How a 4,000-Word Coast Guard Email Erupted Into a Reckoning of Military Sexual Assault

[Tony]

The profanity-laced email that landed in thousands of Coast Guard inboxes this past May wasn’t intended to foment a rebellion in the nation’s most under-the-radar branch of the military. It wasn’t meant to get cited in a congressional hearing. It was just sheer, scorching frustration.

The 4,000-word screed from an anonymous, encrypted email account focused on alleged sexual misconduct at Sector Mobile in Alabama and claims the Coast Guard mishandled the investigation. Not long after firing off the email, the sender, who called themself Whistler McGee, also posted the letter on Facebook.

“I was just going to make the Facebook account, post it, and then bail,” McGee told The War Horse in an interview last month. “But within two, three hours, it just exploded.”