of course I lost -he ruled I was faking my tremors!
Back to Article Click to Print Monday, Feb. 21, 1994
Lost in the Fun House
By RICHARD LACAYO !
The 1991 convention of the Tailhook Association really must have been a bash. Afterward no one seems to have remembered a thing. For more than two years, there were investigations into claims by 83 women that they were assaulted at the annual hell raiser for Navy and Marine flyers. As many as 200 party animals may have joined in the main offense, a poke-and-grab gauntlet along the third-floor corridor of the Las Vegas Hilton. But not one of the 140 cases under investigation ended in conviction for any of the men whose manners and memory -- and maybe their consciences -- were lost in the fun house.
Last week the four remaining men charged in Tailhook had their cases shut down with both a bang and a whimper. Captain William T. Vest Jr., a Navy judge presiding over three of the cases, issued an angry pretrial ruling that laid much of the blame at the feet of the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Frank B. Kelso II. Vest accused Kelso of using his influence to manipulate the investigation and the subsequent disciplinary process "in a manner designed to shield his personal involvement in Tailhook." Despite Kelso's denials under oath, Vest said there was persuasive evidence, including the testimony of more than a dozen witnesses, that the admiral was at the scene during some of the wildest episodes at Tailhook but never raised a hand to stop them. Since that was the very accusation faced by Kelso's subordinates, Commanders Thomas Miller and Gregory Tritt, Vest dropped the charges against them, as well as an assault charge faced by Lieut. David Samples.
Navy brass could have appealed the ruling and pressed for a trial. That might have spared them the embarrassment of not obtaining a single conviction -- if they could stand the embarrassment of pursuing lower-grade officers for crimes their superiors may have winked at. They opted instead to take no further action against the three. A few days earlier, the Marines, citing lack of evidence, dismissed charges of misconduct and obstructing an investigation against Lieut. Colonel Cass D. Howell.
With that, the Tailhook scandal flamed out, leaving only smoke and mirrors behind. In a report issued last April, Pentagon deputy inspector general Derek Vander Schaaf, who was called in to examine the Navy's sluggish probe, concluded that of the nearly 2,400 naval officers interviewed, several hundred had concealed information. "Collective 'stonewalling,' " he concluded, "significantly increased the difficulty of the investigation." Some prosecutions ran aground when witnesses had trouble identifying their assailants; in October the Marines dropped all charges against a captain accused of molesting Navy Lieut. Paula Coughlin after it was concluded that she had misidentified her alleged attacker. Coughlin, the first woman to come forward with accusations in the scandal, resigned from the Navy last week, saying the abuse she suffered at Tailhook and "the covert attacks on me that followed have stripped me of my ability to serve." Among other things, she cited a newsletter called the Gauntlet and published by ex-Navy flyers under a pseudonym -- "Paul A. Coffin."
Kelso, however, was adamant that he was not leaving, despite Vest's criticisms. Even before arriving at Tailhook, the judge ruled, the admiral should have been primed to head off trouble, given the gathering's reputation for heavy drinking, porn films, strippers and prostitutes "as part of the planned activities in the hospitality suites." But three of Kelso's aides testified under oath that he was nowhere near the third-floor scene of the crime, much less a witness to the alleged assaults. In part because of the conflicting testimony, former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin last year turned down Navy Secretary John Dalton's recommendation that Kelso be removed.
Since Kelso plans to retire in July, he has probably escaped the legal gauntlet of Tailhook with no more than the nonpunitive letter of caution he received last October. About 60 other Navy and Marine officers have been subjected to administrative discipline, a measure that can sometimes short- circuit a career. And the commander of the Naval Investigative Service and the Navy's judge advocate general were relieved of their commands. As for the Tailhook Association, the Navy severed all ties with it and warned service members away from the 1993 convention, which in any case was a tea party. Tailhook's main legacy may be to have shamed the Navy into its decision last year to permit women on combat ships. The carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is already being reoutfitted to take aboard the first of them. "It's largely due to the Tailhook embarrassment," says Northwestern University professor Charles Moskos, a military sociologist. As with a lot of drunken festivities, maybe the headache that followed will stay in memory more sharply than the party itself.
With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington
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