Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) slammed the U.S. government in a Thursday interview for its “epic failure of leadership” in its effort to find OceanGates’ missing Titan submersible.
The remarks come after U.S. officials announced earlier in the day that the vessel had imploded, killing all five people on board.
The Wall Street Journal later reported that the U.S. Navy had detected the moment that the vessel imploded earlier this week using “a top secret military acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines.”
Crenshaw told reporters on the Capitol steps that this was a case of “epic failure in leadership,” although he was not sure whether the lapse was the fault of the White House, the Navy, or the U.S. Coast Guard.
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, said that the critical failure in leadership was the fact that the U.S. assets – a 6K ROV and a Magellan submarine – were not deployed sooner to join rescue efforts.
“Now, it’s important to note that if you had just deployed those assets, they would have arrived on scene by Wednesday morning at the latest,” Crenshaw said. “That tapping continues to be heard and chatted about in all these channels throughout Wednesday. Then it stops late Wednesday. They finally deploy this 6K ROV, the only thing capable of actually going to that depth and seeing what’s down there, this morning. It deploys down there and the wreckage was exactly where they thought it would be. So where’s the failure here? The failure here is to not put all your options on the table.”
Crenshaw said that industry experts told him that the implosion sound the Navy heard could have “easily been the sub just hitting the floor.”
“And then you add that with this tapping, which was apparently like your standard procedure SOS, every half hour, you are hearing that throughout the day Tuesday and Wednesday, it begs the question — could this have been resolved differently if leadership had just acted sooner and actually put options on the table instead of just assuming? Well, it doesn’t matter because they’re dead,” he added.
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