the last remaining planners of the attack, the mastermind behind it, actually was held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for 20 years. And he's just now getting his trial, or he will get it in June of next year. Can you tell us a little bit about why it's taken so long for him to be tried?

C (6:57)

Well, one of the key things that I unfortunately need to point out is while a trial date is set, we've had trial dates set before. His name is Al Nashri and he was the principal planner that put this entire thing together. He worked very closely with bin Laden and Al Zawahiri, who was the number two guy. So this had been planned for a long time. As a matter of fact, a gentleman named Khalad. The gentleman I use is a loose term, by the way. Khalad bought the explosives that Al Nashri would use when he built the boat that would attack USS Cole. He is involved with the 911 planning as well. So these guys are bad. They're all tied together. But at the end of the day, he's down in Guantanamo Bay. And we continue to have delays in taking him and holding him accountable for what he did, because quite frankly, we lack the political will on both the Republican and Democrat sides to really make the defense teams stop issuing motion after motion, judges that continue to entertain them and we've had delay after delay and here we are at 20 years plus for a trial that should have gone on, he should have been tried, found guilty and, and then consequently, because it's a capital case executed.

D (8:11)

In today's fast changing digital world, proving your company is trustworthy isn't just important for growth, it's essential. That's exactly why Vanta exists, to make building and maintaining that trust seamless for businesses everywhere. Whether you're a startup just getting started with your first SoC2 HIPAA or ISO 27001 certification, or you're an enterprise dealing with the complexity of vendor risk management, Vanta's trust management platform uses industry leading AI and automation to help companies of all sizes get compliant fast and actually stay that way. The platform can help you knock out those tedious security questionnaires up to five times faster, which means you're closing bigger deals sooner and the impact is real. Vanta customers are saving over half a million dollars annually while becoming three times more productive. In today's business environment, establishing trust isn't optional anymore. But with Vanta's continuous monitoring and automation, it becomes automatic. If you're ready to see how Vanta can transform your compliance process and help you build Trust automatically, visit vanta.commorningwire to sign up for a free demo today. That's V. A nta.commorningwire Now, a few.

B (9:14)

Questions I want to return to. But first, how did they know that you were going to be in the port of Aden if that was just a game day decision to go there as opposed to Djibouti? Were they prepared to follow you or were they just waiting for an opportunity at this port?

C (9:29)

Well, number one, Coal was not targeted as a ship. They were looking for the next Navy ship that had come in. Aden had been a refueling port for about two years. That had been negotiated between the ambassador in the country, Ambassador Bodine, and at the time, the Central Command commander, General Zinni, which then transitioned to General Franks. And what you had was when we pulled in as the 27th ship to refuel in that port, there had been a routine that had been established. Anytime a ship pulls into a port, what you have is they know pretty much where you need to refuel, what is available, what the threat levels are. That's at a much higher level than most ships operate at. So we were ordered into that port. It wasn't like we said, hey, that looks like a good port to pull into and refuel. We, in fact were ordered to refuel in the port of aid in Yemen. And when we pulled in that morning, one of the unfortunate things that had happened is I submitted my force protection plan actually while I was in the Mediterranean. We had no in theater intel briefings at that time prior to pulling into Bahrain, which would be four days after I had refueled. So we had somewhat of an intelligence gap there that later investigations would point out. But when we pulled in that morning, there was absolutely no intelligence that we had that day that Al Qaeda had been there and operating. We had worked through the embassy. Nothing had come from them to indicate there was anything untoward. NCIS does a port vulnerability assessment. They indicated nothing was unsafe about the port. And while overall we operated at a higher threat level, again, there was no credible intelligence to tell us that Al Qaeda had been there for a year, had already attempted attack on another ship nine months before us that we didn't know about. And unfortunately, the same boat with the same explosives were used in the successful attack against us.

B (11:27)

Now, how did this affect the general level of preparedness for terror going forward? Obviously, 911 still went on to happen. Would you say that they didn't raise the level of alert as high as they should have in response to this?

C (11:41)

I think what you saw was the first thing the Navy tried to do was figure out how did this happen? Why was the ship in that port to begin with? Why didn't we have the intelligence? I think that the question still has not been answered by anyone in either the intelligence community or clearly above me in the chain of command. Why was that intelligence fed into the system by the FBI during that interview? And why was nothing done by the chain of command to act on it when putting Navy ships into harm's way in a port that clearly had been targeted by Al Qaeda to go after Navy ships? So it's one of the great unknowns. But unfortunately, I lived and the crew lived and the family still live with the consequences that when we pulled in and were attacked, I lived through one administration with the Clinton administration that kept raising the bar and did nothing in response to that attack. And by the same token, when the Bush administration came in, they took an attitude of we're forward looking, not backward acting. They did nothing. And because of that, that laid the groundwork for 9 11. The fact that there was no response to attack on a US Navy ship, killing 17 sailors and wounding 37, really, in many ways, according to the 911 report, incensed bin Lad. And he said, okay, if they won't even react to this, then clearly we've got a straight path to 9 11. And unfortunately, 11 months later, the nation paid a very heavy price that we are still many ways paying for today.

B (13:12)

Now, you mentioned that the crew sprang into action even without a proper announcement on the ship. Just for our listeners, can you paint a picture of maybe one or two examples of some really impressive things just so people can get an image of what it was like that day on the ship? You can tell your story or maybe one or two examples from crew members that did things that were particularly heroic. I think that might be really interesting for people to hear.

C (13:36)

Absolutely. One that I'll point out in particular is a young signalman, second Class Figueroa. He was in the Mestex area, mess line area, trying to rescue people out of there and heard someone calling from down below in one of the spaces that was flooding. And when he went down, not one, but two decks into floodwaters that were surging around his ankles and rapidly rising, and that space was eventually going to completely flood, a young man was trapped behind the desk, critically wounded, broken leg, other injuries. He managed to pull him out and then literally get him pushed up two sets of ladders or stairs and get him rescued and saved his life. So, I mean, floodwaters coming around. I've got sailors saving them. I had another one where a young woman, literally two compound fractures to her femurs trapped in the wreckage, and two sailors were able to pry back. And I had one of my officers reach down and said, I know this is going to hurt, but I need you to do it on the count of three. And he pulled her out with those two legs broken and again got her to triage, stabilized her, we would evacuate her off the ship. And again, she is alive today. So we really had some heroic efforts going on that day in those critical minutes afterwards. And again, I attribute that to my heroes and the crew because they took the initiative to do that in that moment. And they're the ones that truly saved our ship and shipmates.

B (15:06)

Now, how did that affect morale among the sailors, seeing such a muted reaction to such a devastating loss of life? What kind of message did it send that both Democrat and Republican administrations were somewhat disinterested in getting to the bottom of what happened?

C (15:21)

I think it did have an effect on morale because they felt like, wait a minute, we're supposed to be defending freedom out there for our nation. But by the same token, when something happens and lives are lost, when we have the political leadership and to a degree, the military leadership as well, saying do nothing to demand a response to it. They're kind of wondering exactly what's going on here. I mean, it's one thing for us to volunte, you know, to serve our nation and defend our Constitution and way of life, but it's another thing for me to sacrifice my life and nothing's done as a result. And it's been particularly frustrating, especially for the families who lost loved ones, to see no accountability when it comes to holding those responsible for this attack, which was bin Laden, his followers, and everything else. And while, yes, we have taken out several members that were involved in that chain through drone strikes, obviously post 911 in Afghanistan, Afghanistan with the military force, we still have that guy Al Nashri down in Gitmo, who really is enjoying a fairly decent quality of life, Gets three meals a day, gets to pray five times a day, and it just drags on and on. So justice delayed is justice denied. And I think people overall in the military see this, but they still want to have people that did this held responsible for their actions. We've had 20 years to process the evidence scene, and we continue to even do it today. I mean, the FBI and their forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia, and now the explosives lab that's down in Huntsville, Alabama, they continue to process little items of evidence, continuing to tie people like Al Nashri and others to that crime, now an act of war, so that we could hold them accountable.

B (17:08)

All right, well, Commander Leopold, this has been so wonderful having you, and I think our audience is going to be very interested to watch this. Thank you for coming. Coming on.

C (17:16)

Absolutely. Thank you. And thank you again to Daily Wire and to Big Media for really telling a story of heroism that the American people don't know about. And now they'll get the opportunity to.

E (17:32)

And Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music. Limu. Save yourself money to a day. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We say that may have been too much feeling.

C (17:51)

Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com.

E (17:54)

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings.

C (17:57)

Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates excludes Massachusetts.