Pentagon will not punish individuals in USS Cole attack

Last year's October 12 bombing ripped this hole in the USS Cole and killed 17 sailors

In this story: 'No one could have stopped this attack' Navy releases video of Cole crew interviews RELATED STORIES, SITES

From Jamie McIntyre
CNN Military Affairs Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Pentagon investigation into the October bombing of the USS Cole has concluded that the ship's captain and crew should not be punished.

Pentagon officials decided there was plenty of blame to go around for the security lapses that left the Cole vulnerable to attack in Yemen. The explosion, which originated from a small ship that pulled up beside the destroyer in the port of Aden, left 17 sailors dead and wounded 39 others.

Announcing the Pentagon's conclusion was William Cohen's final act as defense secretary.

GALLERIES Images from Wednesday's memorial services USS Cole wounded return home     INTERACTIVE See a 3-dimensional image of the USS Cole Get the plugin Leaders' reactions to the attack on the USS Cole Animation of a transport ship conducting a recovery procedure at sea     MESSAGE BOARD USS Cole attack

"We must constantly search for and find the so-called seams in our force protection plans before our enemies do," he said. "And in the case of Cole, we did not do so."

Cohen accepted some of the blame himself, as did the Navy's top admiral.

"There is a collective responsibility here, and that we all in the chain of command share responsibility for what happened on board USS Cole," said Adm. Vern Clark.

'No one could have stopped this attack'

The Navy investigation details 12 basic security measures that Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, skipper of the Cole, failed to implement the day the ship was nearly sunk by suicide bombers in a small boat.

An investigating officer wrote that those lapses, such as the failure to monitor unauthorized boats, "allowed the terrorist craft to come along side the ship unchallenged."

But Clark overruled that conclusion.

"My conviction is that no one on that ship should be blamed for this tragedy, because no one on the ship could have stopped this attack with the circumstances that they faced," he said.

Clark said the loss of 17 sailors was "not the product of carelessness or folly, but a deliberate attack by a determined adversary," and he vowed that the Navy would do a better job in the future of equipping its commanders to deal with the threat of terrorism.

Navy releases video of Cole crew interviews

Video just released by the Navy shows the crew just a few days after the attack, talking to Navy camera crews.

"We just heard a big boom and we all bounced up and down a couple of times," said one sailor.

"I was in the operations offices, two compartments from the blast," another said. "I got about every inch of the blast you could think of without actually getting hurt."

At the time of the interviews, the exhausted crew was still battling to stop leaks in withering heat, and sleeping on the Cole's deck because of the lack of power and air- conditioning.

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