A congressional hearing Monday, May 4, focused on testimony from two top Marine leaders regarding the recently released investigation into a summer training accident in which nine men died, including three from Southern California when their amphibious assault vehicle sank off San Clemente Island.
Lawmakers asked about how the accident was able to occur, which the Marines’ investigation described as preventable, and what changes the Marines are making to prevent future accidents.
Members of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee were looking to address their ongoing concern there may be a broader lapse in safety amid an uptick that has been seen the last few year in military training accidents and deaths compared to those related to combat. They have previously held hearings on vehicle rollovers and aviation collisions across military branches.
John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, who heads the subcommittee, noted that in the last five years, 60 service members have died in accidents in the Marine Corps and 137 have died in a decade.
The hearing included testimony from the fathers of two of the men who died in the July 30 training accident when the AAV they rode in took on too much water as it tried to reach an awaiting Navy ship.
Peter Ostrovsky, whose son, Pfc. Jack-Ryan Ostrovsky, 20, from Bend, Ore., was among those who died, spoke in the hearing about his son and his own experiences as a federal law enforcement officer and his understanding of leadership and accountability.
He told Gen. Gary Thomas, the Marine’s assistant commandant, and Maj. Gen. Gregg Olsen, assistant deputy commandant, representing the Corps at the hearing, and Vice Admiral Roy Kitchener, who represented the Navy, a bit about his son, that he was an avid outdoorsman who also enjoyed marksmanship training and military history.
He said it was his son’s dream to become a Marine so he could “serve his country and do things that you could not do in the civilian world.”
Instead of becoming an officer by going to college, Ostrovsky said his son wanted to start at the bottom as a grunt and joined the infantry.
“Jack-Ryan loved being a Marine and we loved that he loved being a Marine,” he said. “With only 13 months of service, he was already talking about re-enlisting and his dream of pursuing a billet in special operations and making the military his lifelong career.”
Ostrovsky, a former special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, said in his own career he planned, conducted and approved many high-risk law enforcement operations, which gave him an understanding what is required in leadership.
“We expect that the Marine Corps and Navy hold accountable, from top-down, all of those who were responsible for this preventable catastrophic incident, through all of the means that are at their disposal and with transparency,” he said. “We also expect that US military systems of accountability and liability be modernized, as a way to ensure that every day moving forward military officers fully appreciate and know the realities of their burden of command so that there is no place for recklessness and gross negligence.”
Thomas told the committee the Marine Corps is looking at “adding additional safety specialists to assure exercises are safe. That and established protocols is what we need to get our safety culture where it needs to be.”
“We’re looking for leaders at all levels to provide necessary oversight and stop exercises when the risk is too high,” he continued. “We are taking a hard look at it.”
Kitchener, who leads the Naval Surface Forces, said the Navy has launched its own investigation into the accident and expects to wrap that up in the next 30 days.
“The Navy cooperated fully with the Marine Corps in the investigation and provided access to records, logs and many witnesses,” he said. “And when we reviewed the investigation, we agreed with the fundamental conclusions that there were no causal factors attributable to the Navy. However, what we did find left a few questions unanswered.”
Kitchener said the investigation will review what actions and decisions Navy personnel made that day that could have contributed to the accident and look into what procedures and policies could be improved.
Another investigation initiated right after the accident by the Naval Safety Center is expected out any time and will recommend more corrective actions to prevent future tragedies.
Members of the congressional subcommittee also learned in their hearing that Maj. Gen. Robert Castellvi, who was in command of the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton at the time the training accident, was put on administrative leave last week while a new investigation is completed.
Members of the committee have been questioning military leaders for weeks about why Castellvi, who in September became the Marine’s new inspector general, remained in a position of oversight at the Pentagon. Eleven other Marines along the chain of command of the expeditionary force the men were training with have received administrative or disciplinary actions.
Lt. Gen. Steven R. Rudder, commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, the senior officer in charge of the recently released report on the first of the two investigations into the training accident, said in his summary he did not take administrative or disciplinary action against Castellvi because he was not the on-scene commander for the training and “was not responsible for any failure that occurred after” the expeditionary unit was formed.
On Monday, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, asked about Castellvi again and was told he had been placed on leave.
In a statement released following the Monday morning hearing, the Marine Corps confirmed the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. David Berger, suspended Castellvi last week “pending the outcome” of a recently initiated investigation into the formation of the expeditionary unit.
That new investigation will look at how preparations for its September deployment may have impacted the series of failures found in the lead-up to the training exercise.
The acting inspector general of the Marine Corps is now Carlyle E. Shelton Jr., who is a civilian. Castellvi has not been reassigned at this time, officials said.
Following the hearing, Ostrovsky said it went as he expected. Ostrovsky said his son was following in the footsteps of his great grandfather, who served in the Navy, and his grandfather, who served in the Army.
“We knew that Jack-Ryan was going to make the Marine Corps a better place,” he said, “but we just never imagined that it would be like this.”