Iowa Inquiry Did Not Malign Sailors’ Character, Report Finds

Navy investigators conducted a thorough criminal probe of the explosion aboard the battleship Iowa and properly investigated allegations of homosexuality involving sailors Clayton M. Hartwig and Kendall L. Truitt, the Pentagon’s inspector general said in a report Wednesday.

“The Naval Investigative Service did not malign the character of Hartwig or Truitt,” Inspector General June Gibbs Brown said in a report sent to Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III.

Brown conducted a review of the investigative techniques and procedures used by the Naval Investigative Service after allegations last summer by Truitt and by Hartwig’s family that the NIS mishandled the investigation and leaked damaging allegations to the news media.

NIS officials assisted Rear Adm. Richard D. Milligan in his four-month investigation into the blast that claimed 47 lives aboard the battleship on April 19.

Milligan cited Hartwig as the most likely person to have caused the explosion, saying he apparently placed some type of detonator between gun powder bags. He said Truitt, who survived the blast in the lowest level of the gun turret, had no link to its cause.

The inspector general’s review found that “the NIS investigation was thorough, complete and expeditious” and that it was proper for special agents to investigate allegations of possible homosexuality in the case, even though no such activity was proven.

Miami defense attorney Ellis Rubin, who represents Truitt, called the report “a perfect example of one branch of the government covering up and whitewashing another branch of the government. This whole Iowa investigation has been one Watergate piled on top of another.”

Hartwig’s family has charged the Navy with using the sailor as a scapegoat and has sought a congressional investigation.