Navy Pilots Complain About Questions in Tailhook Inquiry

Navy aviators interrogated by Pentagon investigators complained Wednesday that they are being subjected to embarrassing questions about their personal sex lives that have nothing to do with the Tailhook convention scandal.

Several sources familiar with the Department of Defense inquiry said the investigators are demanding that officers answer questions about their sexual likes and dislikes.

The investigators, who include former FBI agents, are in the second month of an inquiry into sexual harassment and assaults by drunken Navy and Marine aviators against more than 25 women, 13 of them Navy officers, at the September, 1991, Tailhook Assn. convention in Las Vegas.

Pentagon investigators are currently interrogating officers from three Miramar Naval Air Station squadrons who were at sea when the first interrogations were conducted in July. In addition, about 13 officers who were interrogated in July are being questioned a second time.

On Wednesday sources said some questions posed by the Pentagon interrogators had nothing to do with the Tailhook sex scandal and appeared to be designed solely to embarrass the person being questioned. The interrogations took place at the Miramar base, home to the “Top Gun” fighter pilot school.

Marine aviators who were questioned earlier this month at the El Toro Marine Base by the Department of Defense investigators made the same complaints.

Sources said some aviators were also asked questions about their sexual relationships with their wives.

A Pentagon spokesman, Marine Corps Maj. Steve Little, declined to comment about the investigators’ questions. He said it is Department of Defense policy “not to comment on an ongoing investigation.”

Local Navy officials who requested anonymity said the investigators refuse to say what, if anything, the personal questions had to do with the Tailhook investigation.

These officials said that aviators are also being pressured to take polygraph examinations and have been threatened with retaliation if they refuse, even though official Department of Defense policy states that polygraph tests are voluntary.