Naval analysts honored for role in ’09 Maersk hijacking

Brian Green’s evening played out with ordinary pleasantness that day in April 2009: He coached a soccer game in suburban Maryland. Then he had a leftover taco dinner.

Hours later, fast asleep, Green, the counterpiracy branch chief at the Office of Naval Intelligence, got a phone call he’d known might come someday. The ONI’s watch center in Suitland was on the line to tell him that for the first time in recent memory, a U.S.-flagged container ship — the Maersk Alabama — had been hijacked by pirates.

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“To be pretty frank, these were words I dreaded to hear,” recalled Green, 35. “From there, I knew the game was on.”

On Thursday, 2¹ / ₂ years since the Maersk Alabama was attacked by four Somalis in a drama that played out over five days and ended in no American deaths, the anonymous band of intelligence analysts who helped in the rescue was given a formal thank-you from the Maersk Line, the ship’s Norfolk-based operator.

In a ceremony at the agency’s headquarters, Steve Carmel, Maersk’s senior vice president of maritime services, unveiled a four-foot copy of the Maersk Alabama, a token of appreciation that will remain in Suitland. The Maersk model will join several other models of historic boats from wars that occupy space at the intelligence installation.

The presentation offered a rare glimpse of the secretive work of the ONI’s counterpiracy branch, a group of mostly civilian intelligence analysts who monitor 2.8 million square miles of water — spanning from the Horn of Africa to the west coast of India to south of Madagascar — and alert commercial ships to nearby pirates.

In the event’s aftermath, Navy SEALS reaped so much of the glory because their snipers shot and killed three of the four pirates, enabling the rescue of Richard Phillips, the Maersk captain. (Phillips’s book “A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea” is being made into a movie starring Tom Hanks.)

But Thursday was meant to honor the desk-bound intelligence analysts, whose work is quiet but no less important.

Initially during the ceremony, the counterpiracy analysts — mostly men and one woman who live in the Washington region — posed behind the model ship for photographs. But they were rushed off before the official unveiling because they were not allowed to be photographed by the media and have their faces known publicly. They wore suits. A couple sport goatees.

In his speech while accepting the red, gray and yellow boat, the ONI’s commander, Capt. Robert Rupp, exuded some swagger on behalf of his unassuming charges.

“This event involved 20 different agencies. . . . The fact that ONI was selected to be the lead is because we are the experts,” he said. “You can’t turn to the . . . CIA or NSA to understand the unique issues of what happens under the water, on the water, or over the water.”

The night he was woken up, Green said he first called Steve Carmel, Maersk’s vice president of maritime services.

The men had communicated frequently about potential piracy threats, and they share a bond: Both are graduates of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York.