Kirk Lippold

"Front Burner" is the story of U.S. Navy Commander Kirk Lippold, focusing primarily on his experience as the commander of the USS Cole. The Cole was attacked by Al Qaeda suicide bombers in October, 2000 during a refueling stop in Yemen. Commander Lippold's story is one which has been told many times since Al Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. on 9/11, i.e., that of U.S. intelligence deficiencies, and a general lack of understanding of the threats from Al Qaeda at that time. As bad, anything which may have been known at that time was not fully shared and integrated throughout the Intelligence Agencies and the Pentagon.

The Cole attack was one of the early Al Qaeda attacks against U.S. interests. Because of the lack of intelligence, the USS Cole was unprepared to properly defend itself during what was thought to be little more that a routine refueling stop in Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the attack, and another 39 wounded. Commander Lippold explains that Naval Intelligence failed to identify the danger of a possible Al Qaeda attack to ships visiting Yemen, and as a result, security steps taken while refueling in Yemen proved to be ineffective in protecting the ship.

A small boat managed to came alongside the Cole, detonated its explosive cargo, resulting in the Cole being severely damaged and threatened with sinking. Lippold describes the gaping hole blown in the side of the ship, the flooding of the engineering spaces, loss of shipboard communications, the deaths and injuries to the crew, and the real fears of losing the ship should flooding continue unabated. Throughout the book, Lippold talks extensively of the heroic steps taken by the crew to save the ship, however I felt the book would have been made more interesting if Lippold had been able to include more details of those heroic actions through the eyes of the crew members rather than from his own perspective as the commanding officer. It is Lippold's story, so being told through his eyes and his perspective is understandable, however I continued to have the feeling that in some passages, he made his story sound a little more self-serving and self-centered than needed. To me, the book would have benefited more from better capturing the perspective and specific stories from the rest of the crew, those with their hands on the emergency equipment and struggling to stop the flooding, keep the generator running, rig casualty cables, etc. Also, and perhaps it's my own bias based on one or two other Annapolis graduates I knew (an extremely small minority I should add), but I didn't feel he made himself to be a particularly likable or sympathetic character in the book.

At any rate, the book ends with a bitter detailing of the fact that his advancement and promotion from Commander to Captain was prevented because of political interference. Thus, even though he was exonerated of blame by investigation into the bombing, the attack on the Cole ended up ending Commander Lippold's career in the Navy. That was hardly unusual, in that historically, a ship's Captain has always ultimately responsible for his ship. And while Lippold makes it clear that he did not have the information needed to make the necessary decisions to better protect his ship, to some in the Military and Government, someone had to be held accountable. Lippold was obviously sensitive to being blamed, and understandably, sounded somewhat defensive this otherwise significant story of a precursor attack against U.S. interests prior to 9/11.

Note: to anyone interested in knowing more about the investigation into who was responsible for the Cole attack, I recommend Ali Soufan's "The Black Banners" as a good source.

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