Academy Superintendent

The Napoleonic Wars and the Royal Navy had C.S. Forester. World War II and the U.S. Navy have Vice Adm. William P. Mack.The 76-year-old Mack, a former superintendent of the U.S Naval Academy, is the main author of a projected 10-volume fictional history of the American destroyers during the Second World War."It's a history of the feeling of sailors in World War II," Mack says. "The equipment and the facts are authentic. The only fiction is the characters."The first two books are "South to Java" (released in 1987 and written with his son, William P. Mack Jr.)

Rear Adm. Michael H. Miller, the president's nominee to be the U.S. Naval Academy's next superintendent, flew combat missions into Libya, led aircraft carrier groups to the Persian Gulf and worked four years in the White House before taking his current job as the Navy's chief of legislative affairs. If confirmed by the Senate, Miller will replace Superintendent Jeffrey Fowler, who has led the academy for three years. Fowler will retire, according to the Department of Defense, but he has not announced a date of departure.

It started in April 2007 when $95,000 in corporate sponsorship money raised for Navy's appearance in the 2006 Meineke Car Care Bowl football game was placed into a newly created contingency fund. Over the next two years, Naval Academy administrators deposited an additional $200,000 in bowl game sponsorship money into the account, tapping it to pay for "invitation-only" tailgate parties, several catered receptions and $863 in necktie gifts for football coaches. But this off-the-books "slush fund" never should have been created, according to a newly released report from the Office of the Naval Inspector General.

An article yesterday on the cheating scandal at the Nava Academy incorrectly attributed a comment Wednesday on the suspension of a department chairman to academy officials. In fact, professors at the academy made the comment.The Sun regrets the errors.The superintendent of the Naval Academy cleared the record yesterday of an engineering professor who had been suspended in the school's biggest cheating scandal in 20 years.Rear Adm. Thomas C. Lynch overturned the suspension of Professor Raymond Wasta and restored the five days of pay he lost over spring break.

William Paden Mack, a retired vice admiral and former superintendent of the Naval Academy who had a prolific career writing books about life at sea, died Wednesday of cerebral vascular disease at his home in Annapolis. He was 87. As a young naval officer, he served aboard a destroyer that escaped the Japanese bombing of Manila harbor during World War II. He later saw action in the East Indies and Aleutians; he also served during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Admiral Mack spent his career at sea mainly aboard destroyers, but he also had extensive experience aboard cruisers, battleships and amphibious ships.

The Navy's inspector general is investigating a confrontation between the Naval Academy superintendent, Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton, and a Marine guard who asked to see his identification at a school gate, a Navy spokeswoman confirmed yesterday. Investigators are looking into whether, among other things, there was physical contact between the two after Naughton, a three-star admiral, became angry at the young guard's request for his ID on New Year's Eve. The guard was reassigned to a base in Washington after the encounter, a move "considered to be in the best interest of both parties," Lt. Cmdr.

The commander of a guided missile cruiser will become the U.S. Naval Academy's second-in-command next month in a move that keeps the school in the hands of academy-trained Navy officers for at least another year.Capt. Gary Roughead, 45, was endorsed as commandant of midshipmen by Adm. Charles R. Larson, the academy's superintendent, who will retire next year and has told aides he intends to hand-pick the school's next leaders. Roughead served as Larson's executive assistant when the admiral was chief of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii from 1991 to 1994.

To some, he has achieved the impossible in a four-year tenure: taking an institution with a lingering hostility to women and moving it with missionary zeal to the forefront of higher education, with far-reaching training and enforcement policies on alcohol abuse and sexual assault. Others see a crusade run amok: a thin-skinned commander who, desperate to appease outsiders, brought flimsy cases to trial and made puzzling disciplinary decisions that favored women over men. Naval Academy Superintendent Rodney P. Rempt, who presides today over his final graduation ceremony before heading into retirement in landlocked Montana, leaves behind a legacy of unprecedented reform - having retooled the curriculum, boosted graduation rates and overseen an improved performance in intercollegiate athletics.

The Defense Department is conducting a formal inquiry into whether the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy interfered in three investigations of high-profile midshipmen crimes.Prompted by a complaint from a disgruntled Navy investigator, the Defense Department's Inspector General is examining whether Adm. Charles R. Larson exerted influence to limit the investigations and minimize publicity from student LSD use, a Mid-run car-theft ring, and a student accused of child molestation.The most serious accusations involve complaints that Larson or senior members of his staff may have pressured a lower-ranking officer not to press charges against a midshipman accused of sexually molesting his 4-year-old son.As a result, Annapolis police say, local charges were never filed against the former Mid, now in a Texas prison for a separate case of child abuse.

A former instructor at the Naval Academy has been found not guilty of aggravated sexual assault in an alleged attack on a female midshipman two years ago, an academy spokeswoman said Sunday. Marine Corps Maj. Mark Thompson, 43, was found guilty of indecent acts, failure to obey an order or regulation and conduct unbecoming an officer in the 2011 incident, spokeswoman Jenny Erickson said. He is to be sentenced on Monday. Thompson, who taught history at the academy, was accused of attacking the midshipman in his Annapolis apartment following the annual croquet match between the Naval Academy and St. John's College.