[Vision2020] Raunchy Videos Starring Enterprise Skipper Come to Light

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of HamptonRoads.com (Hampton Roads, Virginia) at:

(includes video)
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/12/raunchy-videos-starring-enterprise-skipper-come-light

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Raunchy videos starring Enterprise skipper come to light

By Corinne Reilly
The Virginian-Pilot

In one scene, two female Navy sailors stand in a shower stall aboard the
aircraft carrier, pretending to wash each other. They joke about how they
should get six minutes under the water instead of the mandated three.

In other skits, sailors parade in drag, use anti-gay slurs, and simulate
masturbation and a rectal exam. Another scene implies that an officer is
having sex in his stateroom with a donkey.

They're all part of a series of short movies produced aboard the
Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Enterprise in 2006 and 2007 and broadcast
to its nearly 6,000 sailors and Marines. The man who masterminded and
starred in them is Capt. Owen Honors - now the commander of the carrier,
which is weeks away from deploying.

The videos, obtained by The Virginian-Pilot this week, were shot and
edited with government equipment, many of them while the Enterprise was
deployed supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the time, Honors was the carrier's executive officer, or XO, the
commanding officer's deputy. He took command of the ship in May.

In the videos, Honors indicates that he's trying to entertain the crew.
They were shown roughly once a week on closed-circuit shipwide television,
according to a handful of sailors who were assigned to the Enterprise at
the time. The sailors requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

One of them said he mailed a complaint about the videos to the Navy
Inspector General this week. Others said crew members who raised concerns
aboard the ship in 2006 and 2007 were brushed off.

The videos were part of what Honors, 49, called "XO Movie Night."

"They were the XO's project," said one former Enterprise sailor, a ship
video-grapher who on one occasion was asked to help in the filming. "He
was the one coming up with scripts and the jokes. He was the one planning
it."

The Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is set
to deploy overseas this month. The videos raise serious questions about
Honors' judgment, especially while the carrier is under way, said another
sailor, an officer aboard the Enterprise who was also there when the
videos were being shown.

"When the ship pulls away from that pier, he's it," the officer said. "To
me, that's scary."

It's unclear why the videos recently resurfaced, although one sailor who
spoke to the newspaper said they remain on at least one shipboard
computer.

Honors is a native of Syracuse, N.Y., and graduated from the U.S. Naval
Academy in 1983. He went on to fly the F-14 Tomcat and work as a test
pilot before serving as XO on the Enterprise from July 2005 to September
2007.

Honors did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the
Enterprise's then-commanding officer, Larry Rice, who was later promoted
to the rank of the rear admiral and now works at the Norfolk-based U.S.
Joint Forces Command.

Rear Adm. Raymond Spicer and Vice Adm. Daniel Holloway, who commanded the
Enterprise carrier strike group during Honors' time as XO, could not be
reached.

The Navy released a written statement late Friday in response to The
Pilot's inquiries.

"The videos created onboard USS Enterprise in 2006-2007 were not created
with the intent to offend anyone," the statement said. "The videos were
intended to be humorous skits focusing the crew's attention on specific
issues such as port visits, traffic safety, water conservation, ship
cleanliness, etc."

The statement said that when leaders with the carrier strike group became
aware of the inappropriate content in early 2007, production of the videos
ended.

At least one video that includes anti-gay remarks and officers pretending
to masturbate was made after July of that year, according to Honors'
comments in it.

The Navy said it plans to launch an investigation.

Some were giving support to Honors. By this morning, more than 1,000
people had joined "We Support Captain O. P. Honors!" on Facebook.

At the beginning of the videos, Honors jokes that his bosses shouldn't be
held responsible for them. "As usual, I want to say that the captain and
the admiral - they don't know anything at all about the content of this
video or the movie this evening, and they should absolutely not be held
accountable in any judicial setting," he says.

The sailors who spoke to the newspaper said it's hard to believe that
Honors' superiors on board weren't aware of the videos as soon as he began
showing them in 2006, given that they were routinely broadcast for the
entire crew.

"People talked about them," the former ship videographer said. "People
looked forward to them - at least the people who thought they were funny."

A female sailor who was assigned to the Enterprise at the time said she
and a number of other women on board were offended by the videos. She said
some crew members complained about them, and in fact, Honors acknowledged
it on camera. In one movie, he says, "Over the years I've gotten several
complaints about inappropriate materials in these videos, never to me
personally but, gutlessly, through other channels."

He adds, "This evening, all of you bleeding hearts... why don't just go
ahead and hug yourself for the next 20 minutes or so, because there's a
really good chance you're gonna be offended."

Then Honors tells his viewers to get ready for something that always
pleases: "the F-bomb." The video goes on to show a string of clips edited
together in which he uses the expletive.

The next portion is a series of clips displaying Honors and other sailors,
including officers, pretending to masturbate. It's set to a song called
"Spank."

After that, the video returns to Honors. "Finally, let's get to my
favorite topic - something foreign to the gay kid over there: chicks in
the shower," he says.

He gestures to the person next to him - who, through a trick of video, is
Honors wearing the blue coveralls of a Navy surface warfare officer, or
SWO. SWOs include the officers who crew the ship; they don't include
fighter pilots and other aviators. Repeatedly in the videos, Honors, a
former Top Gun pilot, draws distinctions between aviators and SWOs and
refers to SWOs as "fags."

The video then shows two female sailors pretending to shower together and
two male sailors pretending to shower together. While the shots imply
nudity, they don't show any; the men are filmed from the waist up and the
women from their shoulders.

In one instance, the women are in the shower stall with a cardboard cutout
of Honors.

The sailors who spoke to The Pilot estimated that Honors made a few dozen
videos for XO Movie Night. They said not all of them contained sexual
jokes and anti-gay remarks.

The videos were shot and edited using equipment from the ship's public
affairs office, which typically spends deployments documenting and
publicizing the good work of sailors.

Of note is the quality of the XO Movie Night videos and the time that
Honors appears to have devoted to them, even as the Enterprise was
simultaneously supporting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its air wing
was dropping record numbers of bombs. The videos have plots, scripts,
props and recurring characters.

In several instances, Honors plays more than one character in the same
scene. To achieve this, it appears he recorded different takes in which he
played the different roles, and then superimposed the takes over each
other, allowing himself to appear on screen as two or three people at
once.

"Some of it was pretty complicated stuff," the former ship videographer said.

The videographer said that while he knew the movies weren't appropriate,
in some ways he can understand how they happened.

"In his defense, I'll say that sometimes, when you've been out to sea for
a while, cut off from everything, you start to think things that you would
never normally do are actually a good idea," he said. "You do stupid stuff
to stay sane."

He added that electronic communication with the rest of the world while at
sea can be difficult; it was nearly impossible to e-mail or upload videos
from the carrier in 2006 and 2007.

"He probably figured they'd never get off the ship."

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Your tax-payiing dollar at work, America.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown