Coast Guard cutters Hamilton and Munro conduct at-sea training in the Pacific Ocean on March 12, 2024. (Ray Corniel/U.S. Coast Guard)

Two separate congressional investigations found retired Adm. Karl Schultz made the decision during his tenure as Coast Guard commandant to conceal an embarrassing internal review of the mishandling of sexual misconduct among cadets at the service’s academy.

Committees in the House and Senate released investigative reports within a week of each other that found Schultz made the decision in fall 2018 and retired Adm. Charles Ray, then his deputy, evaluated the choice in a handwritten pros and cons list.

Months later, an email from a Coast Guard budget and programs official to the commandant’s executive assistant suggested the service take steps to remove all references of the investigation in materials prepared for Congress, according to a report released Friday by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ subpanel on investigations. The 65-page report is the subpanel’s second on the scandal.

For more than a year, the Senate subpanel and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee have been investigating the cover up of the report known as Operation Fouled Anchor, an internal review of sexual assault and harassment cases that occurred between 1990 and 2006 at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. As part of Fouled Anchor, the Coast Guard Investigative Service reviewed 102 reports of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment at the academy and identified 63 potential victims, according to the Senate report.

Retired Adm. Karl Schultz, the former commandant of the Coast Guard, shown in June 2021. (Travis Magee/U.S. Coast Guard)

The Coast Guard conducted the Fouled Anchor investigation for six years and issued a final report on Jan. 31, 2020, which found the academy knew of accusations against 30 of 43 people, but only five were reported to criminal investigators. It concluded academy leaders failed to take sufficient action to ensure a safe environment for cadets, yet no one was held accountable. Congress only learned of Fouled Anchor in June 2023 as reporters at CNN learned of its existence and began reporting about it.

Schultz’s predecessor retired Adm. Paul Zukunft and his deputy retired Adm. Charles Michel told senators that they conducted the internal investigation with the intent of disclosing it to Congress and the public, according to the Senate report.

“The cover up of sexual assault in the Coast Guard was deliberate and purposeful and long standing,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chairman of the investigative subpanel, said Friday in a call with reporters. “We think that it was done simply to avoid embarrassment to the Coast Guard. Unfortunately, that embarrassment was only enhanced by the continuing cover-up.”

The Coast Guard did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on the new report.

While senators concluded Schultz made the final call to bury Fouled Anchor from reviewing emails obtained from the Coast Guard, the House committee interviewed Schultz, who served as commandant from 2018 to 2022. He stated to lawmakers that he made the decision, according to the committee’s nine-page report released Dec. 12.

“I own that exclusively, not Adm. Ray, not others,” Schultz to House lawmakers.

He told CNN this week that he made this decision because he wanted to protect victims and accused perpetrators who had since been cleared of wrongdoing. He feared Congress would politicize the information and pointed to Congress’s ongoing investigations as proof that he was right.

Blumenthal said even with a second report now released on the subpanel’s investigation, that does not mean the work is over. He and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the future chairman of the panel, will work together because he said more needs to be done to stop sexual misconduct within the Coast Guard and the rest of the military.

“Sexual assault and harassment are a continuing challenge and scourge in our military, there’s no denying it. We need to be very clear-eyed about it, and our military leaders are very candid and forthright about seeking to act,” he said. “I believe that survivors are being heard and … effective discipline is more common now.”