Dicks Suspects Cargo Ship Part Of Russian Spy Fleet Laser Beam Reportedly Injured Navy Pilot’s Eye In April Incident

Congressional investigators are probing allegations a Navy pilot’s eye was injured by a laser beam from a Russian cargo ship that Washington Rep. Norm Dicks suspects is part of a spy fleet.

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating the incident that occurred in April in the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Puget Sound, said George Behan, an aide to Dicks, the top Democrat on the panel.

Committee investigators were in Vancouver, British Columbia, this week to question U.S. Navy Lt. Jack Daly, who suffered the eye injury while he was aboard a Canadian surveillance helicopter tracking the Russian ship, the Kapitan Man.

Dicks, who requested the investigation, wants to know if the Kapitan Man and two other Russian merchant ships are part of a spy fleet tracking movements of U.S. Trident nuclear submarines based at Bangor sub base on the Kitsap Peninsula.

“That is the question we have to ask. This is an incident that has intelligence implications and occurred in his home district,” Behan said Tuesday.

“No one from any of the oversight committees has spoken to the pilot himself. Before we proceed with a hearing or anything else, he wanted someone on the staff to personally interview the pilot,” he said.

Michael Sheehy, the committee’s minority counsel and aide to Dicks on the panel, will interview Daly, he said.

Dicks was headed Tuesday on a trip to Thailand and Vietnam with the House National Security Committee and could not be reached immediately for comment.

The Pentagon disclosed in May that it believed the ship had fired a laser beam at a Canadian military helicopter.

Defense Department officials conducted an investigation but failed to turn up any clear evidence.

“You have to describe this as a mystery,” Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said in June.

The congressional probe will review the Pentagon’s handling of the matter. Part of the Pentagon report is classified and Dicks cannot discuss it, Behan said.

In a summary of its investigation findings, the Pentagon said in June that two medical examinations of Daly concluded that his injury was consistent with damage that would be expected from exposure to a low-power laser such as that commonly used as a range-finder in sea navigation.

“Specifically, the investigation could not link the officer’s eye injury to a laser on the Kapitan Man or to any other location,” the Pentagon report said. Still, it referred to “suspected lasing” by the Russian ship.

The captain of the Russian ship, Robert Razumniyy, said in May during a return trip to Puget Sound that his ship has no lasers on board. He noted that U.S. authorities searched the ship three days after the incident and found no lasers.

Suspicions of the laser were based in part on the fact that a photograph of the Russian vessel taken by Daly from aboard the Canadian helicopter showed a red dot of light below the ship’s port bridge.