The Navy Times reports that the former second-in-command of the submarine USS Alaska has been convicted of using a cellphone to secretly record others before broadcasting the footage.
Lt. Cmdr. Bryan P. Watson was fired as the blue crew executive officer of the King’s Bay, Georgia-based boat in July 2017, for what officials said at the time were the preliminary results of a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation.
As part of a pre-trial deal, Watson pleaded guilty to indecent visual recording and broadcasting of an indecent visual recording charges on May 1.
Watson was sentenced to 15 months in the brig and a dismissal, according to the Navy.
Officer dismissal is equivalent to a dishonorable discharge.
A redacted charge sheet provided to Navy Times does not state where or when the offenses occurred, but notes that the infractions happened on several occasions in private areas where the victim “had a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Navy officials declined to say how Watson disseminated the footage and said only the information on the charge sheet was releasable.
Watson was transferred to the Navy’s brig at Charleston, South Carolina, in June and could not be reached for comment.
“They’re not entitled to talk to the media,” the brig’s administrative officer, James Greenway, said Tuesday.
The nuke officer was commissioned in 2003 and had stints on the submarines New Hampshire, Louisiana and Michigan before reporting to the Alaska in March 2017, according to Navy Personnel Command records.
He also worked at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations from 2013 to 2016, according to the records.
Navy Judge Advocate General Corps officials said personnel issues prevented Watson’s May conviction from being posted online until recently.
USS Alaska is a Boomer, or ballistic missile boat. These were trial boats for co-ed crews, because their larger relative size to Fast Attack boats could accommodate separate berthing spaces, showers, etc. I’ll bet the former LCDR Watson was recording the female crewmembers in these spaces, violating what little privacy there was to be had. It’s going to be a long 15 months for him; he’s going to be Number 1 Chew Toy for the Brig’s MAs and Marine guards.
Task & Purpose tells the story of 21-year-old Jefferson Taylor, an Army Reservist stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, who crashed through a power pole and several traffic signs at the end of a cruise at 80 miles-per-hour in a 25 MPH zone. Taylor fled the scene leaving his passenger, Hernan Barragan, unconscious in the wrecked vehicle. Barragan died from his injuries 40 minutes later despite the efforts of first responders.
Police used a search dog to track Taylor to a nearby apartment complex, where officers could hear yelling.
They found Taylor lying on the ground outside an apartment door covered with bloody handprints. Taylor was bleeding profusely from a head wound.
Although Taylor claimed the man who lived in the unit shot him, officers determined that Taylor woke the man up by pounding on the door and tried to push his way inside when he heard police approaching the area.
Taylor struggled with police as he was taken into custody, kicking one officer in the chest. He kicked the doors and windows of the patrol car and repeatedly spit blood and threatened to kill officers.
Taylor has been charged with “vehicular homicide, two counts of third-degree assault, failure to remain at a fatal collision and obstructing a law enforcement officer”.
“When told that Mr. Barragan was dead, the defendant responded with expletives, stating he did not care about him,” according to charging papers. “The defendant then launched back into his verbal attacks on the officers.”
I’ll admit that I haven’t been paying much attention to the Standing Rock protest. One of my main issues is “jobs” and getting America back to work and this protest seemed to be against putting America to work, so I just didn’t give it the attention that I should have. Scott Faith at Havoc Journal, however did pay attention, so that when a group of veterans showed up he wrote something more coherent than I could;
After responding to a (fundamentally misguided) call to action to support the Standing Rock protest, hundreds and perhaps thousands of US military veterans were left without basic necessities, without leadership, and now (after being asked to leave by the protest organizers), without a mission.
After literally rallying the troops through “Veterans Stand for Standing Rock” and raising over a million dollar through GoFundMe, and apparently having accomplished their real mission of calling attention to themselves, far-left social justice warrior Wes Clark Jr. and his compatriots seem to be… absent.
When a Wesley Clark gets involved, my attention span shrinks. This Wes Clark, Junior seems to be a bigger asshole than his father. When he got veterans assembled at Standing Rock, he led them in an apology to the tribal elders for all of things that none of those present had perpetrated against Indians;
Wearing a half-assed Army “dress blues” uniform top and cavalry Stetson, Clark and a rag-tag group of (assumed) veterans gave a half-assed, self-serving, very public “apology” to a Native American leader, kneeling before him and begging forgiveness for things no one in the room had anything to do with.
The apology;
“Many of us, me particularly, are from the units that have hurt you over the many years. We came. We fought you. We took your land. We signed treaties that we broke. We stole minerals from your sacred hills. We blasted the faces of our presidents onto your sacred mountain. When we took still more land and then we took your children and then we tried to make your language and we tried to eliminate your language that God gave you, and the Creator gave you. We didn’t respect you, we polluted your Earth, we’ve hurt you in so many ways but we’ve come to say that we are sorry. We are at your service and we beg for your forgiveness.”
So, soon after this, the Army Corp of Engineers announced that they would stop working on the pipeline and try to find another route, so the protesters declared victory and picked up and left the veterans holding the bag;
It seems like the veterans who supported the call, many of whom had noble intentions and some of whom I know personally, were basically used as “useful idiots” to promote Mr. Clark’s far-left agenda. Now, facing extreme hardship, they’ve been left out to dry. No worries though; after all, according to the protest organizers themselves, the veterans and other outside supporters “served their purpose.” With $1.2 million in the bank, and the national spotlight shining bright, I’ll leave it up to you to decide what that “purpose” actually was.
Well, we have a new claim by our “illustrious regime” in DC. They now claim that they know why their past attempts to support that mythical “moderate” Syrian opposition during the Syrian Civil War failed.
They now claim that US support failed because it was sabotaged.
Seriously.
Specifically, the latest attempt to grasp at strawsblatant propaganda designed to shift blame claim is that CIA aid to those mythical “moderate” Syrian rebels was diverted by “dirty Mideast intel”. Allegedly, Jordanian intelligence redirected a substantial part of the aid intended for those mythical “moderate” rebels in Syria to Daesh.
They also admit that corruption within the Syrian opposition was also partly to blame. They had no choice but to do that; that’s already too well publicly documented.
Why would Jordan do that, you ask? Well, as the story goes: because “Jordan’s biggest enemy is anything Shia” – and Daesh was opposing Iran.
Gee. A foreign nation looking out for its own interests. Ya think that might happen on occasion?
And corruption within the shadowy world of intel? Oh, no! That implies that intel is sometimes a “dirty” endeavor! This is big news! Stop the presses!
Hmm. Ya think that maybe corruption might happen on occasion too? Especially in the Middle East? Or in the shadowy world of intel?
At the risk of sounding “insensitive”: both of those possibilities are so obvious that even Stevie Wonder can see them.
These inane tall tales dubious claims by the Administration IMO show one of two things. First, and IMO most likely: they’re simply dissembling in an attempt to redirect blame for failure.
And second: if by some miracle that’s not the case and they’re telling the truth, then this fiasco shows a near-childlike level of incompetence and naïvety. I mean really: given how “steadfastly” we’ve supported our allies recently, did they really not expect Jordan to “look out for number one”? Were they so foolish that they disregarded the possibility of corruption in pretty much ANY organization in the Middle East?
And to add insult to injury: either way, they’re also throwing a valuable ally “under the bus” in the process. We seem to have gotten quite good at that lately, too.
GMAFB. If they didn’t take measures to detect/correct diversion of support to support an ally’s agenda and limit corruption, then IMO they are literally incompetent fools. But given what I’ve seen in the past from this Administration, I can easily believe that could well be the case.
Hell, given this ridiculously naïve and grossly incompetent clown krewe running the show Administration I personally believe both deliberate mendacity and abysmally naïve incompetence played a part in creating this latest fairy tale. No, I don’t have proof that’s the case. But it simply fits.
Once again, I think my leg’s wet. And it hasn’t started raining yet.
The views expressed here are personal and do not represent the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States government.
I’ve recently written about Brandon Bryant, ex-Air Force drone sensor operator (or as they apparently call them in Norway, a “pilot”) over on my blog, PickYourBattles.Net. Brandon is the star of a new Norwegian documentary called Drone, where his personal story is apparently the meat of the flick. There is just one problem. Brandon Bryant is a liar.
In the short video embedded above, at one point Brandon claims, to an audience in New York City, that the FBI called him to inform him that he was being targeted by ISIS. Then the video shows him telling that exact same story to an audience in Germany, where instead of ISIS he says that the FBI told him he was being targeted by a conservative right wing “Christian Patriot” group. This is par for the course. Sadly, most in the media seem to ignore Brandon’s utter lack of credibility. Or at least they don’t carefully research him. I guess I can’t really blame them. After watching more than forty videos of Brandon running his yap, I do not begrudge them for passing up on the experience. Still this charlatan needs to be exposed.
I know Brandon hates him some TAH so I had to show up over here. And when asked to pile on as a guest blogger, I just couldn’t say no. Kind of like Bryant couldn’t say no to violating his oath of office because he was scared that he might be “ridiculed.” Yeah he said that. In public.
To be fair, those of us in the defense business know that ridicule strikes fear into the hearts of even the most courageous soldiers, strike that, “warriors.” Mortars, rockets, small arms, and anti-aircraft artillery are one thing, but we’re talking about ridicule here. This ain’t X-box, ridicule is the real deal, it’s like being in “the shit.” In fact, I may have just now developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) simply from the thought of ridicule. I am viewing a computer screen right now, so there is a case to be made. If you’re Brandon Bryant, of course, or one of his Legion of Jerkoff superhero sidekicks.
Not only does Brandon claim PTSD from being a drone operator with only a handful of lethal actions from ten thousand miles away from the battlefield, but he has also publicly stated that he’s waiting on his VA benefits so that he can have a place of his own. He’s too good traumatized to get a job and he claims to be homeless. Never mind that he lives with his mother in Missoula, or at least he did, and was using the generous GI Bill to go to school; a bounty that comes not just with full tuition, but also with more than $1000 a month in Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH). Still, Brandon will tell ya, he’s homeless and he’s a “disabled veteran” with no income. He says he has nothing. He touts a “physical injury” from his time in the service, but somehow that doesn’t keep him from literally doing back flips on internet video. If you don’t watch this video for any other reason, it’s worth watching just to see that. But to be fair, I can’t swing a stick without hitting a homeless disabled veteran doing gymnastic maneuvers. So there’s that.
But show some compassion, dear reader. Brandon is too disabled to work. Especially not while also fitting in his globe trotting and fine foreign dining, and giving speeches and attending long Q&As about his European film. That poor bastard really pulls on my heart strings.
I’ve known Brandon online for some time now. When I first became acquainted with him, I thought he might have something of substance to offer to an important discussion. Turns out I was wrong. His story morphed over the years from wanting to be a voice for drone operators serving under bad leadership, to him later claiming that distance technology is cowardly and bad. Of course, there are many who agree with him on that point. We in the biz call them the enemy. They hate our distance warfare capability as much as Brandon does, and they prefer making hand-to-hand IEDs. You know, what Brandon would call honorable combat. Practically a fist fight.
Now this self-proclaimed expert on war is writing letters to the President of the United States, as though he has some kind of moral authority despite the fact that he directly violated his oath of office while he was serving. That doesn’t stop him from making lofty proclamations, though.
Not only have I learned that Brandon will lie without a second thought, as the video above demonstrates, but his motivations are not pure. They weren’t pure when he was in the military, and they’re not pure now. It’s still all about him. He knows nothing of service despite his collection of Reader’s Digest quotes to the contrary. He admits that he’s always wanted to be a hero and that he grew up with comic books. I think it’s fair to say that him plagiarizing the words of Captain America from a Marvel comic both at his Tedx talk, as well as during his ramblings at the Drone documentary premiere in New York City, shows that he hasn’t lost that love of fiction. Brandon is all about spreading fictions.
But public service and public discourse are not the stuff of fairy tales. And there is an important discussion to be had about our nation’s national security and how our military capabilities are utilized. Sadly, Brandon is hurting this discussion and the credibility of better people who inexplicably enable his shenanigans. For some reason, these more serious people are not relegating Brandon to the kid’s table where he belongs. Perhaps these journalists and lawyers are just taking their time, as I did, figuring out his lack of character. I suspect, however, that many of Brandon’s foreign friends, like Tonje Hessen Schei, are not too troubled by his character so long as he follows a particular script.
And that script is infecting and hurting an important discussion all over the internet. Hopefully the fine folks at TAH can help foster and improve the discussion by continuing their fine tradition of exposing this guy for the fraud that he is. Brandon likes social media and a lot of people are eating up the piles of manure he’s feeding them. I hope that those who hate liars as much as myself, and who love their country and want our capability to remain strong while we debate the proper use of that capability, will help get the word out on Facebook and Twitter about this scoundrel.
I ran across this on YouTube. I think it might be a clandestine recording of the DRC’s latest high-level strategy session set to music. Or maybe it’s a recording of someone we all “know and love” practicing for his next court appearance. I guess it could be either.
(FWIW: the embedded comments in the video are a hoot. It’s worth watching carefully IMO.)
A bit of trivia about the above: Mike Oldfield recorded it after an argument with Richard Branson during the making of his debut recording, Tubular Bells. Branson reportedly wanted vocals in the work, which Oldfield wanted to remain an instrumental. Finally, after one meeting with Branson, a thoroughly torqued Oldfield yelled, “You want lyrics? I’ll give you lyrics!” He then stormed off.
Oldfield then grabbed the recording engineer, a bottle of Jameson’s, and went to the studio. After drinking half of the bottle of Jameson’s, he recorded about 10 minutes of his own drunken grunting and screaming. This grunting and screaming was then edited and processed (including being slowed down substantially) and dubbed onto the portion of Tubular Bells popularly referred to today as “Piltdown Man” (occurs about half-way through side/part two of the original album).
Usually drunken stupidity is painful as hell. However, every once in a great while what at first blush seems to be drunken idiocy works out OK.
But don’t get any ideas, DRC. You guys don’t have the skills to pull it off. (smile)
Rosie sends us a link to MyFoxChicago which tells the story of two ex-Marines (I used that term on purpose) who assembled the personal information of several Marines while they were clerks in Okinawa and used that information to impersonate those Marines;
After [Leonard E. Parker Jr.] returned to the United States, he and [Dontreal S. Evans] used the Marines’ information to transfer about $138,798 from their accounts into bank accounts of others who’d been recruited into their scheme, prosecutors said.
Parker and Evans offered to pay people to control and access their accounts, according to prosecutors. They later withdrew funds and made purchases from the accounts they controlled.
Parker also filed false tax returns in the names of the Marines whose personal information was on the roster, prosecutors said.
Parker is looking at five counts of fraud and one count of identity theft – each count of fraud equals thirty years in prison.
Late last year we wrote about Keith Michael Novak who was in the Minnesota National Guard and stole the identities of more than 400 of his fellow soldiers to sell to members of his militia group who wanted to dissappear with different IDs according to the Associated Press;
Novak, who prosecutors say was leading an anti-government militia group in Minnesota at the time of his December arrest, pleaded guilty in April to one count of identity theft. In a letter read in court Friday by his attorney, Novak said he meant no harm and he apologized for the “terrible mistake” that has hurt people he cares about.
Prosecutors say Novak stole names, Social Security numbers and security clearance levels of roughly 400 members of his former Army unit and sold the information of 98 people to others so they could create false IDs for militia members in case they “ever wanted to disappear and become someone else.”
Novak believed he was selling the information to Utah-based militia members. They were really undercover FBI agents. His attorney, Anders Folk, argued that since the IDs weren’t used criminally, Novak should receive a lesser punishment.
