Doubts Are Cast On Sailor's Role USS Iowa Blast

WASHINGTON - Loaded down by a growing cargo of doubt and controversy, the Navy's conclusion that Clayton Hartwig ``most probably'' caused the fatal explosion aboard the battleship USS Iowa may be beginning to sink.

When Congress reconvenes later this month, the dead sailor's reputation will be in the hands of the Senate and House Armed Services committees. The committees last month heard four days of testimony concerning the Navy's investigation into the April 19 explosion that killed 47 sailors in the Iowa's No. 2 gun turret.

Hartwig's family and relatives of other Iowa victims attended the hearings on Capitol Hill and declared their hope for at least a formal congressional resolution clearing Hartwig's name, if not for further investigation into the battleship's 16-inch guns and the cause of the blast.

In the hearings four weeks ago, some top Navy officials seemed to distance themselves from the service's official verdict.

On Dec. 11, the skipper of the Iowa, Capt. Fred Moosally, said he accepted the Navy finding that the April 19 explosion was ``a willful, intentional act.''

But Moosally said he couldn't single out Hartwig, 24, a gunner's mate from Cleveland, as guilty.

``I would not make an unqualified statement that Petty Officer Hartwig is the guy who committed the wrongful intentional act,'' Moosally told the Senate committee.

Similarly, Vice Adm. Joseph Donnell, chief of the Atlantic

surface fleet, took pains to soften the indictment of Hartwig.

``I am very unhappy that an individual was pointed out to be the cause,'' Donnell told members of the House Armed Services subcommittee.

``I cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that someone other than Petty Officer Hartwig intentionally caused the explosion.''

Donnell quickly added that such a possibility is unlikely. But more and more people both in Congress and the Navy are finding it difficult to blame Hartwig.

Privately, some Navy officers have said the Navy should have simply declared that there was insufficient evidence left in the turret after the explosion to definitely determine a cause.

In testimony before the Senate and House committees, witnesses in and out of the Navy have suggested that the Navy committed errors in procedure as well as in judgment.

According to testimony, the Navy's most important piece of physical evidence - a piece of copper taken from the 16-inch shell and said to contain evidence of a possible detonating device - may have been contaminated before, during or after the explosion.

That, and contradictory testimony and a questionable psychological assessment of Hartwig as suicidal, has had members of Congress excoriating the Navy for reaching a verdict against a dead sailor without adequate proof.

Sen. Alan Dixon, D-Ill., said the Navy's case against Hartwig ``strains the intelligence of most people . . . and flies in the face of what I consider to be all the facts.''

The ``facts,'' as they came out in recent hearings, seem at odds with two of the major premises of the Navy's case against Hartwig:

-- The Navy's report contends that, based on an FBI psychological assessment and Naval Investigative Service (NIS) findings, not only did Hartwig have the opportunity and the expertise, but he also had the desire to sabotage the ship. A panel of independent psychologists questioned the validity of that psychological analysis.

-- The Navy also contends that a chemical detonator explains the presence of foreign substances found embedded in the copper band that was part of the unfired projectile recovered from the center gun of turret No. 2. An FBI analysis of the same band was inconclusive.

Both the Senate and House committee hearings attacked the Navy's investigation of Hartwig, questioning the narrowness of the probe and the objectivity of focusing on Hartwig.

During the House hearings, Robert Powers, head of the Navy's criminal-investigation division, acknowledged that evidence was destroyed during the cleanup of turret No. 2.

Powers said the intensity of the blast probably contaminated any remaining evidence.

The NIS was called into the investigation only after evidence surfaced of a life-insurance policy on Hartwig benefiting a survivor of the blast.

Powers said that although the NIS examined files of other Iowa sailors, it focused chiefly on Hartwig and turret survivor Kendall Truitt.

``I don't think we looked into developing information on other individuals,'' Powers said.

Powers said the discovery that Hartwig had named Truitt the beneficiary on the $100,000 insurance policy allowed the agency to narrow the focus of its investigation.

In contrast to the portrait of Hartwig as a suicidal loner, Powers said his agents also collected information that indicated Hartwig was a ``nice guy and a good sailor.''

``That's inconsistent with someone who would blow up the ship,'' Powers said.

At hearings on Dec. 11, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee attacked what they believed to be other inconsistencies.

Richard Ault Jr. and Robert Hazelwood, the two FBI officials who examined NIS interviews and decided Hartwig committed suicide, told senators they had no hard evidence against Hartwig.

``This opinion we submitted is based on a half-scientific, half-art form,'' Ault said.

The agents also said that by May 23, the date they were brought into the case, the Navy had ruled out an accidental cause for the explosion. The Navy asked the agents to focus their expertise on three possible scenarios: murder by a shipmate, murder-suicide and suicide.

Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, asked, ``Did the Navy indicate to you that they had a predisposition that Mr. Hartwig'' was responsible for the explosion?

``Yes, in fact, they did,'' Ault said.

Ault, however, told Cohen the FBI could have arrived at a different conclusion if warranted.

``We were not compelled to parrot what the Navy may want us to parrot,'' Ault said.

The FBI agents said they did not look at records of other sailors in the turret.

A week later, before a joint session of two subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee, a panel of independent psychologists ripped into the FBI's psychological assessment and the failure of the NIS to look into the background of other Iowa sailors as well.

Twelve psychologists and two psychiatrists, all with expertise in criminal forensic psychology, the study of suicide and the behavior of young adults, were asked by the House subcommittees to review the same information presented to the FBI by the NIS.

In their written report to the House subcommittees, the panel generally slammed the FBI's report as having selectively used only negative information and as incomplete with ``all kinds of problems.''

``There is no attempt at balance; the report lists numerous aspects of Hartwig's darker or more troubled side, but it is silent with respect to more positive features that might lead one to conclude Hartwig was troubled and had his ups and downs, but he was getting on with life,'' wrote Norman Poythress, a psychiatrist with the Alabama Department of Mental Health.

The House also questioned the Navy's technical case against Hartwig.

``It is one thing to find `foreign material' on the rotating band of the projectile,'' said Rep. Nicholas Mavroules, D-Mass., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's investigations subcommittee. ``It is quite another to relate it to any sort of detonating device without some direct evidence, and completely irresponsible to link it to Clayton Hartwig, as the Navy did in this case.''

Kenneth Nimmich, chief of the scientific analysis section of the FBI's laboratory, told the House investigative subcommittee that the Navy's key piece of material evidence may have been contaminated.

Nimmich also told the members that FBI tests on the copper band failed to show the presence of any kind of detonating device.

Nimmich said the metal fibers found in the copper band circling the lower end of the 16-inch projectile retrieved from the Iowa's center gun may have come from steel wool used in routine cleaning of the barrel rather than the chemical device the Navy believes started the blast.

According to the Navy's theory, traces of iron, calcium and chlorine became embedded in the soft copper band at the time of the explosion, providing a chemical ``fingerprint'' of what elements were present in the breach of the center gun at the time of the blast.

The Navy believed that several elements found in the band suggested that Hartwig had planted an electronic timer. They later amended that finding to point to a chemical detonator.

Nimmich said the tests conducted in his lab provided no conclusive evidence that an electronic timer was present.

Nimmich said he recommended that the Navy conduct additional tests. The suggestion, Nimmich said, went unheeded.