Doss’ career with the Navy was noteworthy for various reasons, including his being part of a team told by terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of his role as a mastermind behind 9/11, according to a 2012 story in The Bolivar (Miss.) Commercial, Doss’ hometown newspaper.
The newspaper said he enlisted in the Navy after graduating high school with honors in 1987. He completed two combat deployments in the Mediterranean about the aircraft carriers USS Coral Sea in 1989 and the USS Forrestal in 1991, when it was based at Mayport Naval Air Station.
He was commissioned a naval officer in 1996 through the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps in program at the University of North Florida and Jacksonville University. He completed two secret counter drug missions in the Caribbean and South America in 1997 and 1998, the Commercial reported.
He also assisted in conducting annual review boards for suspected enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay beginning in 2006, the newspaper said. His team was charged with interviewing detainees and conducting boards to determine if they should be released. Mohammed was one of those detainees, the newspaper said. The Times-Union could not confirm that account.
Doss returned to Jacksonville after working at the Naval Education and Training Command in Pensacola, where he’d been stationed since November 2011. He was temporarily stationed in Jacksonville at the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training Unit, a Navy spokeswoman said.
Doss’ many awards include the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medal, the Joint Service Achievement medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medal and the Good Conduct medal. At the time of the Commercial’s story, he was a doctoral student at Trident University International.
Doss was buried in the Jacksonville National Cemetery last week.
