Authorship of viral e-mail on piracy rescue in doubt

The widely circulated e-mail claims to offer a look inside last week’s Navy SEAL rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates.

The message, credited to retired Rear Adm. Lou Sarosdy, begins, “Having spoken to some SEAL pals here in Virginia Beach yesterday and asking why this thing dragged out for four days, I got the following…”

It goes on to criticize President Barack Obama for not authorizing the military to act more aggressively during the stand-off, which ended with snipers killing three Somali pirates. The e-mail claims that Obama rejected two proposed rescue plans and that Phillips was saved only after naval officers at the scene decided on their own to proceed.

There’s at least one problem. Sarosdy says he didn’t write it. And he doesn’t know if anything in it is true.

“I don’t know any SEALs,” said Sarosdy, 81, speaking by phone from his home in Pensacola, Fla. “I have no idea who transmitted that.”

Sarosdy said he received the e-mail from a friend – he thinks it was another retired military officer – a few days after the stand-off ended, he said. He thought it was interesting, so he forwarded it to a couple dozen other people.

The message has popped up on message boards across the political spectrum, for the Sean Hannity Show, Military Times and MSNBC.

A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not be reached for comment late Monday.

Cmdr. Greg Geisen, a spokesman for Naval Special Warfare, declined to comment. He noted that a wide range of bloggers are speculating about what happened. “Everybody’s talking about it,” Geisen said. “It’s the number one topic in the nation.”

Sarosdy graduated from the Naval Academy in 1951 and spent a career in naval aviation. He flew F-3H Demons and F-8 Crusaders off aircraft carriers, and rose to a two-star position as director of Naval Air Systems Command.

Sarosdy did two stints in Hampton Roads in the 1970s, and his son still lives in Virginia Beach, he said. He retired from the Navy in 1982.

He’s not quite sure how he ended up as a virtual expert on the pirate rescue.

“I passed it to a fairly limited number of guys,” he said. “I can’t take any credit.”

Louis Hansen, (757) 446-2322, louis.hansen@pilotonline.com