Tailhook Convention Is Canceled Amid Navy Sex Misconduct Probe

The 1992 Tailhook convention was canceled Tuesday night, a move prompted by the wide-ranging investigation of sexual misconduct at the 1991 gathering of naval and Marine aviators, officials said.

The Tailhook Assn., a local booster group that sponsors the annual convention, said it was canceling this year’s event “in the best interests of both the association and the Navy.”

As the investigation intensified Tuesday into last year’s convention, where more than two dozen women charge they were sexually abused, Tailhook Assn. spokesman Steve Millikin said, it “just doesn’t seem appropriate” to make plans for this year’s event. The group’s board voted unanimously to call off the event, he said.

The Navy is weighing charges, ranging from courts-martial to mild reprimands, against 70 or more Navy and Marine officers who attended the September, 1991, convention at the Las Vegas Hilton.

At least 26 women, more than half of them officers, were pushed, fondled and grabbed by a “gantlet” of mostly junior officers lining a third-floor corridor of the hotel, according to a report by the Navy inspector general released earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the Navy disclosed Tuesday that Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III briefly stopped at the doorway to a hotel room during the 1991 gathering, but never saw “any inappropriate or offensive conduct.”

The Navy statement was released in Washington after Navy and Pentagon officials were asked whether the secretary was under investigation in connection the incident.