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COPYRIGHT 1998 Transaction Publishers, Inc.
The military sex scandals of 1996 and 1997 burst upon the American public like a series of thunder claps. Yet, there was plenty of advance warning that the gender-integrated military was not working as well as the Pentagon claimed. Tailhook 91 had been a warning, and by no means the first one, that military men deeply resented having women in their ranks.
The Tailhook Association was a private body composed of reserve, retired, and active duty Naval and Marine aviators with strong ties to the Department of the Navy. For eighteen years, its annual convention had been held at the Las Vegas Hilton. The 1991 convention was attended by some 4,000 persons, thirty-two of them active duty flag/general officers, that is, Navy admirals, for the most part, and a few Marine generals. Tailhook had become rowdier over time, but this convention was the roughest yet, as the young fliers who committed the assaults were elated by the Navy's success in the Gulf War, but also angry over the growing number of female aviators who were flying combat aircraft. As they saw it, the fraternity of Naval and Marine airmen was being ruined.
Conventioneers began arriving in Las Vegas on September 5, a Thursday, but the partying, and the assaults, began in earnest on Friday night, climaxing on Saturday night, after two days of formal sessions and two nights of debauchery. Some attacks took place on an outdoor patio, but most occurred in twenty-two "hospitality suites" rented by individual squadrons, and in the third floor hallway which connected them. Not all the suites were hotbeds of misconduct, and one, rented by a helicopter squadron, was described by some women as a "safe haven" where they found refuge from the hallway.(1)
Although streaking, "ball-walking" - during which otherwise fully clothed officers walked around with their genitals hanging out - and other indecent practices occurred outdoors, most of the action transpired in the suites and the hallway, where the infamous gantlet formed. The gantlet (sometimes incorrectly called the gauntlet) consisted of two lines of men who groped, grabbed, tore at the clothing of, and otherwise abused both civilian and military women. It was an organized assault in which signals were used to direct the activities, and was presided over by what the Pentagon's inspector general called a "master of ceremonies." Although some women entered the gantlet knowingly and willingly, others encountered it by accident or were lured there - sometimes by fellow officers who deliberately set them up.
Other activities included mooning, "belly/navel shots" - a practice that involved men drinking alcohol out of women's navels - men shaving women's legs, showing pornographic videos and slides, strip-tease acts, "butt biting" by men known as "sharks," and "zapping," which entailed slapping stickers imprinted with squadron logos on women's clothing, or sometimes directly on intimate body parts. Zapping was sometimes consensual, at other times a form of assault. There was also a good deal of public sex, both oral and coital, which was always consensual and usually involved prostitutes. In at least one instance, sharking did not work as well as expected. A visiting Royal Air Force officer tried it on Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen, an A-6 bomber pilot who would later fly F-14s. Upon being bitten she turned and decked him with a single blow. Hultgreen later told investigators that she didn't consider herself a victim. More than that, she was just about the only hero of Tailhook.
The most publicized case of female abuse was that of Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, a Ch-53E helicopter pilot then serving as flagaide to Rear Admiral Jack Snyder, commander of the Naval Air Test Center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. At about 11:30 P.M. on September 7, the third and last night of Tailhook 91, Coughlin, who was wearing civilian clothes, wandered onto the third floor, and, although identified as an admiral's aide, was swept into the gantlet. Unlike Lieutenant Hultgreen, who faced a single attacker, Coughlin was mobbed and could not defend herself. Two weeks later Vice Admiral Richard M. Dunleavy, chief of naval aviation and Snyder's immediate superior was notified of the incident. On October 29, the conservative San Diego Union became the first newspaper to print a story about the sexual misconduct that took place during Tailhook 91, alerting Congress and the public.
The Tailhook scandal led to three separate investigations, two by the Navy, which were completely botched, and a third and more sweeping one conducted by the Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General (DOD-IG). It, too, was defective in that suspects were often not read their rights as required by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and DOD-IG agents often failed to tape their conversations, enabling stories to shift over time in ways that compromised the investigation. Also, too many suspects were given immunity in hopes they would inform on senior officers. Something of a witchhunt, the investigation was also a fiasco.
DOD-IG established that an even one hundred assaults had taken place during Tailhook, and drew up a list of 140 suspects. On May 20, 1993, after a month of hearings, the Navy began handing down its verdicts. Out of 118 suspects forty fliers received punishment, twenty-four of them having career-killing punitive letters of admonition or reprimand placed in their files. Of twenty-two Marine suspects eight went to nonjudicial hearings, after which one resigned. Fifty-one Naval officers - not all of them among the original suspects - were given immunity in hopes they would testify against senior officers. Few Marines were offered immunity, but some of them were punished administratively. All of the 140 persons identified by DOD-IG as suspects, regardless of their guilt or innocence, would be haunted by the investigation and many would have their careers ruined. No action would be taken against three women implicated in Tailhook, notably Ensign Elizabeth J. Warwick, who was charged with conduct unbecoming an officer as a participant in leg shaving and belly shot incidents.
Admiral Snyder was relieved of his command by Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, the chief of Naval operations. His idea, apparently, was to make Snyder a scapegoat. If so, it failed to work. In the end Kelso, who had been at Tailhook and had done nothing to stop the orgy, was forced to retire as CNO two months ahead of schedule. Admiral Dunleavy was forced to retire as well and also lost one of this three stars. Secretary of the Navy H. Lawrence Garrett III was forced to resign. The chief of the Naval Investigative service had to retire, as did the Navy's judge advocate general. Two other admirals who had attended Tailhook and reported nothing were given letters of censure. Thirty-one of the remaining flag/general officers - including Kelso and three retired admirals - received nonpunitive letters of caution. It was somehow typical that most of those punished were guilty of ballwalking and the like, while few of the actual assailants suffered as most had been given immunity. Lieutenant Coughlin, her career in ruins for having spoken up, resigned from the Navy and sued the Tailhook Association and the Hilton Hotel. In 1994 the Tailhook Association settled with her for $400,000, while a court ordered the Hilton to pay her $4.8 million.(2)
The Navy's morale was shattered for years after Tailhook, partly because of the event itself, partly because of the witchhunt that followed, partly because the resulting punishments seemed so arbitrary. Tailhook 91 revealed a remarkable depth of hatred for women in the Navy considering that it had been gender-integrated for years and supposedly had trained men to accept women as equals. That was clearly not the case, and would go on being untrue despite all the embarrassment and ruined careers.
Bad as Tailhook was, it paled beside the sex scandals that later rocked the Army. In November 1996 a local judge advocate general charged three soldiers stationed at the Army Ordnance Center and School, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, with numerous sexual offences. The most serious were allegedly committed by Staff Sergeant Delmar Gaither Simpson, 31, a drill sergeant with A Company of the 143rd Ordnance Battalion, who was charged with numerous counts of rape and abuse. Most of his victims were young females between the ages of 18 and 20 who had just graduated from basic training. Another woman claimed to have been victimized by Captain Derrick Robertson, 30, commander of A Company, the worst assault having been committed in his home on September 14, 1996. Eventually twelve men would be charged with similar offences, including adultery. Captain Robertson got off rather easily; his rape charge was dismissed, but for committing adultery and related offenses he was sentenced to prison for four months and discharged from the Army.(3)
The Aberdeen scandal drew varied responses. One was to compare the Army's speedy and public reaction to the Navy's mishandling of Tailhook. On November 10, 1996, Army Chief of Staff General Dennis J. Reimer said that, "My basic lesson learned from Tailhook is to try and make the investigative process as open as possible.... We must be careful to protect the rights of the individuals...
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