 We've got Admiral Richardson and Admiral Greenert, and I'll introduce themselves, so once we get to the marks going, they'll give two short statements, and I'll take a couple questions. And we're here to talk to you about an incident that took place in Charleston, and we'd like to stick to that if possible. And by the way, and I'll point out who's going to ask the questions as well. Thank you, Danny. Good afternoon, and thanks for having us this afternoon. I'm Admiral John Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, and I have with me the Director for Navy Nuclear Propulsion, Admiral John Richardson. We're here to discuss allegations of cheating on a written qualification exam at one of our nuclear training commands. We learned about this yesterday evening. We were alerted of the incident, and it took place in Charleston, South Carolina, at our Navy Nuclear Propulsion Command there. The propulsion exam was allegedly shared amongst some senior enlisted operators. And Admiral John Richardson here, he will speak more about the details of the incident and where we are so far. To say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement whenever I hear about integrity issues. It's disruptive to our unit's success, and it's definitely contrary to all of our core values, our Navy core values, and it affects the very basis of our ethos. The foundation of our conduct throughout the Navy is integrity. We expect more from our sailors, especially our senior sailors, and we demand it in our training and in our operations, and we will operate to that. The incident, I underline, does not represent the hundreds of thousands of professional sailors who are operating with honor and integrity throughout our fleet today. We set high expectations within our Navy, particularly this program, the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program. It has five decades of distinguished service, and it is all founded on integrity. Our sailors are held to a standard, a very high standard, and this will not change. So I assure you if these allegations are substantiated, we will hold the appropriate sailors, they hold the appropriate people accountable. We will remain vigilant throughout the program as we have been, as I said, for five decades. We'll learn from this, and we'll do a case study and we'll train on it. John, over to you, and then we'll take some questions. Thank you, CNO. And as the CNO said, I'm Admiral John Richardson, the Director of Naval Reactors. As such, I have cradle to grave responsibility for the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion Program, and as this incident evolves my program, I take full responsibility for this incident. This is mine to investigate and to correct. I was made aware of this situation yesterday on 3 February when one of our sailors from the Nuclear Power Training Unit in Charleston, South Carolina was offered to compromise his integrity, recognize that this was wrong, and reported it to the command. The Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program aggressively focuses on managing problems, whether those are material, operational, or personnel problems, with the intent of finding and correcting problems while they are still relatively small. And so in addition to self-examinations, each element of the program is examined by outside inspectors, and we aggressively respond to any problems that they find as well. On rare occasions, an integrity incident occurs that includes an element of collusion between more senior people. For instance, for your reference, the last comparable incident of this nature took place in 2010 on board a submarine crew. Integrity is a foundational element of our program, and when confronted with problems, we respond aggressively and forcefully. Now, although the investigation is just beginning, I'd like to try to provide some details for your information. This incident took place in our school. We have a one-year training program that includes six months of classroom training, theoretical training, and six months of hands-on training. We do this in Charleston on two converted submarines that we use as training reactors to certify operators to report to the fleet. So this is propulsion reactors not related to nuclear weapons. This incident involves members of the school staff who are required to qualify to operate and instruct students on the training reactor. We operate using 11-person watch teams, so there's an 11-person team on watch to operate the reactor. This incident, as the CNO said, involves the compromise, the alleged compromise of the written exam to qualify just one of those 11 watch stations, one of the 11-person team. To qualify for that position, in addition to the written exam that we are discussing and investigating, one must also pass an oral academic board given by a three-person panel and must pass an evaluated practical exam showing satisfactory performance. From what we know so far, these elements of the qualification program appear to be valid. Once qualified, their individual on-watch performance is further evaluated by external inspectors, evaluation by my field representatives on site, and through a separate continuing training program. We have seen no major concerns from those other assessments to date. Finally, once the staff member completes his tour at the schoolhouse and returns to the fleet, the process begins anew, and they are required to re-qualify using the same process on the ship to which they report. And this ship, this command, is also subject to the internal and external inspections and oversight that I have just described. It is this philosophy of defense in depth that allows me to assure you that our naval reactors are operating safely. This is a serious incident. As the CNO said, integrity is the foundation of our business. The training command and NCIS have begun a full investigation that will be led by a nuclear-qualified submarine admiral. Initial efforts will be to ensure that we have properly bound the problem. To date, we are getting good cooperation with the investigation. The training reactors were shut down for routine maintenance when we learned of this incident. The training command has ensured that all personnel implicated in this so far have been removed from this site. Their access has been revoked. All personnel on-watch are those who have no element of implication. As a precautionary measure, these personnel are also being retested to validate their knowledge. Additionally, I have assigned extra supervision to the operating teams. I will not reauthorize operation of the reactors until I am personally satisfied that appropriate corrective actions have been taken and additional conservative measures have been implemented. Additionally, I have a five-person cadre of personnel from my headquarters that have flown down to the site led by a senior Navy captain to assess the command climate in other areas and to ensure the investigation is getting started properly. This team will review past assessments with the goal of ensuring that we do not have a broader problem at this command. In closing, I'd like to restate that I am fully responsible for this matter. I'm aggressively moving to address the situation. We take our record of over 55 years of safe and reliable operation of naval nuclear propulsion plants very seriously. While I can't provide much more information at this time due to the ongoing investigation, I will keep you as fully informed as possible. We intend to be as transparent as possible as we work our way through this. Thank you. And I'm happy to be answering any questions that I can subject to the understanding that there is an active investigation going on. Lolita. Admiral, for both of you, I was just wondering, one, if you could maybe clarify a couple of more details. Did this involve emailing questions or answers to the staff? And did it also involve any violation possibly of classified material or access to classified material? And then secondly, as you know, the Air Force has had some cheating issues also within part of their nuclear force. And their comments have been that they worry that it's systemic and that this is a broad morale problem that involves people who are cheating because they felt the need to get 100% because it affected their promotions. I'm wondering if you could address whether those are also among some of your concerns. With respect to the exams themselves and the nature of what we're talking about, most of that will be more fully developed in the investigation. But it's fair to say that these exams and the operation of the plants do involve classified information and that'll be an active part of the investigation to fully understand that. With respect to the morale and the necessity to pass these exams in order to advance, that's not really a dimension of our program. We do not have that kind of 90% and above type of dynamic in our program. Our exam program is different than the one that you mentioned for the Air Force. And so we don't really see that being a dynamic here. But again, as I said, my team is on board to make sure that we've properly bound this. We're taking nothing for granted right now. Lowly to Emma Richardson, I grew up in the same program, the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program. A foundation within it is examination and re-examination, oral and written, as well as demonstration of proficiency. So what I'm saying is it is in the ethos, if you will. It is in the process that folks are used to getting examined and qualified in there. Therefore, I don't perceive, as Emma Richardson said, that there's an element of you have to get the highest grade because we're constantly evaluating and self-assessing ourselves within this program. How many sailors have been desertified? Could you tell us a little more about how this came to light? You said one sailor had been encouraged to join in. It sounded like a sort of group of people who were cheating and he came forward. Did this not come to light because of the review that was ordered by the SEC DEF in relation to the Air Force? It did not. We were, of course, looking very hard at ourselves as we always do. So I hope a theme that emerges here is that there is a climate of introspection, of looking for problems and solving them when we're small. So we are constantly assessing ourselves. This did not come forward as a consequence of that ongoing thing. This was a sailor who has been fully trained from the moment he enters boot camp that integrity is a foundation of our Navy's operations including the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. He recognized when he was asked to join in that that's not consistent with those values and mentioned it to the command. How many have been desertified? We're still bounding that problem. I'm hesitant to give you a number right now because I don't have a final number. But we conservatively estimate that this is probably less than 1% of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Force. So that would be roughly? Roughly. So we have 16,000 sailors in the program. In Charleston, it's a few hundred in Charleston. We'll get to the exact number. So we're talking about a dozen of snow, aren't we? You say 1% is like 16, so a dozen to less than 20, is that what you're talking about? That's the ballpark figure, but again I hesitate to commit to that because we're still in the very early, we're only 24 hours into this. How some of these, this incident and the repercussions of it might disrupt potential budget decisions in a constrained environment for subs and carriers and if there might be a need identified to fund some more of these internal and external investigations. Well, I don't think it'll affect budgetary decisions. As Admiral Richardson explained, we are constantly evaluating ourselves, especially within this program. We in fact have our Navy IG, John has asked that team to take a look at our nuclear propulsion and training process. That examination has been going on, how long John? About four months. And so finding things like this occasionally, as he's mentioned, it happened four years ago on a vessel. So I don't want to trivialize it. This is very serious, but these are the things that we are very vigilant for. We need to learn from, understand the case study and get in and train about. So I don't see it right now as being something that we have a budgetary ramification. But if there is any need to fund additional evaluations and we'll figure that out, we'll fund that. This is very important to me. Jennifer Griffin? What will be the consequences for those who are found to be guilty of being involved in this? I think that that's a case by case evaluation. We generally are pretty forceful about holding people accountable. And so as the investigation continues and we can determine the level of culpability, the level of misconduct, then we'll evaluate that on a case basis. Would it be safe to say that if you're caught cheating, you would be kicked out of the Navy? Or what's the upper end of coming out? That's certainly removed from the program. Our history is that if you are caught in an integrity violation, you're removed from the program and generally out of the Navy. Tom Shanker? I'd like to return to the point that Lita was reaching for earlier about your sense of why now. Rightly or wrongly, I think the general public, the taxpayer, sees a contagion of cheating across the military. So what is happening now? Is it the up-tempo since 9-11? It's been going on for a long time. Nobody caught it. Are these just one-off and inexplicable? Why, Admiral, is this happening now? Tom, if I knew that answer, I would be doing all kind of things within the Navy. But one thing is for sure, we need to and we will remain vigilant. We will continue to drive home to our people the importance of integrity. The fact that it is the foundation of all that we do in the U.S. Navy. We have to believe everything that somebody says to one another. Again, it is the foundation at sea and port and certainly in this program. And so we will be very introspective on this. We will, as I said before, make this very much a case study, like we did previous issues that occur in this program and in others, but certainly in this program. It's founded, again, on self-inspection and good assessment. Julian Barnes? Admiral, two follow-ups and clear points of clarification. Do you think that the sailor who came forward to report this did so in part because of the attention over the Air Force issue knowing from that that he had a duty to report what he knew? And two, is there any way to describe this test in any more detail about whether it was maintaining a reactor, running a reactor or what exactly, obviously, we're not getting into classified material, but what was testing? With respect to what the test tests, this particular is primarily on reactor operation. And so it tests the theoretical level of knowledge to be able to qualify for that watch station, that position on the watch team. And that's what this exam serves, in conjunction with the oral board, in conjunction with the evaluated on-watch assessment. And so there's sort of three layers of evaluation there. With respect to what motivated the sailor to come forward, we have a steady drumbeat in the Navy and particularly in the Navy Nucle Propulsion Program that stresses the importance of integrity to us as a foundational value. And so it's hard for me to say right now what specifically motivated this sailor, but I think at the foundation he understands the importance of the value of integrity and made his report. As you know, the Air Force has had their own issues, been conducting their own reviews, cheating of nuclear missileeers. Has the Navy been doing its own review of its program because of what's been going on in the Air Force? I know Secretary of Defense had a meeting here at the Pentagon to talk about the broader program. What had the Navy already been doing as a result of that? Yeah, the answer to that is yes. The Navy has done a review of what I'll call the nuclear enterprise. The nuclear weapon enterprise involves two services, obviously, the Navy and the Air Force. We have our element, the SSB Enforce, and all of its supporting entities. We've been directed to look primarily at the personnel element of that. The qualification people of all those that organize training and equip, those that do handle or employ or, if you will, direct operations of nuclear weapons, the certification they're in, and of course the personnel reliability program. And so that is in progress. What we do already, Craig, is every two years we have a three-star flag officer review, if you will, the program coordinated with our director of our Strategic Systems Program, SSP. That Strategic Systems Program are responsible for all operations, if you want, handling of our nuclear weapons themselves. So that has been going on. There's a drumbeat of that, as Admiral Richardson said in his program. We have a similar drumbeat. Now, we are going to take the results of our most recent, which is month old. We are going to take the results of the Slesinger Report. Remember that from a few years ago? We're going to take the results of the Admiral Donald Report, if you remember that. Also, it was a few years ago. Look and see what was directed in that. Review that. Did we do what it said? How are we doing on that? And then we're going to do an internal assessment coordinated with that. So what has been looked at before? How was that going? Is it still effective? And where are we now? All of that is underway, and we're due to report in what is now about 45 days. We were assigned this a few weeks ago. Phil Stewart. I just want to get a sense about the timing. The person who came forward, was that person indicating there was a new problem? Was it a fresh one-off incident? Or did the evidence suggest that this might be going back a while? This cheating might have been more systemic, or there might have been a pattern of cheating. And also, your reticence to put a finger on the number, is that because you believe it's going to get much higher? Well, that is indicative of the fact that we are just getting started. And so any number that I give you, I don't know where that's going to go. We're just getting started. And so I'm reluctant to give you a number, because it could change. It may be bound. We just don't know. And so I don't want to put something out there that may be accurate, but we may find more. So we're in the very early stages of this. And then, I'm sorry, what was the other part of your question? Was this a new single-off incident? So again, part of the investigation. We know that when he was confronted, we learned about this yesterday. And so in terms of the time frame, we'll get a sense for that in the investigation. This individual came forward. He was not asked, right? No, he came forward of his own accord. And this just happened in the last 24 hours. And so we wanted to get to you very early on to let you know about this. Was he suggesting a pattern of this thing going on for a long time, or was he suggesting this is a one-off incident? To be determined. We'll be back to you when we learn that. Brian? A couple of points of clarification. So to be clear, this test in particular is one of a series of tests that you must perform before you're qualified. Exactly. And then the other question was, was this test to qualify or to re-qualify someone? In other words, are they already qualified to operate the reactor and they're being retested? Or this is for a new person who's never done it taking the test to see if they're qualified? So because these, the folks that we're talking about are on the staff, they have already completed their initial qualifications as students through this same program. They have then gone out and re-qualified again at sea on the carrier or submarine that they were assigned. And now they are coming back and there's an additional re-qualification process back at those training reactors. So this will be about the third time that they will have been through this qualification sequence. Over the top of all that, there is a continuous training program that in addition to the qualification is a program of lectures and clinics and education with exams and validation along that. So it fits into a pretty thorough network of education, qualification and validation. Sir, I have a question about, these were senior enlisted folks who were the instructors who were implicated in this. Correct. And they were giving the answers to, or offering to give answers to trainees? No. Our understanding to date is they were giving up staff to staff. So this is so that the staff could qualify the position to operate the training reactor. You have to qualify to operate that. And then additionally, you're training students. But we see no evidence of compromises towards the students at this point. Was there anything offered in exchange for these answers? No. Gordon? Just to clarify, in terms of Craig's question, I want you to describe what was underway in terms of reviews and all that. I just want to see, does this incident then trigger potentially a broader investigation, not just of this incident that you've been describing, but like a broader kind of wake-up call kind of investigation of the Navy's nuclear force? Right. We will certainly, in this process of bounding the problem, we will take everything that we've learned from this incident and we will apply that to the broader force. That's just our nature, right? We use these as, these problems as opportunities to check across the force. And so that is part and part. That's par for our course. We will do that. Gordon, I think I should add, as I described to Craig, we're doing this 60-day look involving our nuclear enterprise. We share across enterprises, the nuclear propulsion enterprise. Again, the foundation is integrity. The principles are all there. Our people serve on nuclear-powered SSBNs. And so those elements have to be shared. So there's a lot involved in this across, if you will. Yes. Will there be any operational impact with these, those involved with the cheating possibly suspended? The Air Force had to suspend or restrict about 120 missile layers. Is there any, and people are pulling extra shifts. Do you foresee any type of similar operational impact? I could possibly foresee an impact in Charleston. We'll see if that is broader. What type of impact would that be? It's the same sort of thing. So there's, you know, those folks that are implicated are going to be removed from those responsibilities and other folks will have to possibly pick up those duties. Additionally, there'll be a certification process before I allow any kind of operation of those plants as well. Admiral Richardson, you said the only thing comparable involved with submarine crew, are you talking about the Memphis? That is it, right. Okay, why is it comparable? You're talking about something that happened in a training atmosphere and the other one is talking, you're talking about something that happened on an attack submarine. The elements that concern me are not so much where it happens, but the nature of the incident, which is both on Memphis and in this case, we have one, a violation of integrity, one of our core principles. Two, you have some kind of collusion amongst particularly senior people and so that when we, you know, on those rare occasions that we find those two things, it's a particular concern to us and that's why I draw the parallels between those two incidents. Lloyd Martinez. Can I go back to your under 1% reference? Does that mean that that's how many individuals you're looking at who might be implicated because if it's in fuzzy math that comes up to look under 160 personnel? Right, that's kind of my initial bounding of the problem and so, you know, pending further investigation, that's kind of where I see it right now. In terms of what? Personnel that'll be implicated. Sorry, she asked of course it was like 16,000 personnel in the plant and so I mean 1% of 16,000 I think is 160 but in terms of the ballpark figure, you know, it's well less than that so when you said 16, it's, I think, you know, going to be closer. Again, it's hard to say, I just am very reluctant to, you know, try and declare a number at this time because as I said. That's what I'm having a problem with because you don't want to give a number, it's between 16 and 160 but if you actually decertified people, there would be a number. And I just, in terms of the number of decertified, it's part of this entire program and so I just am reluctant to get a sense for where we stand right now in an ongoing investigation. There are five different shifts that operate so there are five of those teams that operate in shift work and we essentially do 24-7 training there on a shift work basis. This is the universe that you're looking at. Well, we're looking across the entire program so we'll start there. That's where our concern is most acute right now but we'll make sure that we have taken a look at the entire program to ensure we bound this. Admiral, thank you. All right. And if there's any follow-up questions, just please approach the Navy News Desk or email me. Thank you very much. Thank you.