This serves as an addendum to “Nothing at all.” This 4,500 word essay is the first I’ve ever written about this in sixteen years.
December 5, 2021 was sixteen years to the day that everything about my world changed.
Each year in November and December, I relive that moment in my life, it replays almost weekly around 2 am. No matter the number of positive contributions, how many extraordinary people surround me, or how well we parent our daughters: I battle debilitating PTSD, depression, anxiety, ideations, and bouts of self-sabotage and destruction. I can’t shake it because I keep running from it. I rely heavily on friends and loved ones during this time, a weight that I am sure is unbearable for many of them.
I’m going to tell a short part of my story for the first time ever. Not just my perspective but insights and testimony that was never shared publicly.
It must be said, I am resolved to bear the consequences, the retaliation or whatever they may be, in order to move on from this.
I was shaken awake and escorted out of my room at around 2 AM on December 5, 2005. My head was held down in the pitch black halls of Chase Hall, the cadet dormitory.
For the previous 16 years, I chose not to acknowledge the United States Coast Guard in public. I mostly kept quiet out of fear of retribution. I let innuendo and rumors fly, kept shame inside, tried to remain stoic, and hoped that people would see what was real. In 2020, I finally began opening up about my experience to a few people who were closest to me. I revisited a number of places along the east and west coasts that defined my years as a teen-aged officer candidate. Partly, it’s because it was time, this has been causing unbearable pain for too long. One place that I have never revisited was Connecticut.
What you’re about to read is what I never had the opportunity to say. It involves the unlawful command influence on the institution of military justice at the United States Coast Guard Academy. In the process of being denied many of the rights to fairness and equity, my life and name were sacrificed to protect a few people and our institution. It’s hard to convey how violating and dehumanizing it is to be on the dark side of justice. When your rights are swept away in an instant, under cover of darkness and secrecy, in order to protect higher ups and protocol – it’s hard to survive, let alone build a life after. Though I have failed a number of times, I have tried with every ounce of my being to build that life.
Over the nearly two decades, a number of people closest to it have acknowledged what you will read below. This is the beginning of the first article written about a 2006 court-martial that I was at the center of.
A male senior at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy has been charged with sexually assaulting six female cadets in the campus barracks and elsewhere. Webster M. Smith, 22, of Houston was separated from the rest of the student population after the first complaint was filed with administrators on December 4. [February 2006, 1]
And this is the end of the last paragraph of one of the final articles written about the same court-martial:
By the time the final movie script is finished, though, maybe the academy stonewalling will have stopped and Smith, as the music swells, will finally step up, in full dress uniform, to receive his academy degree, a commission, and maybe even an apology. [September 2007, 2]
Though the second was favorable for me, both articles had inaccuracies. I was court-martialed for UCMJ violations that the leadership of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy was aware that I did not commit. A reputable institution, the local and then national media initially believed that CGA had the evidence to justify its first ever court martial. Meanwhile, the same officials quietly disenrolled two male cadets in December 2005 for similar violations despite medical documentation confirming and / or a “preponderance of evidence” of each male cadet’s guilt. The physical evidence against one male cadet, including a rape kit, was filed to the Connecticut Crime Laboratory and held by the New London Police Department.
In that cadet’s dismissal file it stated: Found in violation of 1232, in that the preponderance of evidence is that the sexual intercourse was not consensual and that mutual consent was not clearly established. [ROI: 11S-06–USCG-005243-OMHCGA]
Both were transferred to other colleges in the Spring of 2006. Both of their accusers were later disenrolled from the Academy, one later spoke out about her experience.
As a result of the hurried and baseless accusations against me, I faced over 100 years in a military prison at the convening order of Admiral James Van Sice, the Superintendent of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. I experienced things not seen in Connecticut since The State of Connecticut v. Joseph Spell in 1941. Like the defense helmed by the late Thurgood Marshall, attorneys Merle Smith and Navy JAG Stuart Kirkby did their best to avoid making the racial dynamics of the Academy a factor in my defense - instead focusing on the facts. But a series of post-trial task force investigations would shed light on the facts and findings of the process that would strongly suggest otherwise, many that you will read below. A decade of investigations into matters at USCGA would suggest that racial biases and a lack of accountability could have played a role in command decision-making, directly and indirectly. Shortly after my court-martial, Admiral Van Sice was relieved of his command of the Coast Guard Academy, well-short of his tour of duty.
Months later, when facing further discipline after a task force investigation, he opted to retire. A USCG spokesperson would later state that the abrupt departure and resignation were not related to me in any way. Those disciplinary files were not made available to the public, however.
December 3-5, 2005
On December 3, 2005, a short counseling session between an officer and myself was used as a reason to remove me from my education and place me under a gag order for my remaining time at the Coast Guard Academy. It began with a six minute discussion about what was troubling me with a Lieutenant, a mentor of mine. He was more than an officer to cadets like me. He was the rare one of three black officers on the 103 acre campus, he was my track coach, and he was our de facto counselor. For the 18 black cadets [cite: DHS ROI] on campus, he was our advocate. We didn’t have many.
I shared painful news with him on a December Friday night after I walked back to our cadet wing with a former friend, teammate, and classmate who invited me to join the track team just days earlier (she later became the “Plan B” that you will read below). She noticed that I was upset as well but I didn’t feel comfortable sharing the details with a classmate. One of our nation’s four federally-funded military academies, students pride themselves on honor, respect, and integrity. If they are asked a question, they answer it truthfully. If they fall short of expectations, they admit it. If they are purged for information, they do not lie or attempt to deceive. But it is a political environment with some of the nation’s best and brightest, they are adept at protecting themselves.
One question changed my life forever,
“Will you tell me what’s going on? You’re not yourself.”
I thought for a moment while fighting back tears and I replied, “[she] had an abortion and though she mentioned she had some health struggles earlier in the semester, she confirmed what they were today. I am having a tough time, I am responsible.” The next day, I emailed my former girlfriend and made her aware of my conversation. At the time, I did not understand its implications.
[Source: AOL email / CadetMail]
Within a day’s time, this email’s contents were known by the ranking officer on the Academy’s 103 acre campus, Admiral James Van Sice.
A few days prior to this email, Van Sice made his first big splash by appointing my former girlfriend the second woman ever to become the Regimental Commander of the Corps of Cadets. What I did not know at the time is that parenthood meant expulsion from the Academy for both the man and woman. It’s an issue that two Senators are fighting to change in a bi-partisan effort. In fact, one former CGA cadet just filed suit to change the rules. Additionally, I didn’t understand that some in the military viewed a terminated pregnancy as an unbecoming act: “conduct unbecoming of a cadet,” an infraction that a cadet can be prosecuted for unless authorized on base as a result of incest or rape. So, in one stroke of a pen, the Academy made her terminated pregnancy acceptable.
The next day (December 4), both my former girlfriend and the junior officer that counseled me attended a social at the on-base home of Admiral Van Sice. He possessed extraordinary power and on this day, he elected to use it. Within 12 hours of him reviewing that email, I was removed from my room.
This happened in 48 hours:
On Friday night, I told the Lieutenant that my former girlfriend came to my room earlier that morning and discussed the terminated pregnancy that she’d had in the middle of our sexual relationship.
That Saturday evening, I sent my former girlfriend the email mentioning that I’d confided in the Lieutenant in case she was asked about it. By Sunday afternoon, both the Lieutenant and my former girlfriend were with Van Sice. Within 12 hours of the conversation between the Admiral and my former girlfriend, I was pulled out of my room by four men.
I was shaken awake and escorted out of my room at around 2 AM on December 5, 2005. My head was held down in the pitch black halls of the barracks. My roommate was on his bed, seated and attentive, appearing equally confused.
Four Academy officials escorted me down two flights of stairs and into a car. Shortly after entering a housing building that I’d never seen before near the bottom of the campus, I was given a command to sign a gag order that made it illegal to communicate with or about any cadet. I wasn’t arrested or charged with anything, I was simply ordered not to speak.
You are prohibited from any contact of any kind, directly or indirectly, through any source, or by any means, with Coast Guard Academy Cadets wherever they are located; to include text messages, emails, or phone calls.
[Cite: December 5, 2005 USCGA]
Later that morning, I was told that I did not need a lawyer when I was instructed to speak to the Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) to detail any cadet relationship that I ever had. They asked for every detail of every relationship before or after my relationship with the Academy’s second-ever woman to earn the Regimental Commander position. I did so truthfully; I gave them information that could have gotten me expelled from the Academy. A sophomore cadet and senior cadet can be expelled for dating, for instance. In another situation, I detailed a romantic relationship with a cadet on academy grounds. This, too, can lead to expulsion. I broke cadet regulations that could have resulted in countless marching tours and liberty restrictions but none of this was about little cadet rules.
This began a process of isolation and a suspension of due process that would result in a court-martial on charges based on no physical or corroborated evidence whatsoever.
The first time that I walked back up the hill to my former barracks was the day that I was tasked with clearing my belongings from my former room. The other cadets had left for winter leave by then.
As I walked up to pack my room before departing to Houston on December 16, another male cadet walked out and to his waiting parents. That day, he became the second cadet in weeks to submit a written confession to potential UCMJ violations against his classmate. Neither male cadet would be removed from their rooms or suspended before a legal ruling. At the time, I didn’t understand how someone with physical evidence against them and a confession could be administratively disenrolled from a school that takes these issues so seriously. The evidence against him was overwhelming. The Captain who signed the document later testified:
It was forwarded to the Superintendent and with the advice of the Judge Advocate Sean Gill, The Superintendent declined to press charges, and remanded it back to me, Cadet [x] was disenrolled.
[ROI: 11S-06–USCG-005243-OMHCGA]
The same Admiral that pursued me for that email, declined to pursue him. The Superintendent quietly resigned the cadet for administrative reasons. Both male cadets went on to their respective transfer colleges in the Spring of 2006. The media was not notified.
February 8-16, 2006: “Plan A”
After finding a way to finish my first semester coursework, I was held out of school for the final semester of my senior year. On February 8, 2006, the day that I informed Academy officials of a complaint to be filed against the Admiral who ordered my removal from the Corps of Cadets with no due process, I was retaliated against for the second time since being gag ordered in the middle of the night.
Van Sice charged me within hours of my family notifying CGA of the complaint to be filed against him and his command. I was punished with 10 military violations (22 specifications) involving six cadets, totaling over 100 years of potential imprisonment. The Admiral used a few of the same cadets that I shared in my discussions with CGIS on December 5th. They would each be interviewed following my own acknowledgment of our relationships. The Academy added cadets to the charge sheet that I had no romantic or physical relationships with whatsoever. To justify removing me from my room in the middle of the night the violations were meant to establish a pattern of behavior.
On February 16, I was ordered back to the Academy for a labor detail, cleaning and sanding boats near the foot of the campus. That day, the military violations that had been “investigated for two months” leaked to a reporter named Richard Rainey of The Day, Southeastern Connecticut’s newspaper. Within hours, his writing was amplified by the Associated Press. That day, the Admiral’s staff leveraged the Associated Press to stoke fear in the Cadet Corps and surrounding community of Southeastern Connecticut and it effectively ended any attempt to address the Admiral’s impending civil rights violation.
Just 23 days after that February 2006 AP report reached every end of the country, the Admiral’s staff asked me to accept a plea deal to minor UCMJ violations in exchange for four years instead of the 100+ years that represented on the sheet that I received just three weeks earlier.
As we neared the March 2006 version of the military’s grand jury hearing, my lawyer requested email communication between all cadets involved. It was revealed that, after my conversations with CGIS, my former girlfriend coordinated with several of the same cadets that I mentioned to investigators on the morning of December 5, 2005. In emails, they were constructing what to say and how to say it. Days after these emails began, she messaged my mother:
Ms. Smith, please have a happy new year. Keep him safe. I have to do as I am told and I am just really sad. Have a good night, I am sorry that I cannot talk. But it will hurt both of us if we do. I have to follow their orders.
[AOL Instant Messenger, 12/29/2005 7:29 PM CST]
Rather than accepting the government’s offer, I chose to be court-martialed and my representation was tasked with standing up to an Academy that needed me to lose. The late CDR Merle Smith (Ret) was the first attorney who showed interest in helping me. A Vietnam war veteran and the first African-American graduate from the Academy, he was one of the few who saw past the initial press leaks.
The academy began admitting black students in 1962. Merle J. Smith Jr. of Quaker Hill, who acted as Webster Smith's civilian defense counsel, was the school's first black graduate in 1966. [cite]
Just four days after my decision to go to court-martial, a military judge recommended dismissal of the vast majority of the violations including the most serious one attributed to my former girlfriend and her terminated pregnancy. Many of the salacious charges that they used for the press campaign to justify my 2:00 am removal would later be recommended for dismissal in a pre-trial hearing by an independent military judge named Steven Anderson. This was unheard of in military circles.
I asked to go back to class and was again denied. Admiral Van Sice’s command found another way to keep me out of school by adding three additional charges in the 11th hour. The Admiral instructed his third in command to stand before the 1,000 member Corps of Cadets to recruit anyone willing to contribute to the case. According to cadets in attendance, the Commandant of Cadets cited that “any relationship that I had was being investigated.”
March - June: “Plan B”
With none of the original sexual misconduct charges holding up to scrutiny under oath, the additional charges alleged that a friend and teammate of mine only had a sexual relationship with me because I held a secret over her. It was the same cadet who invited me to breakfast off-campus the following morning and pleaded with me for my involvement on the Academy’s track team for my last stint as a student athlete that same day. In reality, there was no secret between her and I at all, and certainly no extortion. To craft that “secret,” the Admiral’s staff shielded two parts of her testimony from the jury and media. The first was that she committed a UCMJ violation by initiating a relationship with a Navy enlisted serviceman. This was the so-called “secret.” Except, this knowledge was widely known where she and I were stationed the previous summer at Naval Station Little Creek (VA) and in some cadet circles at the Academy.
The second was that she falsely accused that Navy Petty Officer of sexual assault. The previous summer when service members on base learned of her relationship with an enlisted Navy serviceman, she informed me that the encounter was sexual assault. I took her at her word, however she asked me to do nothing about the allegation and I complied with her wishes and did not report them. Over the fall semester, I checked in with her over weeks, asking about her boyfriend’s thoughts on the matter.
In October of 2005, she admitted that her characterization of that summer night was not factual and that her relationship with the enlisted service member was actually consensual. She went on to say that she was open to relationships and invited me to her room three times over several hours, one day, to discuss. This led to our mutual breaking of cadet regulations by committing sexual acts in the cadet barracks.
For these particular sexual misconduct charges to sustain under oath, Van Sice’s legal staff made a key change. To clear the path for her to testify against me, they proposed that he forgave her crimes and shielded her from prosecution over her two violations (false testimony about an act that she claimed was sexual assault and fraternization with an enlisted person). He provided her with immunity and elected to institute a rule called M.R.E. 412 which in turn disabled any mention of that relationship, the false allegation, or any other relationship conversation that we shared that evening. She did not have to mention the conversations that led to our sexual acts or her repeated invitations and requests to me, nor could she be cross-examined about them. I could not testify about her admittance to lying about her earlier-reported sexual assault to me or any of the night’s conversation between us, including the events of the following day or our friendship after the fact. So instead, I had to testify as if none of the conversation or associated events ever happened. I remember thinking heavily and speaking slowly as I talked through that particular day and night; my goal was to avoid the Admiral adding another “breaking an order” charge that would have guaranteed up to five years in prison for testifying truthfully.
I lost to her in June 2006 by a non-unanimous verdict. The jury was composed of 12 officers selected by Van Sice, the convening authority. The majority of them were Academy graduates and six were officers stationed at the US Coast Guard Academy, itself. The rest hailed from the New England and New York areas. The panel handed down a sentence of six months of a possible five year sentence. After all of that, I am not quite sure why the officers were lenient in my sentencing. At that moment, I didn’t know that the most damaging parts of the sentence was post incarceration.
I would later appeal to a staff of three former Academy graduates who served as judges on the Coast Guard’s appellate court. The dissenting Judge (CAPT Frederick Tucher) would later state:
...the military judge abused his discretion when he prohibited the defense of cross-examining (SR) on her false statement to Appellant that the encounter was nonconsensual, since this evidence was highly probative of the defense theory that SR engaged in a pattern of fabrication to avoid discipline. As discussed below, I believe that the military judge erred when he decided the admissibility of this evidence based on his own credibility determination of the only two witnesses involved. [...] The excessive restrictions imposed on Appellant’s Sixth Amendment confrontation rights allowed (SR) to testify through non-factual euphemisms. [...] The Government offered no other evidence to support SR’s testimony that her sexual encounter with Appellant, which had many outward indicators of being consensual, actually resulted from coercion.
I lost the appeal 2-1 with the affirming opinion coming by way of Judge Lane McClelland, the Coast Guard’s first ever woman to attain the rank of Captain. This was the only fact-based appeal that I had available to me. I could have raised issues of Unlawful Command Influence but I was not yet aware of much of what you have read in this essay, I was still prohibited from speaking to cadets.
Notes on the embedded image:
December 2, 2005: My former girlfriend visits my room to inform me of the terminated pregnancy in the middle of our relationship.
December 3, 2005: watched one of my favorite historical films in my room before lights out, “Rosewood” by John Singleton. The email exchange occurs.
December 5, 2005: Awakened at 2:07 AM by four Academy officials
December 15, 2005: Cadet [x] is administratively dismissed for non-consensual sexual activity, the second cadet to be dismissed with physical evidence and a confession that winter.
February - June 2006: everywhere I went at the time, I was followed or confronted.
March 15, 2006: The day in March that I found that the majority of the charges would be dropped. The Academy carried them to court-martial anyway.
July - September 2006: Solitary confinement for weeks at Naval Station Charleston’s brig began to wear on my soul.
December 2008: This was the day that I lost quite a bit of hope, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. This effectively ended my chances for vindication.
Following the court-martial, the Admiral was relieved of his command over the Academy. When facing further discipline, he chose to resign rather than being fired. “In 2006, Van Sice requested retirement following an investigation,” reads his Wikipedia. TheDay.com reported:
Rear Adm. James C. Van Sice was transferred from his post as superintendent of the academy soon after the Smith trial and allowed to retire early. An internal Coast Guard investigation later revealed that Van Sice had made “questionable” comments to one of Smith's accusers, prior to the court martial, suggesting the detrimental effect the trial was going to have on his own career.
An investigation by the Department of Homeland Security later revealed that he “may have committed unlawful command influence by referring to the case in a social conversation with one of the accusers expected to testify.” According to the same report, a witness to the conversation at a reception at the Superintendent’s Quarters gave a statement about it:
With Van Sice to my left and the cadet to my right, to draw Van Sice into conversation, I said something close to, ‘Admiral we were just talking about Cadet X getting her first choice for a cutter,” the witness said. “Van Sice then responded, with a tone I remember as more sarcastic than joking, something close to the following….”Well, because of things going on here I probably won’t have a job next fall.’ At that point I glanced at the cadet who had stopped smiling and whose body language changed, e.g. she stiffened almost like coming to attention.
The cadet that he spoke to that night was the one that he granted immunity and his judge granted M.R.E. 412 protection. It worked. I lost the three charges attributed to her “non-factual euphemisms” with no ability to testify against them or cross-examine, a decision that his command recommended.
Afterwards
Nearly two years to the day that I was pulled out of my room in the middle of the night, Lindsey and I welcomed our first born on December 11, 2007. Soon after, pro bono lawyers at WilmerHale unsuccessfully lobbied the Supreme Court to hear the case, a last ditch effort to exonerate me. Even so, I could not have questioned the ethics of the command in that proceeding. Defeated, I chose to put my fight for vindication on the back burner and begin building a future for my family.
I accepted responsibility for my missteps: I failed to live up to cadet standards, my father’s standards, and mine. I also accepted responsibility for disregarding the medical privacy of someone, who meant a lot to me, in a moment of weakness.
In March 2018, one of the three senior cadets that Van Sice relied on for accusations against me reached out over Instagram and we spoke in depth.
Your daughters are beautiful and look exactly like you. I promise I am not stalking you. I would love the opportunity to chat with you and Lindsey. I know you probably don’t live in the past, but if there was one thing in my life I wish I could have changed it was that entire time period. Best wishes. [Instagram: March 14, 2018]
The former classmate and USCG veteran ended our exchange with:
Thanks for chatting today. Hope it helped. Truly wish for resolution for you and your family. [Instagram: March 29, 2018]
I’m not sure that resolution will ever happen. In the years since, I have been quietly working to build a life of sustainability for our children. Between June 2006 and December 2021, I encountered tremendous hardships: we’ve been evicted twice (once in Texas, once in Ohio), I’ve been fired after my employer was contacted about the Academy ordeal, we’ve been nearly bankrupt on three occasions, even our school-aged children’s lives have been disrupted by senseless innuendo and slander. I do not intend to speak or write about the full extent of what my family and I have experienced over the years. The comments, the phone calls, the doxxing, the rumors, the press inquiries, and the innuendo began to break me over time. The people closest to me dealt with it the most.
I accepted responsibility for my missteps: I failed to live up to cadet standards, my father’s standards, and mine. I also accepted responsibility for disregarding the medical privacy of someone, who meant a lot to me, in a moment of weakness. To this day, I hold nothing against my peers. Not one of them. Relative to those who were in charge, we were children under the command of old men that we all felt were infallible.
The same Admiral that initiated the removal from my room at 2 am, also initiated the wide-ranging CGIS investigation, he approved the charges, he overturned the dismissal of many of those charges in a pre-trial hearing, he convened the court-martial, and then he approved the conviction and sentencing.
The senior military officer who is customarily in charge of cadet order and discipline, CAPT Douglas Wisniewski (ret) later testified:
I was awakened by a Duty Officer on December 4, 2005. [...] The investigative body reports to the [...] Superintendent, and he has legal advisors. I did not participate in the investigation at all. [Exhibit F/C, Page 5 of 9]
In 2007, The Department of Homeland Security rejected my only chance to question the Academy Superintendent’s leadership stating, “On its face your complaint collaterally challenges a separate proceeding, specifically the findings of the USCG court martial. You cannot challenge the results of a separate forum through the DHS employment discrimination complaint process.”
My claim was that the court-martial, itself, was a retaliation against me. It was preemption against the filing of a civil rights claim against two superior officers. One of them, Admiral James Van Sice, chose to convene the court-martial process against me within 18 hours of being notified of the complaint to be filed against him. The Coast Guard and DHS decided that I was not able to question the actions of its leaders.
Over the next 16 years, the USCG entered a period of scrutiny that it never experienced. In 2007, The late Congressman Elijah Cummings tasked the Academy with looking into incidents of racism at the school. In 2017, minority cadets raised issue once again. In 2020, a white supremacist Coast Guard officer stationed at USCG headquarters was later convicted for threats against minorities. In 2020, an IG report would be released. Senator Blumenthal went on record as stating: “We must aggressively monitor the academy’s actions to ensure that minority cadets do not ever encounter such acts of hatred and bias again.” This would all culminate in a congressional hearing and testimony of esteemed professor and Coast Guard Commander Kimberly Young-McClear, Ph.D for the discrimination, racism, and retaliation against her.
Slightly larger than the NYPD but with responsibilities spanning the globe, the vast majority of the officers in the service hail from USCGA. This included the prosecutors, the majority of the jury, the pre-trial judge, court-martial judge, USCG appellate judges, and the Admiral’s legal staff.
Though the school is just now beginning to make considerable progress amending race relations, it was notably the slowest of the vast majority of American universities to desegregate. My attorney, Merle Smith’s appointment followed a public order by John F. Kennedy to desegregate the school in 1962. In 1974, my father was part of the largest class of African-Americans in the school’s history (28). He was one of four to graduate in 1978. The image at the bottom right of this page includes my 18 year old father.
Forgotten for nearly 60 years, the Academy finally honored Commander Merle Smith for desegregating the Coast Guard Academy by renaming the school’s Officer’s Club in 2020.
I was happy for Merle. In his cluttered, wood paneled home office in Quaker Hill, Connecticut: he’d always noted the disrespect he felt for his once forgotten legacy. It was part of the reason he was comfortable defending me against his own institution and service. Standing up to the Admiral, his lawyers, and his public affairs office was a form of justice for him. What he knew that I didn’t at the time was that I lost my chance for impartiality, truth, and fairness the moment I was awakened and ordered silent at 2 am.
There isn’t anything that can be done about any of this. But what you’ve now read is what I wanted people to understand all along.
I’m enraged all over again for you, Web. -the opposite side of the same coin