Scare Tactics Alleged in Tailhook Inquiry : Military: Navy pilots say Pentagon investigators lied to them during questioning about sex scandal. Defense Department denies charges.

Pentagon investigators probing the Tailhook sex scandal lied to try to intimidate aviators from Miramar Naval Air Station into informing on other fliers, pilots and other sources said.

But a Department of Defense official denied the charges.

A Navy official said aviators were also threatened with administrative action--including discharge from the Navy--if they did not cooperate with investigators or refused to take polygraph examinations, a violation of Department of Defense policy.

Most people interviewed for this article, including people involved in the investigation, agreed to talk on condition of anonymity. Aviators at Miramar said they were instructed by Navy superiors not to talk to the press about the investigation.

Some Navy wives were questioned about their husbands without having an attorney present, the sources said.

“My husband has been told specifically not to talk to the press,” said Lauri Shirck. “He and the other guys in his squadron are scared to death for their careers. Their interrogations with the DOD people made it clear to them that anyone who was at Tailhook is suspected of sexual misconduct.”

Shirck was not questioned by Pentagon investigators, but her husband, a pilot, was.

Don Mancuso, Department of Defense assistant inspector general for investigations, denied that investigators used falsehoods or intimidation to obtain information from aviators. However, he said that “it’s quite possible” that they used the “get-in-your-face routine.”

One Pentagon official said the aggressive interrogations by Defense Department investigators are no different from those used by most police departments.

Pentagon investigators are probing allegations of sexual misconduct at the September, 1991, Tailhook Assn. convention. More than 25 women, half of them Navy officers, charged that they were groped, fondled and sexually assaulted by drunk aviators in the hallway of a Las Vegas hotel. Navy officials said the victims included a drunk 17-year-old girl, who was partly undressed and passed from man to man.

The Tailhook Assn. is a private group from San Diego composed mostly of retired and active-duty naval aviators formed to promote carrier aviation.

The Department of Defense launched an investigation in July after the Naval Investigative Service was accused of botching its investigation.

Critics said the investigative unit was not aggressive enough in identifying officers accused of illegal activity. Although the agency’s report determined that some criminal activity had occurred at the Tailhook convention, nobody was charged.

Miramar aviators began complaining about the Defense Department’s investigators’ tactics almost immediately.

“They would get right in your face. It was a very accusatory confrontation. They assumed you were guilty and tried to sweat a confession out of you,” one pilot said.

Pilots and a Navy official said investigators also told aviators that other fliers had linked them to sexual misconduct when no such information had been given.

“They tried to get you to rat on others by telling you false stories. They’d tell you things like: ‘We have it on good authority that you were in the hallway (where most of the assaults occurred). Some of the other officers said they saw you there.’ But later you’d find out that the other guys never told them anything,” a pilot said.

A Navy official familiar with some of the interrogations confirmed that investigators lied to some aviators.

“Some were told that their buddies had turned them in, when in fact nobody did,” he said.

In addition, several Miramar pilots complained that investigators threatened retaliation if they refused to take a polygraph.

Mancuso said 400 fliers had been questioned at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and Miramar Naval Air Station and 22 agreed to take polygraph tests.

A Defense Department spokesman said submitting to polygraphs is strictly voluntary. “DOD policy also says that there can be no adverse action against any person for refusing to take a polygraph exam,” said the spokesman, a military officer who did not want to be identified.

Mancuso denied that aviators were threatened with retaliation if they refused to submit to polygraph examinations. But he said that lack of cooperation was officially noted.

“Invariably, people would ask what would happen if they refused to talk. The answer given was that if they refused to answer questions or give answers that are clearly evasive, that would be noted in the report,” Mancuso said.