Kurt Lippold

Commander Kurt Lippold was the captain of the USS Cole when it was bombed in Yemen in late 1999.

An official United States Navy inquiry into the attack learned that the vessel's Command Center was unstaffed at the time of the attack, and that Lippold had not issued any standing orders of what to do in case of an attack. Lippold was not officially reprimanded however.

Notably Lippold was quoted criticizing United States President Barack Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba:

Lippold was supporting a recent ruling by Colonel James L. Pohl the Presiding Officer of Abd el-Rahim al-Nashiri's Guantanamo military commission. Although President Obama had issued an Executive Order staying all the Guantanamo commissions for 120 days, to allow his administration time to re-assess them, Pohl's had ruled that he could ignore the President's order. Lippold called Pohl's order:

According to Carol Rosenberg, reporting for the McClatchy News Service, Lippold was also critical of the suggestion that Susan J. Crawford, the official in charge of the Office of Military Commissions, could withdraw the charges to bring her office into compliance with the President's order.

Al Nashiri is alleged to be an al Qaida leader who played a role in planning the attack on the USS Cole. He is one of the former ghost prisoners secretly held and interrogated in the CIA's black sites, where the CIA has acknowledged they subjected him to waterboarding.