The Tailhook scandals - how the Navy's sexual harassment investigation case was mishandled

National Review, March 7, 1994 by Elaine Donnelly

ON OCTOBER 15, 1993, Rear Admiral Riley Mixson, Chief of the Navy's Air Warfare Division, received a letter of censure from new Secretary of the Navy John Dalton. Dalton hit Mixson for being responsible for the arrangements of the 1991 Tailhook convention, the military's worst sex scandal in history.

The rebuke was fired like a showy missile attack, staged for the benefit of CNN. But Mixson defended himself with a letter that convincingly refuted Dalton's charges. He wrote that during most of the time plans were being made for the infamous convention in Las Vegas, he was half a world away directing combat operations during Desert Storm. "I can assure you," Mixson wrote, "my thoughts in the Red Sea were not on Tailhook '91."

In fact, Mixson hadn't attended Tailhook in 13 years, and was shocked to see how gross its nightlife had become. In an immediate report to his superiors, Mixson warned that the activities he observed must never be allowed to happen again.

Two years later, none of this would prevent the highly decorated admiral from being censured for arrangements he didn't make, and for the actions of men not under his command. He missed out on a third star and the chance to become Commander, Naval Air Forces Pacific Fleet, and is now retired from service. His case was far from unique.

The sensational accounts of Tailhook damaged the morale and prestige of the Navy. But the worst damage was inflicted not by a few drunken and misbehaving junior officers, but by high-level officials whose judgment was impaired by sexual politics.

Patricia Schroeder, a powerful member of the House Armed Services Committee, is a mistress of sexual politics. She rushed to define Tailhook as a "watershed event"--a revelation of the Navy's sexual harassment so shocking that it could be remedied only by lifting the prohibition against women in combat. It was a stunning non-sequitur--military women must be exposed to thugs behind enemy lines in order to protect them from drunken comrades at home--but cowed Navy officials felt compelled to embrace it as their own.

The brass allowed themselves to be bullied into a capitulation to feminists on procedural and policy issues, at the expense of legal safeguards and sound military policy. The farce came to a humiliating end on February 8 of this year, when Captain William T. Vest, a Navy judge, blasted Defense Department officials for bungled, amateurish witness interview reports that could not stand up in court, and threw out the last of three pending courts martial. In the end, after all the uproar, not a single court-martial produced a conviction.

What Really Happened?

THE MYTH of Tailhook has by now wreaked enormous damage on the Navy; but what had been the reality of Tailhook? Named for the device that halts aircraft when they land on aircraft carriers, the Tailhook Association is an independent group of active-duty and former Navy aviators. For more than 25 years, the Navy has provided transportation and high-ranking speakers for its annual conventions, where professional symposiums are held by day, hospitality suites by night.

In Las Vegas in September 1991, many naval aviators were returning from life-or-death missions in Desert Storm. That--and the usual free-flowing alcohol--gave the nightlife its special kick. Hundreds of single women were drawn to the three-day event-- some for the second or third consecutive year--and freely participated in wild party activities, ranging from sexual suggestiveness to gross indecency.

But in a few cases, non-consensual touching and grabbing degenerated into serious sexual assault. On Saturday night around 11:30 P.M. Navy Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, a helicopter pilot, wandered into the "gauntlet," a mob of drunken airmen arrayed along the third-floor hallway who pounded on the walls and pawed at women as they walked by.

According to Lieutenant Coughlin's oft-repeated account, a Marine Corps captain grabbed her from behind, almost lifting her off the ground by her posterior. She spun around to confront him, but another man grabbed her from behind and the first man then forced his hands down her tube-top. The story broke in October when a letter from the head of the Tailhook Association berating officers for activities "far over the line of responsible behavior" was leaked to the San Diego Union-Tribune. A few months later, Lieutenant Coughlin emerged as its star--the Navy's own Anita Hill.

Rush to Judgment

BY APRIL 28, 1992, the Navy Investigative Service had amassed a 2,000 page report from 2,200 interviews. But this voluminous study found only 44 instances in which there was clear evidence to justify disciplinary procedures. That was not enough for feminists like Pat Sehroeder, who berated the Joint Chiefs for "not getting it." Hoping to appease them, Navy Undersecretary Dan Howard leaked an incomplete version of the NIS report; but this added fuel to the flames. When it emerged that the number of prosecutions was likely to fall below the exaggerated expectations aroused by early reports, the feminists--echoed by the media--alleged "whitewash."