Josh Green at the Atlantic has a great scoop on why Massa may not actually want anyone to go talk to the 10,000 sailors he served with in the Navy:
According to Peter Clarke, a Navy shipmate, Massa was notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates. He tells the story of his friend Stuart Borsch, with whom Massa shared a hotel room while on leave during the first Gulf War. “Stuart’s at the edge of the bed,” Clarke says Borsch told him at the time, “and [Massa] starts massaging him. Massa said, ‘You’ll have to get one of my special massages.’ He called them ‘Massa Massages.'” Ron Moss, a Navy shipmate and Borsch’s roommate, confirmed that Borsch told him this story at the time.
Borsch, now a history professor at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, didn’t addresss that specific incident, but did confirm to me in an email that he was groped by Massa: “In 1990, aboard the U.S.S. Jouett, I was awakened when a senior officer, Lt. Commander Massa, seemed to be groping me. (I was a lieutenant at the time.) I believe he may have been drinking. I shouted at him and he left. I mentioned the incident to several other officers. I did not officially report it.”
Clarke says that Massa’s roommate, Tom Maxfield was also assaulted. “Tom lived on upper bunk,” Clarke say. “When you’re on ship, you’re almost exhausted 24-7. So a lot of times you sleep with your uniform on. Tom and Massa shared a stateroom together. Massa climbed up on the top of his bunk, which is hard to do–you never crawl up on somebody else’s bunk. He wakes up to Massa undoing his pants trying to snorkel him.” Ron Moss also confirmed hearing this story from Maxfield. Maxfield did return calls and messages left for him–I’ll update if he does.
Massa’s shipmates didn’t turn him in for fear that he would retaliate. “He was a cocky guy, competent, but he saw himself as a future admiral,” Moss told me. “It doesn’t surprise me he wound up in Congress.”
Read the rest, you won’t regret it.