Be Careful How You Do It : Congress must beware of punishing the innocent over Tailhook scandal

Congress is expressing its righteous indignation over the Navy’s Tailhook sexual harassment debacle. Annoyed by the Navy’s foot-dragging on allegations that women were assaulted by officers at the 1991 Tailhook Assn. convention, the House Appropriations Committee voted this week to slash 10,000 military jobs from Navy headquarters in Washington and around the world.

Congress is right to keep the heat on the Navy. We hope, however, that Congress weighs the number of job cuts it finally mandates against the nation’s needs, not the magnitude of the Navy’s blunders. This scandal should not claim more innocent victims.

Congress has appropriately increased the pressure on the Navy in recent weeks. Twenty-six women, half of them naval officers, were pushed through a gantlet of up to 200 men in a hotel hallway. The men allegedly fondled them and in some cases pulled off the women’s clothes.

A Defense Department criminal investigation into the 1991 gathering of present and former naval aviators and swirling charges of a cover-up by senior naval officers have prompted a remarkable series of high-level changes. A Senate committee has frozen thousands of Navy promotions until it is convinced the sexual harassment problem is being satisfactorily addressed. Last week, Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III resigned, accepting “full responsibility” for the Navy’s management of the investigation. The Navy also unveiled plans for training aimed at ending sexual harassment.

Congress’ continuing concern about Tailhook may also spring from lingering embarrassment over its past reluctance to take sexual harassment seriously. The sight of Anita Hill, testifying last fall about now-Justice Clarence Thomas before an all-male panel of senators--many of whom were not even clear on the definition of sexual harassment--angered many female and male voters.

Congress members anxious about reelection know a hot issue when they see one and want to reassure voters they now recognize the seriousness of sexual harassment. That’s heartening. But threatening 10,000 Navy jobs to punish a relative few is neither good policy nor good sense.