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Home Is The Sailor, Home From The Sea

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By STEVE OTTO

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: October 22, 2008

It was 18 years ago that I last saw then-Cmdr. Kevin Cosgriff. I was climbing (actually hanging on for dear life) down a rope ladder over the side of the USS Robert G. Bradley into a pilot boat that would haul me back to Egmont Key as the guided missile frigate moved slowly in the dawn light just beyond the Sunshine Skyway.

He was wearing a sweater against a cold wind as he prepared to take the frigate to its home port, then in Charleston, S.C., and then somewhere in the Middle East.

"It seems like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?" said newly retired Vice Adm. Cosgriff as he sipped coffee and sampled my wife's great Key lime pie.

I guess so. Even Cosgriff could not have suspected as he took his first command out of Tampa Bay that he would be caught up in the cauldron that is the Middle East and a career that would deal with everything from interdicting pirates off the coast of Somalia to working in the West Wing of the White House, commanding the 5th Fleet and finding himself that horrific day in the Pentagon when not many yards away a jet airliner slammed into an outer ring.

It was later that summer in 1990 that I saw Cosgriff's name again. This time it was on a wire story and described an incident somewhere off the coast of Kuwait involving the Bradley and a warning shot he had been forced to fire at an approaching Iraqi ship. In fact, the Bradley was probably 40 miles off the coast when Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait and it all began.

Panic In Kuwait

"The tough part for us was that every kind of aircraft was taking off from Kuwait and the airwaves were full of chatter from pilots who had ... no clear idea of where they were going."

But if the Middle East was dangerous ... "Well I did manage to survive Washington after that ..." That he did. He became an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency and eventually worked for the under secretary of the Navy.

From there he was made director of the White House Situation Room. "Working in the West Wing was a life unto itself," he says. You would frequently be with the president, but only in the sense that you would get on one end of the helicopter and he (President Clinton) would be on the other.

The Big Kahuna

Recently, as commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, as well as the combined maritime forces, he has been the big kahuna for all Naval operations in that part of the globe.

If there was an incident in the region, say armed boats harassing Navy ships in the Straits of Hormuz, his would be the face on CNN explaining what happened.

He's retired, but still cautious when talking about events in that part of the world. He's optimistic, in that he thinks most of the people and nations over there want us to succeed.

But at the same time he talks about piracy along the African coast, and the trafficking of humans by the thousands in the region. He understands the tribal divisions and the complexities of operating in cultures that have such diverse views of government and human rights.

I asked him what he was going to do now and how difficult is it to adjust to a civilian world where there is a potential war about every 15 minutes to deal with. He admitted it takes getting used to. His family is still just outside of Washington but he sure likes what he sees in Tampa. Maybe because he's used to the Byzantine world of the Middle East, we ought to hire him to run county government. It might not be all that different.

Keyword, Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's column.

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