Earlier this week, President Donald Trump fired Adm. Linda Fagan, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, for mishandling Operation Fouled Anchor, a yearslong investigation into sexual assault and harassment at the Coast Guard Academy that top leadership hid.
I am a survivor of sexual harassment in the Coast Guard and I support Fagan’s firing.
For the past 18 months, sexual harassment and sexual assault survivors repeatedly asked Fagan when Coast Guard leaders who failed to prosecute known sexual assaults at the Coast Guard Academy and in the service would be prosecuted. We asked when Adm. Karl Schultz, former Coast Guard commandant, would be held accountable for failing to share the Operations Fouled Anchor (OFA) report with Congress with the Coast Guard community.
No response. No accountability.
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My first attempt at transparency was at the November 2023 “healing” event. The event, held five months after CNN reported on OFA, intended to provide survivors with a venue to talk about sexual assault in the Coast Guard. Fagan, who was briefing sexual harassment and sexual assault survivors, shared that she was committed to not creating new survivors. It was a laudable goal, but what about current survivors?
I politely stood up in a room full of women carrying decades of pain and asked, what about us? When will Coast Guard leaders be held accountable? Fagan declined to answer the question.
Later that day, Steve Poulin, a former Judge Advocate General colleague of mine and then Coast Guard vice commandant, thanked me for advocating for Coast Guard sexual assault and sexual harassment survivors. Empty words. I’m a former agency leader, having served as chief counsel for the Maritime Administration between 2009-2012. He was the vice commandant, the No. 2 in command in the Coast Guard. Why wasn’t he doing more in 2023? He was the Coast Guard chief counsel when OFA began in 2014. Why didn’t he hold former Coast Guard leaders accountable for failing to prosecute crimes?
I asked again in December 2024. I stood up at a Navy League breakfast and asked Fagan about accountability. Fagan was at the event to share information about the service with Navy League members. I wanted to know what was happening with OFA. Fagan thanked me for my “courage” in asking the question.
There is nothing courageous about asking about crimes. I’m simply a Coast Guard veteran and former JAG, who is appalled by the Coast Guard admiral’s club who refuses to hold each other accountable.
Thad Allen, former Coast Guard commandant and Fagan’s boss, describes Fagan as a “leader of character and integrity whom he looked to for counseling and support and would do so again without hesitation. … She has faced the most difficult challenges in a responsible, forthright and forward-looking manner … always acting in the best interest of the service.”
I agree with Allen’s assessment. Fagan always looked out for the best interest of the service and Coast Guard sexual harassment and sexual assault survivors suffered as a result.
Fagan knew about OFA before she became commandant, according to her testimony before Congress in June 2024. Fagan “formally” learned about OFA in 2018 when she joined the Coast Guard Leadership Council in her role as Pacific Area Commander (2018-2021). The decision not to share the OFA report with Congress occurred in 2020, the period in which Fagan was on the Leadership Council.
Fagan was nominated to be Vice Commandant in 2021. She did not share information regarding OFA with Congress as part of her nomination process. Fagan was nominated to be commandant in 2022. Again, she did not share OFA info.
It wasn’t until CNN reported on OFA in June 2023 that Fagan publicly admitted to knowing the most damaging secret in the service — crimes were committed but not prosecuted and the report summarizing these crimes and the lack of accountability was not shared with Congress.
Coast Guard sexual harassment and sexual assault survivors weren’t the only ones calling for accountability. Five Congressional committees were also pressing the service for information and all they got were blacked-out pages. Hours were spent lining out thousands of pages of documents, an effort that appeared to limit Congress’ oversight.
The criticism of Fagan’s firing by former Coast Guard leaders has led many in the Coast Guard sexual harassment and sexual assault to shake their heads. Yet again, admirals are looking after themselves while survivors, male and female, struggle to live with the unaddressed pain.
Sexual assault is a crime. It’s a crime that should be prosecuted and for the first time in history a service chief was fired for not doing her job to address this crime. It was the first time in 18 months since OFA was uncovered that an admiral was held accountable and that’s a good thing.
K. Denise Rucker Krepp is a Coast Guard veteran and former Maritime Administration chief counsel.
