Navy Admiral Issues a Profuse Apology for Miramar Incident

Describing himself as “humiliated, disgusted (and) frustrated,” a top Navy commander apologized profusely Thursday for an incident in which obscene language was used to describe a congresswoman at a recent fighter-pilot party at Miramar Naval Air Station.

“We are going to make changes,” Vice Adm. Edwin Kohn Jr. said during a news conference at the North Island Naval Air Station. “We are going to change . . . a decaying culture that has been proven more and more unproductive and unworthy.”

Kohn’s remarks stemmed from controversy over a large sign unfurled during a skit at the June 18 “Tomcat Follies” at the Miramar Officers’ Club. The sign made sexual slurs about Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.), who has criticized the Navy’s handling of the Tailhook sexual harassment scandal. The sign in the Miramar skit referred to Schroeder and oral copulation, playing off the nursery rhyme that begins with the words “Hickory dickory dock.”

Two senior officers at Miramar--Capt. Richard Braden, the No. 2 man in command of the Navy wing that oversees fighter aircraft in the Pacific Fleet, and Cmdr. Dave Tyler, commanding officer of Fighter Squadron 51--have been temporarily relieved of their duties pending an investigation into the incident.

“We need to be the moral leaders of our society,” said Kohn, commander of the Naval Air Force in the Pacific. “We want to ensure that we are the leader of our society for opportunity, for fairness, for integrity, professionalism. . . . It does not appear that all of our people have received the message yet.”

Kohn, who temporarily reassigned the two officers, said Tyler is under investigation because he was aware of the skit before it was staged and apparently did nothing to halt it. Braden, meanwhile, may face disciplinary action because he was the senior officer present during the skit and failed to upbraid participants afterward, Kohn added.

“I think that (Tyler) has to be considered responsible because he did not say, ‘Don’t do this, we’re not going to have this,’ ” Kohn said. Though Braden “probably would not have been able to prevent” the skit from occurring, he “was in a position to have taken some very . . . firm action, call them up short and perhaps take disciplinary action”--but he did not do so, Kohn said.

The investigation, which is expected to last about a week, has been slowed because some officers who attended the “Tomcat Follies,” an annual event in which Miramar-based squadrons put on skits that sometimes turn raunchy, are aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, which is expected to dock in Hawaii today.

Navy spokesmen said it is unclear whether the investigation will be limited to Braden and Tyler, or whether others who participated in the skit will face disciplinary action.

“It’s certainly a possibility, but there’s no way to know how far it will go,” spokeswoman Pat Neal said. “I’m sure they’ll want to talk to anyone who was there.”

The Tailhook scandal deals with a September, 1991, meeting of a Bonita-based aviation group in which at least 26 women, half of them Navy officers, have charged that they were groped and fondled while being pushed through a gantlet of drunken Navy and Marine Corps aviators in the hallway of a Las Vegas hotel.

“The legacy of Tailhook seems to keep going on and on and on,” Schroeder told reporters in Washington, speaking about the Miramar incident. “Our society has changed so radically in the last 20 years or so that guys having fun is no longer defined that way.”

Combined with the Tailhook incident, the new episode at Miramar demonstrates the continuing need to dispel the macho, sometimes sexist images of naval officers spawned by movies such as “Top Gun” and “An Officer and a Gentleman,” Kohn said. In particular, the Navy must redouble its efforts to make certain that enlistees and officers alike understand that sexual harassment will not be tolerated, he concluded.

“You don’t pound your chest in peacetime and say, ‘I’m going to be a hero in wartime,’ ” Kohn said. “The quiet warrior . . . is probably very successful.”