🔰Rep AOC Question line Righting the Ship The Coast Guard Must Improve its Processes for Add

I'd like to recognize myself for five minutes of questioning. Lieutenant Commander Young-McClear, thank you so much for coming in and testifying today. Mr. Eaton, thank you as well for your testimony and coming to answer some of our questions. For a very long time, it has been the legacy of this committee for whistleblowing to be a bipartisan and supported activity, because without whistleblowers, we cannot maintain the integrity of our government activities. That is how we're able to ensure that every single branch and every single office under our federal administration conducts itself with the utmost integrity and that we live our values in the work that we do. As we have discussed, the Inspector General's Office confirmed that Lieutenant Commander Young-McClear suffered retaliation for raising allegations of harassment and bullying. And, Lieutenant Commander, once again, thank you for sharing this story and for bringing this pattern of behavior up to us. Mr. Eaton, this past September, your office released another report of investigation that substantiated retaliation against Coast Guard officers for whistleblowing. Specifically, your investigation substantiated retaliation against a Lieutenant Commander and a Lieutenant assigned to a port security unit. Is that correct? That's correct. Can you tell us briefly about your findings in that case? And did whistleblowers in those cases also receive unfavorable officer evaluation reports? Yes, we did find that retaliation occurred in those cases. Like this one, those officers received negative evaluations on their OERs. There were also other instances of retaliation, such as the withholding or denial of certain awards or the removal from a temporary duty assignment. So this is not just a matter limited to Lieutenant Commander Young-McClear's experience. This seems to be something of a pattern in that there are other examples of retaliation going on in the Coast Guard. That is clear. I guess I should make one distinction, that those complaints of retaliation for protected communications were not about allegations of discrimination but about reporting misconduct by their senior officers. I see. And you mentioned earlier that the Inspector General also began the review of race-based cases at the Academy. What caused and what triggered the IG to begin to review that? That review was begun independently of this particular case, although our evaluators are certainly informed by our report and our findings. So given that it's happening independent of this case, what has caused the IG to look into it? I believe we received requests from Congress, and we've noticed reporting in the media. So there's a pattern of reporting about race-based cases, and there's a separate pattern of reporting of retaliation against whistleblowing. Is that correct? I don't know if I would go so far as to characterize it a pattern, but there has been reporting. Okay. And could whistleblower retaliation cause service members to be reluctant to speak out about deficiencies in the Coast Guard? Yes. So over a 12-month period, the Inspector General's office has found that Coast Guard officers retaliated against three service members. And in all three cases, at least one of the methods of retaliation was by lowering the officer evaluation report. That, frankly, is completely unacceptable. What this also does is, as the Lieutenant Commander mentioned earlier, is that it could potentially allow some of the worst actors to be elevated within a culture, within an office, while when we lower officer evaluation reports, some of our finest officers being relegated to being stuck in their careers. Not only is it unacceptable, but it has a profoundly detrimental effect on the Coast Guard's ability to carry out its mission. So clearly the Coast Guard must take additional steps to ensure that service members who blow the whistle are protected from this kind of retaliation. And so I think that's a huge part of what our job and what our role is here today. Lieutenant Commander Young-McClear, you did your job by blowing the whistle on this, but we need to do ours. And we need to make sure that we take this report extremely seriously and make sure that we follow up, along with the Inspector General who has substantiated these reports as well. And I know, not just speaking for myself, but for our committee, that's exactly what our intention is. Thank you all very much.