Navy Secretary Resigns Over Tailhook Affair

Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III resigned Friday, saying he accepted responsibility for a “leadership failure” that tolerated the sexual assault of 26 women at an aviators’ convention.

A letter to President Bush tendering the resignation was released at the Pentagon.

In it, Garrett insisted that he “neither saw nor engaged in any offensive conduct” at the 1991 naval aviators convention in Las Vegas where 26 women--half of them naval officers--said they were sexually assaulted by Navy and Marine Corps pilots.

“I hereby tender my resignation as Secretary of the Navy, effective immediately,” Garrett wrote.

‘In doing so, I accept full responsibility for the post-Tailhook management of my department.”

Garrett said he accepted responsibility “for the leadership failure which allowed the egregious conduct at Tailhook to occur in the first instance.”

The secretary, who had been present at the convention, requested an independent investigation of the incident and the Navy’s handling of it by the Pentagon inspector general.

He had come under fire from some quarters in the wake of the Navy’s own investigation, which said in April that senior Navy officials had known for years of the goings-on at the convention, but had done nothing to prevent it. However, Garrett personally was not named in the inspector general’s report.

“While I believe that the sea services will ultimately succeed in eradicating sexual harassment from their ranks, our progress to date has disappointed me,” Garrett wrote, adding that he hoped his successor would be able to “‘return the Navy and Marine Corps to the forefront of fairness, civility, and equality to all their members.”

Garrett, 53, the Navy’s top civilian, had worked in several posts at the Pentagon. Most recently, he served as undersecretary of the Navy and before that, he was the Pentagon’s general counsel.

Garrett became Navy secretary on May 15, 1989.

A former enlisted man and machinist’s mate in the Navy, Garrett was commissioned as an officer in 1964 after completing flight training. He served aboard maritime patrol aircraft and was sent to Vietnam.