Navy Captain speaks truth, gets fired

[Greg]

What, do they just not teach people how to leak anymore?

[Vonz90]

If you're an intel officer making comments on anything in the news media, you're already doing it wrong.

+1 The press is simply a set of spies we are not allowed to shoot.

Even if it's a critical situation of imminent threat (which doesn't apply here), there are ways to end run superiors to get your analysis a fair hearing without going public.

Especially given what he said was, let's be honest- quite frankly obvious to anyone who knew anything about the area. It's not like he was whistleblowing a nefarious plot for the Chinese to concoct a military reason for occupying Taiwan by shooting down a civilian airliner with stolen Taiwanese hardware or something.
Even if he were in the civvy side of things, talking to the media when you are not the designated media relations wonk will get you fired.

I think many of you are misjudging this. I do not think he screwed up.

I think he was probably just sick of the politically correct crap coming out of the administration about China being our "strategic partner" and was throwing the BS flag in public, 'cause at 29 years he had nothing to loose.

[workinwifdakids]

Were this a Tom Clancy book, this would be a sneaky way to call China out on it without making it official policy, and with the captain in question getting a cushy job at LockMart in exchange for giving up on getting stars. Where's the tin-foil hat smiley?

You called it. There's a 50/50 chance they asked this guy to fall on his sword and then make sure he's taken care of after retirement.