There are two phrases an intelligence officer wants never to have reason to say. The first is, “I was wrong.” The second is, “I told you so.” These days, a lot of current and former naval intelligence and information warfare professionals who served in the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) community are saying the latter. Many of them are women.
Multiple incidents in the Naval Special Warfare community—including rape, murder, and drug abuse—caused Rear Admiral Collin Green, Naval Special Warfare commander, in July to declare, “We have a problem,” and order his subordinates to provide an assessment of the challenges they identified along with proposed solutions. A few weeks later, on 20 August, he issued a memo to all major commanders stating that a portion of the force was “ethically misaligned with our Culture,” and issued guidance detailing methods of intrusive leadership to get back on track.
As both a naval officer and NSW alumna who formally qualified as an NSW non-SEAL officer, I am especially heartened by two elements of the memo. First, that Rear Admiral Green identified that “the root of our problem begins with members who fail to correct the behavior within their own sphere of leadership and prioritize this misalignment over the loyalty to the Navy and the Nation.” Second, the admiral used both male and female pronouns when he declared, “The responsibility of the Commanding Officer for his or her Command, is absolute.”
If Rear Admiral Green truly would like to understand what is happening in his units, he should consider asking the women currently serving in NSW, both active and reserve, as well as alumnae. The significant presence of women in the combat support ranks of Naval Special Warfare is one of the special operations command’s best kept secrets, perhaps because the hundreds of women who have served as “combat support” and “enablers” in the community have not written books and are rarely publicly acknowledged by SEALs themselves. The role of women in the community only recently made the news with the death of Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, who was killed while deployed to Syria in January 2019.
From 2013–16, I was an intelligence officer in an NSW unit, serving in both operational and garrison leadership roles. I spent the final 15 months of that time as the senior intelligence officer (N2), which at that particular unit was dual-hatted as a troop commander. I was far from the only woman in my unit, though I was the most senior when I left. It was the most exciting, dynamic, and challenging job I had in ten years of active and reserve military service.
It was also the most toxic. During my time in the community, I often had the good fortune of working for phenomenal leaders, who were more than eager to identify and hold accountable SEALs who did not live up to the ethos of the community. But these leaders were the exception and not the rule—and often faced cultural inertia themselves.
My knowledge of the cultural rot in the community started right after I arrived in 2013. At that point, I was new and believed what I was told—that I “just didn’t understand how things worked around here.” By the time I left in 2016—and since then, staying in touch with my friends who remained in the community until recently—it was clear we knew exactly how things worked around there.
During one deployment, a SEAL officer (who is no longer in the Navy but remains in a government position requiring substantial public trust) once told me “You don’t know what the f**k you’re talking about because you don’t have a Trident” after I showed him a regulation in print that said, very explicitly, that an operation he wanted to execute was outside our authorities without a smidgeon of interpretive gray area.
On another deployment, a SEAL platoon refused to allow a female intelligence specialist on its forward operating base to conduct a threat assessment—a capability she uniquely had and specifically deployed for. The platoon’s leaders were willing to put their personnel at risk rather than “allow” a female sailor on their compound. Multiple levels of in-country leadership looked the other way before, ultimately, her garrison leaders in San Diego got involved to resolve the issue.
A few years later, a female officer reported abusive, sexually explicit text messages that a SEAL officer had sent to their entire detachment. The command chose to send this officer on deployment anyway, as the detachment had already relieved another SEAL khaki for sexual harassment. The detachment had multiple other officers—SEALs and otherwise—who were qualified to lead the operation.
Rarely was there accountability for SEALs who were drug abusers, serial philanderers, sexual harassers, or outright incompetent. And in what accountability there was, it was less consequential than when non-SEALs were punished for similar offenses. This did not escape anyone’s notice and was frequently mentioned in command climate surveys. When a SEAL leader did try to attempt to reform culture in his own command, it did not outlast his tenure. Accountability was finding a way to help a SEAL fail up—get them out of the Navy, but make sure they have a stellar letter of recommendation to earn a graduate education at an elite institution.
Non-SEAL members of the community can help Rear Admiral Green document the causes and prevalence of the “ethical misalignment.” They have been raising the alarm for years, only to be ignored, gaslit, derided, or outright retaliated against in response. Non-SEAL chiefs and warrant officers—regardless of gender—should also be part of this process. These are proven leaders who have dedicated years of their lives to the NSW community, but also have the insight of having spent significant time outside of it. These are the leaders who can see the forest through the trees.
However, women in the community were often the first to experience the brunt of the cultural challenges, both blatantly and insidiously. We knew we would never be part of the “brotherhood,” were never going to be “one of the guys,” and were never going to fit in. We saw clearly that “brotherhood” meant closing ranks and protecting the Trident and those who wore it, not excising those who did not uphold the Ethos.
I worked for and with some exemplary SEAL and non-SEAL leaders who showed me how incredible the community could be at its best. When I think of my proudest moments in my entire military career, I often think of these individuals and what our teams accomplished. For the sake of the Navy, the NSW community, and national security, I hope the NSW self-examination includes the input of those who have long recommended improvements, but have been ignored or silenced.