US Navy orders high-level outside probe of Seal course after sailor's death

WASHINGTON - The US Navy has started an independent investigation of the brutal selection course for its elite Seals after a sailor's death this year revealed a tangle of physical abuse, poor medical oversight and use of performance-enhancing drugs in the course.

Among the problems were a damaging ethos of forced suffering that often dismissed serious injuries and illnesses as weakness and a growing subculture of students who saw illicit performance-enhancing drugs as the only way to get through the course. The Naval Special Warfare Command, which includes the Seals, had been looking into Mullen's death and the surrounding issues on its own, and its findings were supposed to have been released in August. But they were held back after top Navy leaders indicated that they thought the report placed too much blame on the sailor and not enough on failures in the Seals, according to a Navy official who is familiar with discussions about the report.

The BUD/S course takes place on the gritty beach sand and in the cold ocean waters of Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, near San Diego. It has a reputation as the most physically gruelling selection course in the military. Candidates endure weeks of carrying heavy logs and inflatable boats, lengthy sessions of situps and pullups in frigid surf,"drown-proofing" exercises underwater with bound hands, and days and nights spent cold, wet, sandy and exhausted.

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