Admiral Loses Job for Slow Response in Sex-Abuse Case

The Navy has decided to permanently remove an admiral from his command because he failed to take “timely action” in response to complaints of sex abuse at a Tailhook Assn. convention in Las Vegas, the service said Friday.

In November, Adm. Frank Kelso, the Chief of Naval Operations, ordered Rear Adm. Jack Snyder temporarily relieved of his duties as the commanding officer at the Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center in Maryland, a Navy spokesman said.

Kelso’s action followed an investigation into allegations of sex abuse at the 1991 Tailhook Assn. Symposium in Las Vegas. The association is based at Miramar Naval Air Station.

In late October, the Navy announced it was cutting ties with the association, which is composed of active-duty and retired Navy pilots and others who support naval aviation, after reports surfaced that several women were abused at its September meeting.

At the time, Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III expressed “absolute outrage” in light of reports that a number of women were abused in public at the association’s meeting.

According to officials familiar with the situation, one of the incidents involved a female military aide who attended the meeting with Snyder.

The officials, who commented only on condition of anonymity, said naval pilots formed a gantlet in a hotel hallway, called out “admiral’s aide, admiral’s aide” as she came by, then tried to rip off her clothes and grabbed her private body parts.

Snyder, a past president of the Tailhook Assn., was not present but was told of the incident, the officials said.

A Navy spokesman, responding to a query about Kelso’s action, said Friday that the admiral decided to permanently remove Snyder because of “a lack of timely action in directing an investigation into certain events at the 1991 Tailhook Assn. in Las Vegas.”

The spokesman, Lt. Fred Henney, said Snyder had been transferred to temporary duty at the Naval Air Systems Command during the interim investigation. The admiral now must await a new assignment, Henney said.

The Patuxent station is one of the Navy’s chief flight-testing bases in the United States.

The Naval Air Systems Command is in charge of the service’s purchases and development of weapons.

The Navy has two investigations under way into the Tailhook events--a criminal investigation being handled by the Naval Investigative Service and a broader investigation by the Navy’s inspector general of the service’s relationship with the association.

No actions have been taken against any other individuals so far, the spokesman said.

When Snyder was first removed from his command, the Navy issued a statement saying that the service’s policy against sexual harassment “is clear-cut and firm. It will not be tolerated.”