Aviation Admiral Fired in Quiz of Harassment at Convention

An admiral has been fired from his naval aviation post after he failed to act on a complaint by a female aide that she was sexually harassed during a September convention of naval aviators in Las Vegas, Navy officials said Tuesday.

Rear Adm. John W. Snyder Jr. was relieved as commander of the Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center in St. Mary’s County, Md., for “his apparent failure to take timely and appropriate action” when the aide complained that she had been abused by male aviators at the annual Tailhook Convention, a brief statement from the Navy public affairs office said.

The woman, a lieutenant and helicopter pilot who has since been transferred to a new job at the Pentagon, was one of at least five women who complained of sexual, verbal and physical abuse by drunken junior aviators attending this year’s gathering of carrier-based fliers and senior Navy leadership.

The allegations, coupled with a $23,000 damage bill from the Las Vegas Hilton, are the subject of continuing Navy investigations. Last week, Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III severed the Navy’s longstanding support for the convention and the Tailhook Assn., the private organization of Navy fliers that sponsored the event.

Snyder, 47, was ordered transferred by Adm. Frank B. Kelso, chief of naval operations, to a lesser, unspecified job at the Naval Air Systems Command in Crystal City, Va.

A Navy source said that after Snyder’s aide complained to him that she had been molested at the convention, “my understanding is that the admiral had basically said, ‘Boys will be boys,’ and she wouldn’t accept that.” The aide subsequently took her complaint to Navy officials in Washington, sources said.