Navy Secretary Asks Review of Tailhook Probe

The secretary of the Navy has asked his top legal officer to review options for holding individual Navy and Marine Corps officers accountable for their role in a 1991 sexual abuse incident involving the former Miramar-based Tailhook Assn.

Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III has asked the Navy’s judge advocate general, Rear Adm. John E. Gordon, to review the service’s 2,000-page investigation into the misconduct that occurred at a Tailhook convention in Las Vegas.

The investigation, released last month, found that Navy and Marine Corp aviators had molested at least 26 women--half of those Navy officers--amid much drunken revelry at the annual pilots convention.

However, the Navy’s inspector general, Rear Adm. George W. Davis, who conducted one of two investigations into the incident, said “closing ranks and obfuscation” on the part of officers who supposedly had knowledge of the incidents made it impossible to know their exact nature, severity or number.

Despite conducting more than 1,500 interviews during a seven-month investigation, the inquiries by the Naval Investigation Service and the inspector general turned up only two primary suspects, Navy officials have said.

Some officers refused to allow their men to be photographed, making it difficult for the victims to identify their attackers. Many others simply stated that they hadn’t seen any misconduct at all.

After the incident became public, Garrett severed the Navy’s relations with the Tailhook Assn., a booster club for naval aviators named after the mechanism that snares an aircraft as it lands on a carrier.

In a memo to Gordon made available to the Associated Press by Pentagon sources, Garrett said he expects the individuals identified in the investigation to be held accountable for their misconduct.

“But I am concerned with holding accountable those officers who may have obstructed either of the two investigations, obfuscated, or in any way hindered or interfered with the lawful execution of the inquiries,” he wrote.

“In spite of the huge investigation effort . . . we apparently have evidence with which to hold only a few individuals legally accountable for their conduct,” Garrett wrote.

The secretary asked Gordon to prepare a list of legal and administrative recommendations for dealing with the situation.

“Please present to me appropriate options which permit us to hold individuals accountable for their actions within those investigations, to the greatest extent permitted by law and regulations,” while ensuring their rights are properly protected, Garrett said.