USCG Leadership Displays Ignorance at Hearings, Criminalization Of The US Mariner Continues John Konrad Total Views: 69 July 20, 2010 When gCaptain interviewed Admiral Thad Allen , then CG Commandant, last year and asked about the increase in the criminalization of mariners, he was quick to lay down the facts that technology, not an increase of investigation, has assisted the USCG in finding mariners guilty of criminal acts. Fair enough but why are mariners being singled out? Businessweek tells us: Rig Captain May Face Criminal Probe Curt Kuchta, master of the Deepwater Horizon when it burned and sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in April, has been designated a “party of interest” by a joint U.S. Coast Guard- Interior Department panel probing the catastrophe, said Kyle Schonekas, Kuchta’s lawyer. Under federal rules, that means Kuchta could be charged if the investigative panel concludes crimes were committed, Schonekas said. Other parties of interest named by the panel include James Harrell, Transocean’s offshore installation manager on the rig, and Douglas Brown, the chief mechanic, according to the panel’s website. “When you’re designated as a party of interest, it means you’re a target,” Schonekas said in an interview today in Kenner, Louisiana, where the panel is conducting public hearings. “The objectionable thing about this is that they named my client a party of interest after he had already testified.” Continue reading… gCaptain protested Captain Nguyen’s heated exchanges with the lawyers defending the rights of Captain Kuchta and Jimmy Harrell which increased in intensity to the point of Nguyen threatening to remove the mariner’s legal representation if they continued to voice their objections! Objections grounded in the fact that the late appointment of these individuals as parties of interest has denied rights due to them in the marine safety manual . He even went as far as suggesting the board no longer considered them to be innocent after hearin