In 1996 and early 1997, I was recalled to active duty for Operation Joint Endeavor, President Clinton’s little peccadillo in the Balkans. I ended up on the staff of the Command Surgeon, US Army Europe, and was assigned as one of the SURG reps in the CINC’s war room. We were hammered daily with security lectures; you had to card in and out, and the computers in the war room were air-gapped, even in those years when the internet was still in its infancy. The only messages that could go in or out electronically were through the Army’s secure teletype system. We were also lectured daily on the consequences of revealing classified information.
So it’s a little baffling to see a Navy Chief Petty Officer (CPO) installing an unauthorized Starlink dish on a warship.
A U.S. Navy official was relieved of her duties and demoted, after having an unauthorized Starlink High Performance satellite dish installed on a warship and lying about it to her commanding officer.
Grisel Marrero, a command senior chief of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, was demoted in either August or September 2023.
Information on her dismissal and the investigation that led to it were only released this week to the Navy Times.
This can’t be seen as anything other than a severe violation of communications security (COMSEC). If I or any of my fellow officers in that war room in 1996 had engaged in any similar cluster foul-ups, we had been told in no uncertain terms that it would result in loss of commission and discharge from the service, at a minimum.
But here’s the real head-scratcher:
Marrero reportedly wanted the dish so she and other enlisted officers could better access social media, online content and sports scores.
Navy investigators learned Marrero lied to her superior officer about the dish, which she nicknamed “Stinky,” when asked about it. She also disguised the network by renaming it as a printer.
This is a deliberate attempt to deceive – and over social media?
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It’s important to note that the Starlink dish is a two-way system, not a passive receiver. This isn’t my area of expertise, but it sure seems like this would allow the ship to be tracked, and its whereabouts would be known by anyone in the area. Even if this particular installation somehow evades that, it doesn’t detract from the fact that Chief Marrero lied to her commander about it. In a sensible system, this violation of regulations and security should result in a bad-conduct discharge, at the minimum. But that’s not what happened.
Marrero was convicted in March at a court-martial proceeding. She pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and providing false official statements to commanders, and sentenced to a reduction in rank.
So she’s still in the Navy. We can hope that she will never be placed in a position of trust with classified information, but a reduction in grade? That’s all? Really?
The military, as I’m constantly pointing out, is like no other institution in our society. A breach of faith, a breach of trust like this cannot be tolerated – and it cannot be forgiven. This is an act that, in the event of war, could have gotten everyone on that ship killed and a multi-billion dollar ship destroyed. Is checking your high-school friend’s latest recipe for macaroni and cheese worth all that?
Given my brief and modest experience with operating in a secured environment with classified information, this punishment seems unbearably light. Chief Marrero has broken faith with her chain of command, has proven herself unfit to serve on a U.S. Navy warship, and should be handed a bad-conduct discharge and sent back to the block.
