{"id":131984,"date":"2012-10-08T10:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=131984"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:03:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:03:33","slug":"navy-shaft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> Why was a Navy adviser stripped of her career<\/a> by Jeff Stein in the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> Gwenyth Todd had worked in a lot of places in Washington where powerful men didn\u2019t hesitate to use sharp elbows. She had been a Middle East expert for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. She had worked in the office of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, where neoconservative hawks first began planning to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

But she was not prepared a few years later in Bahrain when she encountered plans by high-ranking admirals to confront Iran, any one of which, she reckoned, could set the region on fire. It was 2007, and Todd, then 42, was a top political adviser to the U.S. Navy\u2019s 5th Fleet.<\/p>\n

Previous 5th Fleet commanders had resisted various ploys by Bush administration hawks to threaten the Tehran regime. But in spring 2007, a new commander arrived with an ambitious program to show the Iranians who was boss in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff had amassed an impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9, rising through the ranks to command a cruiser and a warship group after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Following a customary path to three stars, he had also spent as much time in Washington as he had at sea, including stints at the Defense Intelligence Agency and as director of the Clinton White House Situation Room.<\/p>\n

Cosgriff \u2014 backed by a powerful friend and boss, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) chief Adm. William J. \u201cFox\u201d Fallon \u2014 was itching to push the Iranians, Todd and other present and former Navy officials say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a feeling that the Navy was back on its heels in dealing with Iran,\u201d according to a Navy official prohibited from commenting in the media. \u201cThere was an intention to be far more aggressive with the Iranians, and a diminished concern about keeping Washington in the loop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two people who were there said Cosgriff mused in a staff meeting one day that he\u2019d like to steam a Navy frigate up the Shatt al Arab, the diplomatically sensitive and economically crucial waterway dividing Iraq and Iran. In another, they said, he wanted to convene a regional conference to push back Iran\u2019s territorial claims in the waterway, a flash point for the bloody Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Then he presented an idea that not only alarmed Todd, but eventually, she believes, launched the chain of events that would end her career.<\/p>\n

Cosgriff declined to discuss any of these meetings on the record. This story includes information from a half-dozen Navy and other government officials who demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, many parts of which remain classified.<\/p>\n

According to Todd and another witness, Cosgriff\u2019s idea, presented in a series of staff meetings, was to sail three \u201cbig decks,\u201d as aircraft carriers are known, through the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 to put a virtual armada, unannounced, on Iran\u2019s doorstep. No advance notice, even to Saudi Arabia and other gulf allies. Not only that, they said, Cosgriff ordered his staff to keep the State Department in the dark, too.<\/p>\n

To Todd, it was like something straight out of \u201cSeven Days in May,\u201d the 1964 political thriller about a right-wing U.S. military coup. A retired senior naval officer familiar with Cosgriff\u2019s thinking said the deployment plan was not intended to be provocative.<\/p>\n

But Todd, in an account backed by another Navy official, said the admiral \u201cwas very, very clear that we were to tell him if there was any sign that Washington was aware of it and asking questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the past year, the air had been electric with reports of impending U.S. or Israeli attacks on Iran. If this maneuver were carried out, Todd and others feared, the Iranians would freak out. At the least, they\u2019d cancel a critical diplomatic meeting coming up with U.S. officials. Todd suspected that was Cosgriff\u2019s aim. She and others also speculated that Cosgriff wouldn\u2019t propose such a brazen plan without Fallon\u2019s support.<\/p>\n

Retired Adm. David C. Nichols, deputy Centcom commander in 2007, recalled in an interview last year that Fallon \u201cwanted to do a freedom-of-navigation exercise in what Iran calls its territorial waters that we hadn\u2019t done in a long time.\u201d Nothing wrong with that, per se, but the problem was that \u201cwe don\u2019t understand Iran\u2019s perception of what we\u2019re doing, and we haven\u2019t understood what they\u2019re doing and why,\u201d Nichols said. \u201cIt makes miscalculations possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd feared that the Iranians would respond, possibly by launching fast-attack missile boats into the gulf or unleashing Hezbollah on Israel. Then anything could happen: a collision, a jittery exchange of gunfire \u2014 bad enough on its own, but also an incident that Washington hawks could seize on to justify an all-out response on Iran.<\/p>\n

Preposterous? It had happened before, off North Vietnam in 1964. In the Tonkin Gulf incident, a Navy captain claimed a communist attack on his ship. President Lyndon Johnson swiftly ordered the bombing of North Vietnam, touching off a wider war that turned the country upside down and left more than 58,000 U.S. servicemen dead.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t tell anybody? No way.<\/p>\n

Todd picked up the phone and called a friend in Foggy Bottom. She had to get this thing stopped.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Gwenyth Todd was from a long line of American diplomats, bankers, spies and scholars going back to Revolutionary times. Her first 17 years had been spent following her father, Kenneth Thompson, a career diplomat, and mother, Eve Tyler, granddaughter of a renowned art collector, through embassies in Malta, Turkey, West Africa, England and Spain. Summers were spent at the family chateau in France, where the bloodline led back to Napoleon.<\/p>\n

But Washington was home. Her maternal grandfather, William Royall Tyler, had been an assistant secretary of state in the Kennedy administration and director of Dumbarton Oaks, the estate and center for Byzantine and pre-Columbian art studies. The estate\u2019s original owners, Robert and Mildred Bliss, were intimate friends of her family. \u201cWhen we weren\u2019t overseas, I spent much of my time as a child playing in the gardens,\u201d Todd said during one of several interviews in the past year.<\/p>\n

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in Near and Middle Eastern studies from the University of California at Berkeley, then earned a master\u2019s in Arabic and international affairs in 1990 at Georgetown University.<\/p>\n

Bright, brash, tall and sexy \u2014 she had modeling jobs between Berkeley and Georgetown \u2014 she seemed destined for a promising career. But she also revealed an early penchant for intrigue. She recounts how, studying Arabic in Syria in 1989, she had drawn the attention of the secret police, who suspected her of being an American spy, apparently because of her romance with a dashing young U.S. Army officer, Maurice \u201cLin\u201d Todd, attached to the U.N. mission in Damascus. Tipped by a Syrian student that her arrest was imminent, she said her boyfriend suggested they marry immediately so she could escape with diplomatic immunity as a spouse of a member of the U.N. mission. The marriage lasted only six years, \u201ca huge disappointment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

From there on, her life would seem to unfold as if it were an episode of \u201cAlias\u201d or \u201cCovert Affairs.\u201d One time, \u201cI hired a car and driver and drove across the Sinai from Cairo to the Israeli border, with Abba blaring on the stereo and feeling rather like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,\u201d she recalled. Destination: Eliat, on the Red Sea. Mission: scuba diving.<\/p>\n

Conversant in French, Spanish, Turkish and Arabic, Todd quickly won a White House internship and a job at the U.S. Army Security Assistance Command in Alexandria. Her job involved squiring senior foreign military officers around town.<\/p>\n

Right away, remembered her boss, Linda Baish, then chief of USASAC\u2019s Pacific Division, Todd was fearless about standing up to overbearing men.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very impressed with her,\u201d Baish said. \u201cShe was, I thought, the kind of person who should be representing the U.S. government.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1991, Todd, 27, quickly won a transfer to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where she gained her first top-secret security clearance and became the desk officer for Iraq, Kuwait and Oman. In charge of analyzing regional events, in particular the effectiveness of economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein, Todd found herself rubbing elbows with Pentagon neoconservatives who she says were already conspiring with Iraqi exiles to replace the dictator a dozen years before the invasion of Iraq. She believed overthrowing Hussein and his fellow Sunnis, implacable enemies of Iran, would be a strategic blunder.<\/p>\n

With Bill Clinton\u2019s election victory in 1992, Todd became desk officer for Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. It was a lively time, with covert U.S. involvement in operations to liquidate Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug kingpin, and Abimael Guzman, leader of Peru\u2019s Shining Path revolutionaries.<\/p>\n

Two years later, she was back on more familiar turf, as Pentagon desk officer for Turkey, Spain and Cyprus. Clearly on a fast track, she was appointed special assistant to Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy. For her work there, she received the department\u2019s Distinguished Civilian Service Award. And in 1997, she got the brass ring: transfer to the White House National Security Council.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery heady stuff,\u201d she remembered. But she was now also involved in another high-voltage relationship.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Tall, slim and extremely well informed in the ways of Washington, Robert Cabelly had been an Africa expert in three administrations by the time he encountered Gwenyth Todd at Pesce, the fashionable Dupont Circle seafood bistro. Now, in 1995, he was about to turn his inside connections into K Street gold as a lobbyist for oil-rich African regimes.<\/p>\n

Todd, little more than half Cabelly\u2019s age, was attracted to high-powered men who shared her interests. Still hurting from the end of her marriage, however, she wasn\u2019t open to romance. But two years later, \u201cunder the impression that he was separated from his wife,\u201d Todd said, \u201cwe began a tempestuous relationship.\u201d In 2000, she learned that she was pregnant \u2014 and that Cabelly had no intention of divorce, she said.<\/p>\n

(Cabelly referred questions about Todd to his Washington lawyer, Aitan Goelman, who declined to comment for the record.)<\/p>\n

By then, Todd had left the White House. She was disenchanted with the administration and wanted to make more money to provide her daughter with advantages she had enjoyed as a child.<\/p>\n

She took a consulting job with Global Crossing, a partner of the Houston-based Enron energy conglomerate. When Global, like Enron, went belly up a year later, she was a 37-year-old unemployed single mother of an infant.<\/p>\n

Cabelly stepped forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobert had a vested interest in making sure I got a decent job, because I was raising [our daughter],\u201d Todd said. \u201cRobert\u2019s business partner helped me set up my own company,\u201d the consulting firm G.E.T. LLC, in Rockville. Her first client was Nuri Colakoglu, a Turkish steel and shipping magnate.<\/p>\n

Unknown to Cabelly, she says, she began an affair with Colakoglu, who showered her with jewels and spun her around the Mediterranean on his yacht. And unknown to her, she says, Cabelly was getting into business with some of Africa\u2019s worst despots, including Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.<\/p>\n

Cabelly never confided the particulars with her, Todd said. \u201cThe most detail I ever heard was that Bashir wears cheap, fussy leopard-print slippers,\u201d she said. \u201cBut [Cabelly] was always stepping out of the room with his mobile to talk to high-level U.S. officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cabelly seemed to be providing an unofficial back channel to Sudan, she said.<\/p>\n

Then one day in January 2005 she got an intriguing offer from Adm. David Nichols, commander of the 5th Fleet: Come to Manama, Bahrain, as a political adviser, on contract \u2014 you can keep your other clients. They had conferred twice the previous year, when Todd stopped in Bahrain during a business trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was immediately impressed by the sharpness of her mind and the incisiveness of her comments on Middle East strategic issues,\u201d Nichols would write years later, in a glowing recommendation of her work.<\/p>\n

The job went well for two years, until Cosgriff showed up.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Nichols and his seccessor as 5th Fleet commander, Adm. Patrick Walsh, had been determined to avoid rhetoric or maneuvers that could lead to an unintended clash with Iran. In one instance, Todd recalled, commanders in Bahrain had used her to leak one inflammatory plan from Washington to Time magazine. It was derailed.<\/p>\n

But Cosgriff seemed as eager as the Bush administration hawks to mix it up with the Iranians.<\/p>\n

When Cosgriff instructed Todd and other staff not to tell the State Department about his plan to marshal the big decks (two aircraft carriers, an amphibious helicopter assault carrier and five supporting warships) that May in 2007, Todd said, it was just too much. She immediately called a family friend at the State Department\u2019s Iran desk. Her contact alerted superiors, according to sources familiar with events, and Cosgriff was told to stand down, at least until the critical conference with the Iranians was over. He was also told to notify the Saudis and other gulf allies before resuming the maneuver.<\/p>\n

The armada passed through the strait a week later, on May 23, without incident. Likewise, in Baghdad, Iranian and American diplomats met as scheduled.<\/p>\n

Cosgriff was furious about \u201cthe [expletive] storm\u201d coming down on him from Washington because of the leak, according to Todd and another staff member.<\/p>\n

Cosgriff declined to comment for the record, but a retired senior naval officer said Cosgriff \u201cwas collaborating with … Adm. Fallon\u201d and had \u201ctaken a little heat. … It was a \u2018lessons learned\u2019 thing \u2014 you gotta notify people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Administration officials privy to the affair, meanwhile, said they were surprised when Fallon portrayed himself, in a much-talked-about 2008 Esquire interview, as nearly single-handedly stopping Bush administration hawks from starting a war with Iran. Because of the uproar over the article, he resigned shortly after.<\/p>\n

As for the big-decks conspiracy scenario presented by Todd and others, Fallon called it \u201cB.S.\u201d in an e-mail, but declined to answer further questions.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Todd was relieved. The big-decks surprise had been defused, and Cosgriff didn\u2019t seem to suspect her of leaking the plan.<\/p>\n

Then another emergency popped up, this one personal. Two FBI agents showed up in Bahrain with questions about her, Cabelly and Sudan. They told her Cabelly\u2019s business dealings with the regime, prohibited by trade sanctions, were under investigation. Todd was surprised. Cabelly had been granted an exemption in 2005, and she assumed U.S. officials were using him as a back channel to the regime.<\/p>\n

After an outcry by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Cabelly had dropped his $530,000 annual contract with Sudan to provide PR advice to its embassy in Washington. The government believed he had quietly pursued other business in Sudan, notably oil and aircraft deals.<\/p>\n

Todd said she told the agents she had as little to do with Cabelly as possible, outside of child support. She was now romantically involved with Capt. Charles Huxtable, a handsome Royal Australian Navy captain who was a liaison officer to the 5th Fleet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not helping Robert re Sudan,\u201d Todd said in a recent e-mail. \u201cI thought (and still do) that Robert was working on behalf of the USG.\u201d Fifth Fleet commander Walsh, for one, met with Cabelly when he came to Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Todd opened her house, as well as her computers, to the FBI agents, she said. They talked for hours. The FBI agents wanted to know about $30,000 Cabelly had given her. She said she explained that it was for emergency surgery \u2014 Bahrain hospitals demanded upfront cash guarantees from foreigners \u2014 but that she had returned it, because Colakoglu, her Turkish client, had stepped in to help her first.<\/p>\n

She had nothing to hide, she told the agents as they departed with her computers. When they left, they presented her with a summons to appear before a grand jury in Washington.<\/p>\n

She hired a lawyer.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Months passed. Todd heard nothing more from the FBI. But at work, she believed Cosgriff started freezing her out.<\/p>\n

Then, on Dec. 13, 2007, he summoned her to his office. An intelligence report had come in about a possible Iran-backed attack on U.S. personnel in Bahrain. The report, which she guessed originated with the local CIA station, said the attacks were to be led by Bahrain\u2019s top Shiite religious figure, Isa Qassim.<\/p>\n

Todd thought the report was fishy. Although Bahrain\u2019s Shiites did oppose the U.S.-backed Sunni monarchy, they\u2019re Arabs, eternal enemies of the Persian Iranians. And Qassim himself, it happened, had warned Todd just the previous day that anti-monarchy demonstrators might attack places frequented by U.S. personnel.<\/p>\n

The report \u201clooked like a fabrication by someone trying to kill two birds with one stone, by making the Bahraini Shia appear to be anti-U.S. terrorists who also happened to be taking orders from Iran,\u201d Todd said. \u201cI knew, really knew, that the Bahraini Shia were trying to ensure U.S. personnel were nowhere near the possible violence.\u201d She suspected the intelligence report was cooked up by Bush administration hawks.<\/p>\n

Cosgriff \u201casked me if I could go out and verify the information at the source \u2014 an informant in Dirza, a Shia village \u2014 saying that he realized it was dangerous,\u201d Todd said.<\/p>\n

Cosgriff declined to answer questions for the record about his meeting with Todd; a retired senior naval officer familiar with his thinking said he did not issue an order.<\/p>\n

Todd\u2019s boss, Martin Adams, recalled the event. \u201cI saw the incoming report,\u201d Adams said. \u201cSomeone \u2014 I do not remember who, but it was a junior officer \u2014 brought it to the office I shared with Gwenyth and showed it to her and to me. Subsequently, Gwenyth got a call, asking her to go down and see Cosgriff \u2014 an unusual event in itself. When she returned, she said she had to work that evening, as Cosgriff had asked her to go out to confirm the information in the report.\u201d<\/p>\n

But first, they called Cmdr. Carl Inman, the assistant Fleet N2, or intelligence officer. \u201cHe was very surprised Cosgriff had called me, not him,\u201d Todd said. Inman said he could not recall that.<\/p>\n

According to Todd and Adams, however, the three decided that going at night to Diraz, a restive Shiite area seven miles north of Manama, was too dangerous. Instead, she\u2019d try a foreign businessman in town who had good contacts among leading Shiites.<\/p>\n

That night, she met at a Manama restaurant with the businessman and a Shiite dissident, a man the CIA station chief had once warned her was a \u201cterrorist\u201d but who she was confident was not. It soon became clear they were being watched by Bahraini security men, she said.<\/p>\n

The dissident batted away the report. The last thing the Bahraini Shiites wanted, he said, was to antagonize the Americans. But violence definitely could erupt between protesters and security forces, he said. U.S. personnel should steer clear.<\/p>\n

Todd returned to the base at 10:30, but at the gate, her security badges didn\u2019t work. A glitch, she thought. She talked the guard into letting her in and wrote up a warning report.<\/p>\n

At 2 a.m., Inman came in. \u201cThis is important,\u201d she remembered him saying. \u201cIt has to go out now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inman did recall that \u201cwe then made sure the right people had her information, her observations and her analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exhausted, Todd walked out of her office \u2014 for the last time, it turned out.<\/p>\n

At 7:30 the next morning, her badge still wasn\u2019t working. Again she wangled her way past a guard. An \u201cagitated\u201d Inman appeared.<\/p>\n

Go home, he said. \u201cThe front office is very upset.\u201d He couldn\u2019t say more.<\/p>\n

\u201cFreaking out,\u201d Todd went to a nearby Starbucks. She called Cosgriff, but got shunted to an adjutant, who told her: \u201cYou have to come in for an explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now wary, Todd refused.<\/p>\n

The next day, her computer access was shut down. The day after that, Cosgriff\u2019s chief of staff called to demand she come in to turn in her badges. Instead, she gave them to Adams for delivery.<\/p>\n

Then came a stunning revelation: Todd said she learned from a friend that her access had been suspended the same day Cosgriff had dispatched her into the night to verify the threat report.<\/p>\n

What? Todd said she felt the room spin. Cosgriff had given her a sensitive assignment \u2014 to meet a suspect Shiite \u2014 after her clearances had been suspended? It didn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n

Ten days later, on Christmas Eve, her contract was abruptly terminated without explanation. Stripped of clearances, she was not only out of a job, it appeared, but finished altogether, her career in tatters.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

As the holidays passed, she gloomily assessed her prospects. Huxtable, her Australian navy captain, presented her with an escape plan: Go to Perth, his next duty assignment. Get a house for us. Wait for me there.<\/p>\n

She gathered up her daughter and fled. While she appealed to the Navy for an explanation, she solicited recommendations from old colleagues, hoping she might find work again, somehow, in foreign policy. Many stepped forward.<\/p>\n

Adm. John W. Miller, now 5th Fleet commander, called her judgments \u201csound and invariably on the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd\u2019s departure from Bahrain was \u201ca serious loss,\u201d Inman wrote. \u201cHer appraisals of events are almost uncanny in their accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huxtable finally arrived from Bahrain, and she busied herself in wildlife restoration at a national park, helping rescue injured kangaroos.<\/p>\n

Then, events in Bahrain caught up with her. On Feb. 27, 2008, a letter from Cosgriff\u2019s chief of staff, Capt. Joe Sensi, arrived via \u201cunregistered snail mail.\u201d It was dated Dec. 13, 2007, the day of her strange intelligence mission. For the first time, she read that her contract had been terminated because of \u201cunreported foreign contacts … financial irresponsibility … [and] the disclosure of classified information to unauthorized persons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd shot back a six-page response, demanding a \u201cdetailed substantiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no unreported foreign contacts,\u201d she said in the letter. \u201cOn the contrary, every contact of interest I have come across during my time at [Naval Forces Central Command] I have factored into my reporting to the Command.\u201d She referred to several, including \u201cthe meetings I knew Mr. Cabelly had arranged between Sudanese and Bahraini businessmen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next: \u201cIf there were concerns about my finances, they were never brought to my attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next: \u201cI have not knowingly disclosed classified information to any unauthorized person.\u201d Her clearances routinely had been renewed.<\/p>\n

Finally, Todd demanded \u201ca full explanation\u201d of why the Navy had violated personnel rules in canceling her clearances without notice or a chance to appeal.<\/p>\n

The Navy\u2019s response: \u201cAs … the manual states, commanding officers will suspend individual access to classified material as warranted.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Her first year of exile passed slowly in Perth. On March 29, 2009, \u201cin a lovely ceremony on a bright sunny day in the garden of our landlady,\u201d she and Huxtable exchanged vows. They moved to Canberra, where her husband took a new post.<\/p>\n

Things seemed to have died down at last. But on Oct. 27, 2009, the Justice Department unsealed its indictment of Robert Cabelly. According to the indictment, he had violated sanctions on Sudan, as well as engaged in money laundering, passport fraud and making false statements. Cabelly entered a plea of not guilty to all counts.<\/p>\n

And to her alarm, Todd discovered she had been included as an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator. Her lawyer warned her not to step on American soil until things were resolved.<\/p>\n

Then came the oddest incident of all, according to Todd.<\/p>\n

One night in February 2011, Todd said, she was preparing dinner when the doorbell rang.<\/p>\n

On the doorstep was a man who introduced himself as \u201cBill Phelps, a consular officer from the American Embassy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained to Todd and her husband that Chinese hackers had been compromising U.S. passports, and he was warning ex-pat Americans about it. He was at the H\u2019s. Could he see her papers, please?<\/p>\n

\u201cMine begins with T,\u201d she said. \u201cMy name is Todd.\u201d She nodded at her husband, Charles. \u201cHe\u2019s an H.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man appeared flustered. \u201cOh, wait, let me think,\u201d she recalled him saying. \u201cR, S, T. … Oh, yeah, T\u2019s were compromised, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd said she \u201csmelled a rat … somebody connected with U.S. intelligence.\u201d Huxtable was incensed. They told the man to leave.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, \u201cPhelps\u201d returned the next day and confessed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI lied \u2014 I\u2019m with the FBI, and we want to talk to you,\u201d Todd recalled him saying. He wanted her to come to the embassy for a video conference with Washington officials to discuss her relationship with Cabelly. The FBI did not respond to requests to confirm Todd\u2019s account, which she first provided to Australian television immediately after the incident.<\/p>\n

It had been a comically clumsy ruse, but Todd wasn\u2019t laughing. Neither was Huxtable, who alerted his superiors that the FBI was evidently conducting some kind of \u201crogue investigation\u201d in Australia, an egregious violation of protocol.<\/p>\n

Todd asked the agent whether he could guarantee her immunity if she came to the embassy. No, he said. Forget it then, she replied.<\/p>\n

She called her lawyer in Washington. He made a few inquiries and told her that she had been dropped from the indictment months before: There had been a misunderstanding about the cash Cabelly had brought her in 2006 for the emergency surgery, she said.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Todd understands her story sounds improbable. Indeed, she spends at least part of every day spinning various conspiracy theories through her mind.<\/p>\n

For a long while, she admits, \u201cI thought I was perhaps being paranoid.\u201d But when the mysterious FBI agent showed up, she decided somebody really was out to get her.<\/p>\n

The question was who \u2014 or who first?<\/p>\n

She wondered if maybe the whole Bahrain catastrophe came down to the FBI trying to pressure her to give up information they thought she had on Cabelly.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, she thought it curious that the FBI man had showed up only days after she had been quoted in the New York Times harshly criticizing the Bush administration\u2019s Bahrain policy, which was \u201cconsciously ignoring at best the situation of Bahraini Shiites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was somebody in Washington still smarting over her Dec. 13, 2007, refutation of its intelligence report linking Shiite protesters to Iran?<\/p>\n

Or was hers a classic Washington tale of a strong woman slapped down for standing up to powerful men? \u201cSisterhood\u201d wasn\u2019t a word that came easily to Todd\u2019s lips, but now she felt a kinship to Valerie Plame, the CIA operative outed by Bush officials because her diplomat husband challenged their case for invading Iraq.<\/p>\n

Todd swings from theory to theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want my opinion, I am 100 percent convinced that this is about my thwarting plans to provoke war with Iran,\u201d Todd said at one point.<\/p>\n

One former official familiar with the events in Bahrain agreed. \u201cShe got on the wrong side of some powerful people,\u201d he said on condition of anonymity in exchange for discussing anything about the case.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department will not discuss anything about the Cabelly case. The FBI did not respond to requests to discuss the Australia incident, Todd or Cabelly.<\/p>\n

Cabelly\u2019s travails, however, may be reaching closure. A sentencing hearing, scheduled for June, was postponed, under seal.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Eighteen months later, Todd is still afraid to come home, lest the Cabelly case pop up and bite her again. Her parents have visited from Vermont, where they are retired, on a few holidays. Once in 2008 they gathered in Toronto, where she was meeting her lawyers.<\/p>\n

At 47, she\u2019s no longer a high-level player in big-think Middle East strategy (though, judging by her e-mail exchanges with past and present senior officers, Navy leaders still welcome her advice). She worries: The drumbeat for a military attack on Iran, she says, is being pounded \u201cby the same people who gave us Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to Gwenyth in Bahrain was shocking,\u201d said her father, Kenneth Thompson, \u201cbut having spent much of my working life in the State Department, I know that such things are possible. The only way to curb such abuses of power is to make the facts public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her continued inquiries to the Navy have been bounced from office to office. She complained to the Navy\u2019s Inspector General Hotline, which responded that it \u201cwill neither confirm, nor deny, receipt of your Hotline complaint via email of 28 Feb 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a Freedom of Information Act request, the Navy Central Command said it has no records of Cosgriff and Fallon discussing a plan to move the big decks, no records of the intelligence report on Shia unrest, no warning report by Todd and Inman on Dec. 14, and no \u201crecords related to the revocation of Ms. Todd\u2019s security clearance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Defense Security Service indicated that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had a classified file on her; NCIS says it is working on a FOIA response.<\/p>\n

In desperation in February 2011, Todd wrote to two high-ranking Navy officers, including Miller, who had provided her such a glowing recommendation in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan either of you help me?\u201d Todd beseeched. \u201cI do not want to cause more damage, but this whole situation is un-American. I just want to know the facts, and then I will shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller, who assumed command of the 5th Fleet this year, told her he would look into it. She is certain he will. As of press time, however, help has yet to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: Why was a Navy adviser stripped of her career by Jeff Stein in the Washington Post. The Text: Gwenyth Todd had worked in a lot of places in Washington where powerful men didn\u2019t hesitate to use sharp elbows. She had been a Middle East expert for the National Security Council in the Clinton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow To Get The Shaft By The Navy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A former Navy advisor tells the story of being stripped of her career.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A former Navy advisor tells the story of being stripped of her career.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Prose Before Hos\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-08T14:00:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-12-26T21:03:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Article of the Day\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@pbhnetwork\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@pbhnetwork\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Article of the Day\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"25 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/\",\"name\":\"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-08T14:00:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-12-26T21:03:33+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#\/schema\/person\/1e19d7cf2b1a9aea1805fd7b4b4b2b4e\"},\"description\":\"A former Navy advisor tells the story of being stripped of her career.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/\",\"name\":\"Prose Before Hos\",\"description\":\"The Far Side Of Politics\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#\/schema\/person\/1e19d7cf2b1a9aea1805fd7b4b4b2b4e\",\"name\":\"Article of the Day\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pbhnetwork\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/author\/article-of-the-day\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy","description":"A former Navy advisor tells the story of being stripped of her career.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy","og_description":"A former Navy advisor tells the story of being stripped of her career.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/","og_site_name":"Prose Before Hos","article_published_time":"2012-10-08T14:00:25+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-12-26T21:03:33+00:00","author":"Article of the Day","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@pbhnetwork","twitter_site":"@pbhnetwork","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Article of the Day","Est. reading time":"25 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/","url":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/","name":"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-10-08T14:00:25+00:00","dateModified":"2012-12-26T21:03:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#\/schema\/person\/1e19d7cf2b1a9aea1805fd7b4b4b2b4e"},"description":"A former Navy advisor tells the story of being stripped of her career.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/10\/08\/navy-shaft\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How To Get The Shaft By The Navy"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/","name":"Prose Before Hos","description":"The Far Side Of Politics","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/#\/schema\/person\/1e19d7cf2b1a9aea1805fd7b4b4b2b4e","name":"Article of the Day","sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/pbhnetwork"],"url":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/author\/article-of-the-day\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131984"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133451,"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131984\/revisions\/133451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}