For 1st time, German Army officer to be USAREUR chief of staff

By Jon Harper

Stars and Stripes

Published: March 21, 2014

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military plans to appoint a German officer to be the next chief of staff of U.S. Army-Europe, Stars and Stripes has learned.

“U.S. Army-Europe is currently in discussion with the German [Ministry of Defense] on the opportunity to have a German brigadier general serve as the USAREUR chief of staff. The details are still being worked,” said Joe Garvey, deputy chief of Public Affairs for USAREUR.

Garvey would not provide additional details or a timetable for when an official announcement about the next chief of staff will be made, but said the two sides are “in the final throes” of the process.

“A decision has been made to make this happen,” according to Garvey.

The decision was first reported by German media.

This would mark the first time that a foreigner has held such a high position in the USAREUR leadership staff, although there have been higher-ranking foreign liaison officers there, according to Garvey.

Col. James Mingo is the current chief of staff.

“[It’s] a very positive initiative, and we’re looking very much forward to it,” Garvey said.

The U.S. military maintains key bases in Germany, and there are 40,000 U.S. servicemembers stationed there, including 25,000 soldiers.

The decision to strengthen bilateral military cooperation by appointing a German officer to the leadership ranks of USAREUR, which is based in Wiesbaden, comes at a time of popular anger over revelations that America’s National Security Agency has been spying on German citizens, including tapping into Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal cell phone. Some in Germany have suggested that the country’s relationship with the U.S. should be reevaluated in the wake of the high-profile espionage.

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Twitter: @JHarperStripes

Coast Guardsman under scrutiny for Facebook post

KODIAK, Alaska — A Coast Guard member is under scrutiny after he posted derogatory remarks about Alaska Natives on a Facebook page, and possible actions are being considered in response.

Coast Guard officials said Petty Officer Brandon Upchurch's comments on the "Friends of Kodiak" page are being taken seriously, KMXT reported.

"The Coast Guard holds all our members accountable," Coast Guard spokeswoman Sara Moores said. "Making inappropriate comments isn't tolerated, especially when they have the potential to offend various groups throughout the community."

Upchurch, based in Kodiak, was among people on the Facebook site who were sharing opinions about Kodiak Native groups closing their private land to public use.

In his posting Wednesday, Upchurch said he will still go to Native land to camp and have fires. He went on to say Natives "live like a bunch of bums with trash everywhere. You think that the billions they get from the U.S. Government, they would live like kings."

Upchurch could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.

The commander of the Coast Guard Base Kodiak, Capt. Jerald Woloszynski, issued a formal apology, which also was posted on Facebook. The apology said Upchurch's command has been notified and will decide how to deal with him.

Moores said several different options are possible, including amending the personal data record or pursuing a military justice process.

Upchurch was previously stationed aboard the Kodiak-based cutter Munro, and he was transferred to a shore-side position before the Facebook incident, Moores said.

The captain's apology has been well received, she said.

"The Coast Guard enjoys an excellent relationship with the community here in Kodiak, and we value those partnerships," Moores said. "A lot of people who have been stationed here choose to remain here after their careers because it is such a wonderful place to live and work."

13 dead after gunmen attack upscale Kabul hotel

KABUL — The teenage gunmen moved from table to table firing pistols point blank at diners celebrating Persian new year, while other guests fled in terror. At the end of a night of carnage, 13 people were dead, including the four assailants and at least two children.

The Thursday night attack on the luxurious Serena hotel, one of the most heavily guarded private facilities in the city, stunned the capital’s foreign diplomats, aid workers, non-governmental organizations and well-heeled Afghans, who had made it a center of the city’s rapidly disappearing social scene.

Among the dead was a Paraguayan who had come to monitor the April 5 presidential election and a respected Afghan journalist working for the French news agency AFP, his wife and two of his children.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, raising fears of more violence ahead of the election to replace President Hamid Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. The assault followed a recent suicide attack on a market in northern Afghanistan, the January bombing of a Lebanese restaurant favored by foreigners and the daylight assassination of a Swedish journalist on a street in one of Kabul’s most secure neighborhoods. Earlier Thursday, 10 Afghan policemen were killed in attacks in the eastery city of Jalalabad.

Afghan authorities said the assailants penetrated layers of security at the hotel including high walls, armed guards and metal detectors, full-body pat downs and bomb-sniffing dogs, smuggling the weapons in their socks or shoes, police said.

Within seconds, hotel guards shepherded guests into safe rooms where they sat for hours wondering what was happening beyond the doors, said one American who asked not to be named for security reasons.

The U.S. National Democratic Institute said in Washington that it was reviewing its presence in Afghanistan after one of its election monitors, former diplomat Luis Maria Duarte of Paraguay, was killed in the attack.

The spokesman for the Kabul police, Hashmat Stanakzai, said it took security forces three hours to kill the four gunmen. He said the dead included four foreigners, although nationalities were unclear. However, the Toronto Sun reported two Canadian development workers were killed.

Five people were wounded, including a member of parliament, and an unidentified foreigner, Stanakzai said.

The AFP news agency said its Afghan correspondent, Sardar Ahmad, his wife and three children had gone to the hotel for new year’s celebrations. A son and daughter died, and their infant son was undergoing treatment for serious wounds, AFP said.

“This is an immensely painful and enormous loss,” AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog said in a statement released in Paris.

Surviving guests said when they left the safe rooms, they saw police removing the bodies from the bloodstained lobby.

How exactly the four gunmen, some as young as 18, entered the heavily guarded hotel Thursday night remains unclear. Investigators say they are looking to see if the attackers had inside help.

Like the Taliban-claimed attack on the Lebanese restaurant that killed 21 people, the attack on the Serena sent shock waves through Kabul’s large community of foreigners and wealthy Afghans, many of whom can afford to retreat into fortified compounds.

While foreigners in Baghdad were comparatively safe inside the “Green Zone,” Kabul has no such fortified area of the city. But the Serena is as close to a safe zone as there is for most of Kabul’s civilian NGO workers, journalists and affluent Afghans.

The hotel’s high walls and heavily guarded gates hide an oasis where waiters cater to guests lounging by an aquamarine swimming pool or holding meetings in courtyards shaded by trees. The hotel has been a bubble within what some call “Kabubble” that separates the relatively wealthy and calm capital city from the rest of war-torn Afghanistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the brazen attack on the Serena Hotel, saying it had been carefully planned to kill members of parliament.

He denied targeting civilians, insisting that those in the hotel were fair targets.

“We haven’t targeted civilians; the hotel was full of people and only those are targeted who were foreigners, government people or those who work for Westerners,” he told Stars and Stripes.

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Twitter: @joshjonsmith

EDITORIAL: Army Times calls on Fox to give 'Enlisted' better time slot

The Fox network’s new military comedy, “Enlisted,” appears to have hit its stride, but stagnant ratings after the show’s disappointing pilot episode threaten to torpedo its chances of being picked up for a second season.

That would be unfortunate. The show’s creators have demonstrated a sincere effort to normalize America’s view of its service members. In doing so, they’re forging a better, broader understanding of military life and its most challenging aspects, including difficult topics such as post-traumatic stress.

That’s all too rare in popular culture — which makes such endeavors all the more valuable.

“Enlisted” chronicles the goofball antics of three brothers assigned to a “rear D” unit at a fictional Army post in Florida. “M*A*S*H” it is not, though there is at least one important similarity between the two: Both suffered from a low-performing initial run. And things turned out OK for “M*A*S*H.”

Yes, the “Enlisted” pilot was poorly executed. But the show has come a very long way since then. The writers have doubled down on their commitment to accuracy and relevant jokes.

Frankly, it’s hard not to root for these TV troops.

Now it’s Fox’s turn to step up. “Enlisted” airs at a dreadful time: 9 p.m. Fridays. If the show is to survive, it must have better visibility. Fox can — and should — make that happen immediately.

One of world's remotest areas being swept for missing Malaysian jet

The U.S. Navy dispatched its most technologically advanced search aircraft to an empty quarter of the Indian Ocean on Thursday to look for two large pieces of debris that may provide the first physical evidence in the investigation of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Experts were hopeful that the debris would not turn out to be another of the false leads and misinterpreted data that have dogged the investigation into why the Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew turned from its Beijing trajectory March 8 and then vanished.

Even if the floating objects photographed in the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday by a commercial satellite prove to be from the aircraft, the remainder could lie thousands of feet below the ocean surface and possibly hundreds of miles away.

“It is the beginning of a very long saga,” said David Gallo, who managed search expeditions for Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil in 2009. “The search teams are already physically and emotionally drained.”

Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister and chief government spokesman, said Friday that he remained cautious about the debris report, even as officials there were gearing up for a multinational operation to recover the plane’s black boxes, with lessons learned from the Air France recovery effort.

In the time since the debris was photographed, about 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, Australia, it could have drifted 70 miles, complicating efforts to get a closer look, experts said. Its drift from the impact area would be far greater, they added.

Although currents and winds in that part of the Indian Ocean are not considered particularly strong, predicting how a piece of debris can drift over many days is an inexact science. Calculating where the main body of wreckage may have settled after sinking several thousand feet could be even harder, oceanographers and accident investigators say.

Search aircraft spent very little time over the area Thursday before the mission had to be called off at nightfall. Expectations were not much greater for coming days. Even the most capable long-range aircraft, including the U.S. Navy’s P-8 Poseidon, would get only three hours to comb the area before having to return to a distant base in Perth.

“As oceans go, this is probably one of the most remote areas on the planet,” Gallo said. “It’s a long way from any place.”

The larger of the two photographed pieces was estimated to be 79 feet long, according to an analysis by the Australian navy. Only two parts of a 777 — the fuselage or a wing — are as extensive. Although a wing, empty of its fuel after a long flight, might float for a while, the fuselage probably would sink soon, experts said. A number of experts also cautioned that the debris could be nothing more than the normal junk that floats in much of the world’s oceans.

If the debris is verified, however, scientists will create computer models based on factors such as ocean currents and wind speed to predict where the impact zone and underwater debris field lie, said Gallo, director of special operations at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Even the smallest detail about the floating objects, such as whether they might catch wind like a sail, can affect their movements, experts said.

“The ocean is full of surprises,” said Luca Centurioni, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. “The ocean could be moving in one direction, and the wind can make it go a different way.”

Centurioni said the ocean currents in the area move easterly at about half a mile per hour.

The area is known as the Mid-Indian Ridge, with water depths of 10,000 feet to 13,000 feet that create pressures so intense that retrieving debris would require the use of remotely controlled submersible research vessels.

In the meantime, navy aircraft will probably follow traditional search patterns, flying back and forth along rows, like mowing a lawn. Even at low altitude with radar and infrared sensors that detect variations in temperature, debris can be difficult to find, said Robert Ditchey, a commercial airline executive and former Navy pilot who flew a submarine-hunting P-3 Orion.

Even a whale breaching the surface may be invisible from an overhead search aircraft, depending on sunlight, water clarity and wave height, he said.

“Waves reflect radar and water alters the optical capability of infrared,” Ditchey said. “You can have something a few inches below the surface and you can’t see it.”

After they narrow their search area, investigators will lower listening devices and attempt to pick up signals from a device attached to the plane’s two black boxes. Battery life of the “pinger” devices is about 30 days.

Although it took searchers five days to find wreckage of the Air France flight, it took two years to retrieve its voice and data recorders from a depth of about 13,000 feet. Information they revealed help clarify the cause of that crash.

Experts remain hopeful that they will catch a similar break in the Malaysia Airlines mystery.

“This has been a roller coaster,” said Michael Barr, an accident investigation expert and former military pilot. “Everything has been unlucky so far, so maybe this time we will get lucky.”

US, Russia impose dueling travel bans; Obama opens door to energy sanctions

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Thursday sanctioned several top Russian politicians and key business oligarchs with ties to Vladimir Putin, raising the stakes in a blossoming international crisis and opening the door for targeting Russia’s vital energy sector.

Three days after targeting 11 of Putin’s ideological allies in response to his plans to annex the Crimean peninsula, the White House responded with a new executive order that delegated to the Treasury Department the ability to blacklist individuals and companies in Russia’s financial services, energy, metals and mining, engineering and defense sectors.

“In addition, we are today sanctioning a number of other individuals with substantial resources and influence who provide material support to the Russian leadership, as well as a bank that provides material support to these individuals,” President Barack Obama said in a statement to reporters.

The Treasury Department unveiled visa bans and a financial blacklisting of 16 high-profile political officials, four important business leaders and a Russian bank in St. Petersburg. They’d be denied entry to the United States or access to dollar transactions in the U.S. banking system. Any U.S. assets they might own will be frozen.

Significantly, the president’s executive order was broad enough to potentially target the heads of natural gas giant Gazprom and oil conglomerates Rosneft and Lukoil. Some of the sanctioned Thursday had close business relations with these state-affiliated energy companies. Russia and the United States are jockeying to be the world’s largest oil producer this year.

Putin responded Thursday with tit-for-tat sanctions of his own, banning travel to Russia for nine congressional leaders and critics, including three senior advisers to Obama.

“I guess this means my spring break in Siberia is off, Gazprom stock is lost & secret bank account in Moscow is frozen,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the nine sanctioned, tweeted in glee.

Obama’s executive order allows actions against companies or persons found “to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the order.”

That’s a legalistic way of warning away all sorts of companies that now do business, or are considering doing business, with the targeted oligarchs and the cited bank, Bank Rossiya. It potentially makes them financial pariahs and also puts the energy sector on notice.

For the sanctions to be effective, the Obama administration needs similar action from the European Union, whose member states all have companies operating in Russia and who collectively count Russia as their third largest trading partner after the United States and China. U.S. exporters of oilfield equipment and British banks also face potential retaliation from Russia.

The administration expected new European sanctions on Russia as early as Friday, the deadline Russia has given for Ukrainian military personnel in Crimea to withdraw or defect to Russian ranks.

The Ukrainian Parliament on Thursday passed a defiant resolution, saying the country would resist any further incursion by Russia.

But many lawmakers there also had accepted that Crimea, at least for now, was lost, and they waited to see how many, if any, Ukrainian soldiers would follow the government’s order to withdraw. Russia has told Ukrainian soldiers and sailors in Crimea that they are welcomed to join the Russian military, with a substantial increase in pay and pension benefits and a pledge that they can remain in Crimea. The deadline for accepting the offer is Friday.

Outside the Ukraine Parliament, about 50 Ukrainian navy and paratroop veterans rallied, urging that something be done to prevent the Russian land grab. But most knew that there was really nothing to be done, with Russia and its sympathizers in Crimea holding the numerical edge.

“We’re here because we are preparing for the worst,” said Vladimir Voloshyn, one of the veterans.

The highest-profile tycoon targeted by the White House on Thursday was Gennady Timchenko, co-owner of the private global commodity giant Gunvor, which boasts revenues in the range of $80 billion and owns oil refineries in Belgium and Germany.

“Timchenko’s activities in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin,” the Treasury statement said. “Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds.”

Holding dual Russian-Finnish citizenship, Timchenko lives in Geneva and has long been rumored to have cashed in on ties to Putin.

“He’s one of the five biggest commodity traders in the world. This is really making their business impossible,” said Anders Aslund, a Russia expert and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “You can’t be a big commodity trader without dealing with the U.S. and U.S. companies.”

Brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg were also targeted by Treasury. They’ve grown rich under Putin, enjoying lucrative contracts with Gazprom, the agency said, and during the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Sochi. Boris Rotenberg is known to ordinary Russians as a judo partner of the oft bare-chested Russian president.

Thursday’s move by Obama “clearly upped the ante because he’s gone after people who are much closer to President Putin, and they are much more likely to have major holdings in Western banks,” said Will Pomeranz, deputy director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think tank. “Clearly that is an important step.”

Yuri Kovalchuk, who the administration said was a personal banker to senior Russian officials and is the largest single shareholder in Bank Rossiya, Russia’s 17th largest bank, was also targeted.

Political figures sanctioned included Sergei Naryshkin, chairman of the Duma, Russia’s parliament; Igor Sergun, head of Russia’s military intelligence service; Sergei Ivanov, chief of staff of Russia’s presidential executive office; and Vladimir Yakunin, chairman of Russia’s state-owned railways.

In response, Russia on Thursday placed travel bans and financial sanctions on House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and several other lawmakers. The Russian sanctions also prevent two top national security advisers and Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser, from traveling in Russia.

That effectively slams the door on U.S. involvement in a G-8 summit of industrialized nations that had been planned for June in Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her parliament Thursday that the G-8 process has ceased to exist for now and raised prospects for expelling Russia.

The seven members, minus Russia, will meet in The Hague next week to discuss further responses to Russia’s aggressive stance against Ukraine and its ongoing annexation of Crimea.

Lesley Clark and Hannah Allam contributed from Washington, Matthew Schofield contributed from Kiev.

Naval Academy midshipman found not guilty of sexual assault

WASHINGTON — A former Navy football player was found not guilty Thursday of sexually assaulting a fellow midshipman at an off-campus party in Annapolis, Md., two years ago in a case that has drawn national scrutiny to the elite training ground for future officers of the Navy and Marine Corps.

Allegations that Midshipman Joshua Tate and two teammates had sexual contact with the woman while she was too intoxicated to consent have helped fuel the debate over the prosecution of sexual assaults in the military. Her experience at a preliminary hearing last summer, during which she was called to testify for more than 20 hours over several days, led Congress to change the rules for such proceedings.

Advocates for further changes said the verdict Thursday showed that commanders are incapable of prosecuting sexual assaults and an attorney for Tate agreed that the system is “broken.”

In another closely watched case Thursday, an Army general who had been investigated for an alleged sexual assault was reprimanded and fined for mistreating a subordinate with whom he had an adulterous affair.

In the Naval Academy case, Tate, a junior from Nashville, Tenn., could have been sentenced to 30 years in a military prison if convicted of sexual assault. Marine Corps Col. Daniel Daugherty, who presided over the three-day court-martial at the Washington Navy Yard, found Tate not guilty on that charge, but referred three counts accusing the midshipman of having made false statements back to Vice Adm. Michael H. Miller, the academy superintendent.

Miller declined to pursue those charges in exchange for Tate’s resignation from the academy. An academy spokesman said late Thursday that Tate was in the process of withdrawing.

Tate, who left the courtroom smiling with supporters, did not speak publicly after the verdict. An attorney for Tate said the case against his client was weak, but effectively ended his military career.

“It’s a shame he had to go through this,” attorney Jason Ehrenberg said outside the courtroom.

The alleged victim, now a senior at the academy, was not in the courtroom when Daugherty read the verdict.

The woman testified this week that she drank heavily before and during the April 2012 party at the so-called football house in Annapolis. She said she did not remember having sex with Tate in a car parked outside, but learned of it through academy rumors and comments on social media.

When she confronted Tate, she testified, he confirmed that they had had sex.

Prosecutors argued that she was too drunk to give consent. After the verdict, an attorney for the woman said his client was “beyond disappointed.”

She “is appalled by the lack of accountability,” Ryan Guilds said. “Fundamentally, this case is the result of a flawed military system.”

The Baltimore Sun does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

The allegations became public last year amid growing scrutiny of commanders’ efforts to confront the long-standing problem of sexual assault within the ranks. President Barack Obama raised the subject during his graduation address at the academy last spring, saying that sexual assault has “no place in the greatest military on Earth.”

The Pentagon, using confidential surveys, estimated last year that up to 26,000 service members had suffered unwanted sexual contact during the previous 12 months. But only 3,374 assaults were reported, and only 594 suspects were sent to courts-martial.

Critics say the way to improve those numbers is to take prosecutions out of the chain of command — taking the authority to order a court-martial away from military commanders, who might have conflicts of interest when weighing allegations between subordinates, and giving it to trained lawyers.

Military leaders and their allies in Congress oppose such a change. They say a commander’s authority to refer troops for court-martial is an essential tool for maintaining order and discipline — and for holding officers accountable for their units.

Rep. Jackie Speier, who has championed legislation to overhaul the military justice system, said the verdict in the Naval Academy case showed that “the military cannot competently investigate and prosecute serious crimes.”

“This case was botched from the beginning by an incompetent investigation overseen by a commander that never wanted to bring these charges forward,” the California Democrat said. “The military justice system is broken as long as legal decisions are left up to commanders with no legal expertise and a bias to protect the assailant.”

Ehrenberg said he agrees with “those on Capitol Hill who say the system is broken.”

“But it’s broken in many directions,” he said. He said the prosecution of Tate was motivated more by political pressure than by the evidence.

“Don’t use my client to advocate for your cause when you don’t have a case,” he said.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, another lawmaker who has pushed to take prosecutions out of the chain of command, said the academy case showed “a military justice system in dire need of independence.”

“When survivors and defense attorneys both agree we need to reform the system — it should tell us the system needs reform,” the New York Democrat said.

Critics also condemned the sentence handed Thursday to Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair.

A veteran of more than 27 years and five combat tours, Sinclair was accused of threatening to kill an Army captain and her family if she exposed their three-year affair, forcing her to perform oral sex, and engaging in “open and notorious” sex in a parked car and on a hotel balcony.

If convicted of the most serious charges, he could have been sentenced to life in prison and would have had to register as a sex offender. In a deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to improper relationships with two female Army officers, violating orders and conduct unbecoming an officer. He received a reprimand and was fined $20,000. He will be allowed to retire and receive a pension.

Nancy Parrish, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, said the sentence “sends one more chilling message to victims that are thinking about coming forward.”

“It provides a clear example of why nine out of 10 sexual assault victims never report their attacks,” she said. “The military’s promises of ‘zero tolerance’ for sexual offenses continues to ring hollow as yet another high-ranking official is let off the hook.”

In the Naval Academy case, Daugherty said he was unable to determine from the evidence whether the woman was too intoxicated to consent to sex or if she was so traumatized by “rude, disgusting and vulgar” social media postings that her recollection of the events was colored.

Daugherty said that amounted to reasonable doubt that prevented a conviction.

He said the case presented difficult questions such as “how drunk is too drunk” to consent, and whether one person can tell when another has crossed that threshold.

Daugherty said the investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was hampered by the unwillingness of the alleged victim to cooperate and by lies told by midshipmen who were interviewed.

In testimony this week, the woman acknowledged that she had initially urged Tate to lie to investigators. But after an encounter with a sexual assault victim, she said, she had a change of heart. She said she decided to pursue charges in part to find out what happened.

Baltimore attorney Susan Burke, who has represented the woman, said the midshipman had “done her patriotic duty.”

“Her courage has led to the reform of the Article 32 process,” said Burke, who has represented hundreds of service members in sexual assault claims against the military. “That’s a pivotal piece of getting this broken system fixed.”

The Article 32 hearing, sometimes compared to a civilian grand jury, is used by the military to investigate charges and help commanders determine whether to refer a suspect for court-martial.

After the woman in the Naval Academy case was subjected to a broad range of questions by three defense teams over five days, Speier introduced a bill to change the rules.

Her legislation limits the scope of the proceeding to determining probable cause and allows alleged victims to decline to testify. Congress approved the measure in December.

With the verdict Thursday, the Navy failed to secure a conviction against any of the three former football players who were initially investigated in the alleged assault.

Miller declined to pursue charges against Midshipman Tra’ves Bush after a preliminary hearing last year. Bush has since graduated and been commissioned as an ensign in the Navy.

Midshipman Eric Graham was charged with abusive sexual contact and making false statements, but the case was dropped when statements he made to NCIS investigators were deemed inadmissible in court. His case was sent back to the academy’s conduct system and an academy spokesman declined to comment on the outcome, citing student privacy laws.

Graham’s attorney, Ronald “Chip” Herrington, said his client has agreed to withdraw from the academy as a result of the case. He is hoping for an honorable discharge and to not be required to pay back the cost of his education.

The cost of a full academy education is $186,000, but midshipmen who leave early might not be required to repay the full amount, said Cmdr. John Schofield, an academy spokesman.

Graham’s departure from the academy was held up while he testified in Tate’s case under a grant of immunity from prosecutors, Herrington said.

It will be up to an assistant secretary of the Navy to decide whether Tate must repay the cost of his education. Midshipmen attend the Naval Academy free of charge in exchange for five years of service in the military after graduation.

David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times contributed to this article.