(05-30-2019 10:11 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  No, the key here is "White House official."
Again, the issue isn't what the Navy did, but what the WH did. The fact that any level of official at the WH thought it was a good idea to try and get a ship hidden because it was named after McCain is bad. Does it say anything positive about the admin that anyone working in an official capacity thought they should try and do this?
Also, why even try and refute the email? CNN provided more sources to back up the claim, and it sounds within the realm of possibilities for this WH.

"White House official" is a nebulous term that could be used to describe literally hundreds if not thousands of people, most of them lower level lackeys. The fact the this "official" was talking with a lower-level Navy person is a dead giveaway that it was one of the lower level lackeys. SecDef and anyone close to him aren't interested in talking to LTJG Jones, and LTJG Jones's commanding officer is damned determined that no such conversation take place. That's just not how it works. Could the question have been raised as one of about a thousand details that advance teams go over? Absolutely. For one thing, with repair crews crawling all over it, the McCain is probably pretty damned unsightly.

As far as the email, what CNN is produced is more sources of the same rumor, but no email. A rumor does not become true because more people repeat it.

Here's my best guess at what happened. There was probably a discussion of what to do with McCain at some point during the advance visit. It was a very low level discussion and was quickly quashed by higher ups. Some staff puke at COMNAVFORJAPAN probably decided that it looked like crap and it had to be spiffed up a bit. Probably a lot of red lead showing and stuff like that. So he had a paint barge go over and paint it out haze gray in a hurry. I would expect that there is a strong possibility that the ship name was painted over in haze gray, and the black ship's name was not repainted in by the time of the visit. There was a tarp to cover the paint job until it dried. Somebody took a photo of the tarp several days before the visit. The bit about the ship name stenciled on the hat is the part that tells me that the writer didn't really do the proper homework. I'm guessing maybe he had seen other navies who do display the ship's name on their hats and made an improper projection. Then somebody makes up this story about the email, somebody comes up with a photo of the tarp, and it gets traction.

The reason why this sounds within the realm of possibility is that we have had so many other stories where stupid allegations have gotten legs before they could be debunked.