Updates On Some Recent Stories

Back in August, I blogged about the USS Albuquerque sailor who had been arrested for attempting to sell secrets to some foreign government. Today, we found out that he's planning on pleading guilty to at least some of the charges against him, apparently as part of a plea deal:

Weinmann has agreed to plead guilty to some of the charges under a pretrial agreement that also includes the maximum possible sentence, said attorney Phillip Stackhouse, a retired Marine lawyer from Jacksonville, N.C.
Stackhouse declined to say to which charges Weinmann will plead guilty or to give details about the sentence.
“I anticipate during the hearing a lot of things will be explained,” Stackhouse said. He said the sentencing phase of the trial could last the week.
Weinmann is charged with espionage, desertion, failing to properly safeguard and store classified information, copying classified information, communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it, and stealing and destroying a government computer. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of espionage.

As I said earlier, a young, good-looking kid like him will be really popular in Leavenworth.

Regarding the story of the CSS-17 Commodore who was unexpectedly fired earlier this month, someone from the more mainstream portion of the blogosphere finally came out and said what a bunch of anonymous commenters have been mentioning since the story broke:

One of the things commanding officers are not supposed to do is commit adultery with the wives of subordinates. But a U.S. Navy captain was relieved of his command of Submarine Squadron 17, in Bangor, Washington, for that reason. Actually, no official reason was given other than that the navy had "lost confidence" in the officer. But all over the base, sailors were talking about the sexual escapades that apparently led to the relief. The dismissed officer was a former enlisted marine, who worked his way up to a job that would have led to admiral rank. But no more.

I was really worried that my old friend Raymond Perry was going to "break" the story, so I'm glad someone else did. (Actually, Trickish Knave did post about it last week.)