The Navy announced this afternoon that it has fired Capt. Owen Honors from his post as commander of the USS Enterprise over crude videos he made in 2006 and 2007.
Honors has been re-assigned to administrative duties.
“The responsibility of the commanding officer for his or her command is absolute,” Adm. John Harvey, commander of the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, said in a statement released this afternoon. “While Captain Honors’ performance as commanding officer of U.S.S. Enterprise has been without incident, his profound lack of good judgment and professionalism while previously serving as executive officer on Enterprise calls into question his character and completely undermines his credibility to continue to serve effectively in command.”
“After personally reviewing the videos created while serving as executive officer, I have lost confidence in Capt. Honors’ ability to lead effectively,” Harvey said, “and he is being held accountable for poor judgment and the inappropriate actions demonstrated in the videos that were created while he served as executive officer on Enterprise.”
Capt. Dee Mewbourne will become the new commander of the Enterprise, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a crew of 6,000 that is scheduled to deploy this month to support the Afghanistan War. Mewbourne is currently chief of staff for Navy Cyber Forces.
The videos, which were produced by and star Honors, showed the captain making anti-gay slurs and performing skits that included mock masturbation and women showering together. When the videos surfaced this past weekend, the Navy said Honors’ superiors at the time pulled the plug on the “movie nights” and left it at that. But the service then said it was opening an investigation.
“The investigation will continue to look at all aspects of the production of the videos, to include the actions of other senior officers who knew of the videos and the actions they took in response,” Harvey said today.
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