Tailhook Assn. Seeks to Shake Stigma, Rejoin Navy Team : With 1st Anniversary of Fated Convention Approaching, Reformed Group Says It Has Taken Its Share of Flak for the Military

In two weeks, it will be the first anniversary of the infamous Tailhook Convention in Las Vegas, where a large group of male pilots sexually molested and harassed women in a hotel hallway and at parties, initiating a year of turmoil and tarnishing of the Navy.

And, although the Department of Defense investigation to identify the pilots involved continues, leaders of the Tailhook Assn. say they want to re-establish official ties to the Navy, which has cut them off after 35 years, leading to the cancellation of this year’s convention.

Chastened Tailhook officials acknowledge their organization will never be the same and that they have made fundamental changes to avoid repeating last year’s fiasco. The new Tailhook Assn., they say, will bear a close resemblance to the original one: an informal, out-of-uniform gathering of Navy pilots to discuss carrier aviation, technical advances, tactics and weapons.

The booze, the hospitality suites, the raunchy behavior, the other side-show activities that gradually came to dominate the convention are out, banned by Tailhook officials who say they were too slow to recognize the cancer within.

“We’ve been dragged through the mud for almost a year, and we’ve willingly taken the shots for the Navy. I hope the Navy’s leaders agree that we’ve spent our time in the penalty box. We want out so we can work together with the Navy to find a solution to this serious problem of sexual harassment . . . . We’ve picked a persistent scab in focusing on this issue,” said association spokesman Steve Millikin.

Tailhook officials said the group has planned some important changes for the next convention, whenever it is held. For starters, individual squadrons will not be permitted to host hospitality suites.

The hospitality suites have been the source of most of the Tailhook Assn’s. headaches over the past six years, when, members said, the conventions and accompanying parties turned raunchier and rowdier.

Until about 10 years ago, the suites were sponsored by defense contractors and were located at different hotels or on different floors of the same hotels.

In those days, the admirals and other senior officers would retire to the contractors’ suites after the symposiums, while the junior officers headed for the casinos, said Nick Criss, a retired naval aviator who has attended Tailhook conventions for about 25 years.

Some time in the early 1980s, the Pentagon imposed strict guidelines forbidding military officers from accepting favors or gratuities from defense contractors.

“When that happened, individual squadrons picked up the slack by requiring each officer to pitch in for the cost of a suite. That’s how squadrons ended up hosting hospitality suites,” Criss said.

Most of the harassment and assaults at last year’s convention in September occurred in the squadron suites--which featured pornographic movies, phallic symbols and an endless supply of alcohol--and in the hallway that connected the suites.

“We’ve had a very loose control policy in the past. The hospitality suites were the party arena. We’re going to eliminate that type of activity,” said Ron Thomas, Tailhook’s executive director.

The conventions, held at the Las Vegas Hilton for many years, attracted hordes of female college students, groupies and hangers-on looking to party and meet Navy aviators. Recently, Hilton officials informed the Tailhook board of directors that their business is no longer welcomed at Hilton hotels.

In order to keep the convention on a more professional level, Millikin, the association spokesman, said that alcohol will not be allowed at future symposiums.

While Millikin and other association officials have decried the sexual misconduct of some aviators at the 1991 convention, the fact is that bawdy behavior has been a trademark of the Tailhook convention for years.

“Ball walking” and “butt rodeo” by officers have been popular attractions at Tailhook conventions for years, said long-time attendees. In the first instance, aviators walk around a casino or other public place with one testicle hanging out.

Another aviator described butt rodeo as an event where an officer gets on his hands and knees, sneaks up behind an unsuspecting woman, bites her rear end “and hangs on for as long as he can.”

The squadron suite with “Dr. Gillette” was also a popular Tailhook attraction. Dr. Gillette is an aviator who uses a razor to shave the legs and other body parts of willing females, several aviators said.

Aviators said that women “also return the favor” by doing “package checks.” In a package check, a woman walks up to an aviator, yells, “package check,” and grabs the man’s crotch.

Veteran aviators and retirees said the after-hours activities at Tailhook conventions took a raunchier turn in 1986, after the release of the movie Top Gun. The film, starring Tom Cruise, offered a glorified image of hard-drinking, womanizing fighter pilots who train at the Navy’s famed Top Gun school at Miramar.

“Prior to 1985 the only thing that happened at Tailhook was damage to the hotel. Normally, it had little to do with women, because there were few women there, other than women who dated Navy guys,” said Criss, a retired commander and former commanding officer of the Top Gun’s adversary squadron.

But that changed after the movie.

“Suddenly, we were the superstars of the known world. Women were coming out of the woodwork, and every one of them wanted to date a Navy aviator. . . . We began seeing all these junior officers, little Tom Cruises, running around in their flight suits. They honestly believed the Navy was like the movie. I think to some extent the Navy itself started believing it was like the movie,” said Criss, a fighter pilot who served two tours in Vietnam.

Millikin echoed Criss’ comment.

“All this Tom Cruise stuff crystallized into a message. Unfortunately, the wrong message,” Millikin said.

Lost in the controversy over the sexual harassment and attacks at the 1991 convention, Tailhook officials said, is that the group had no ties to the hospitality suites or authority over the aviators who rented them.

“We’re a private, nonprofit corporation with no control or authority over the conduct of active duty personnel, whether they are on or off-duty. It’s the Navy leadership’s responsibility to oversee the conduct of their officers at all time,” said Millikin, the Tailhook spokesman.

“We also informed the Navy about the harassment and assaults immediately after learning of these incidents,” Millikin added. “We also called for the punishment of those engaged in sexual misconduct, but this too has been overlooked by many in the media and Navy.”

According to Millikin and Thomas, the association’s role at the convention has always been limited to organizing a three-day symposium, where line aviators have an opportunity to openly discuss weapons, tactics and policy with defense contractors and the Navy brass, including the secretary of the navy. The group also sponsors a banquet the last night of the convention.

Attending last year’s convention, for example, were former Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett, III and the Navy’s top officers.

But, while the Tailhook Assn. has promised changes and wants to re-establish ties, that alone might not be enough, at least in the near future.

Standing between the association and the Navy is the Department of Defense investigation aimed at hundreds of Navy and Marine officers, many who are association members suspected of sexual misconduct and criminal wrongdoing at last year’s convention. The probe is looking at those responsible for sexual attacks and harassment against more than 25 women, including 13 female Navy officers.

The Navy moved quickly last year to sever any official relationship with Tailhook, ending the longstanding relationship one month after the group’s Sept. 5-8 convention. The association has been put off limits to active duty personnel.

For the last year, the attacks have been widely reported, prompting Under Secretary of the Navy Dan Howard in July to note that “the name Tailhook will forever be synonymous with sexual harassment and attacks on women.”

Howard’s comment further widened the gap between the Navy and the Tailhook Assn., an organization of active-duty and retired naval aviators that once had almost unlimited access to secretaries of the Navy and the service’s top admirals.

In an effort to improve Tailhook’s image, officials of the group recently hired a public relations firm to present what they said is their side of the sex scandal. Earlier this month, the Tailhook Assn. issued a public apology to the victims of the sexual harassment and attacks at last year’s convention.

Group officials hoped the apology and a promise of change in the organization would get them back in the Navy fold.

But Adm. Frank Kelso, chief of naval operations, met with aviators at the Miramar Naval Air Station last week and all but issued a direct order to withdraw their memberships in Tailhook.

Spokesman Millikin said the group hired the public relations firm because members “decided to take the offensive after months of taking hits for the Navy.” Although the association issued an apology, albeit late, Millikin said the Navy has failed to apologize to the victims for the conduct of its officers at last year’s convention.

Millikin said the group’s board of directors is uncertain where or when the next gathering will be held.

Millikin, like many retired aviators in the association, is still fiercely loyal to the Navy. He said he is “ambivalent as hell” about criticizing the Navy. But, he added, “it’s time to set the record straight.”

A 28-year Navy veteran and retired captain, Millikin edits The Hook, the Tailhook Assn’s. quarterly journal on carrier aviation.

A Vietnam War veteran and helicopter pilot, Millikin earned the Silver Star for plucking a downed Navy pilot out of Haiphong Harbor and out of the reach of pursuing North Vietnamese, all while the chopper he was flying was under enemy fire.

Executive director Thomas said, with some irritation, that the annual convention’s “professionalism” grew despite the portrayal of fighter pilots in the Top Gun movie.

“If you take the symposium itself and not include the parties, it has grown in professionalism each year. There has been no deterioration of the program just because Tom Cruise appeared on the screen as a fighter pilot,” Thomas said.

Criss, who retired after almost 20 years as a Navy aviator, said that senior Navy officers, including admirals, never considered it their obligation to monitor their junior officers’ behavior at the Tailhook conventions. He said he attended his first Tailhook convention in 1967.

“I don’t know of any senior officer who felt it was his job to control the moral lives of his junior officers . . . . I don’t think that the senior officers concurred with the conduct of their junior officers (at the Tailhook conventions). I think they just thought it wasn’t any of their business,” Criss said.

In order to maintain future conventions on a professional level, the Navy brass would have to supervise the junior officers who have caused most of the problems over the years, Millikin said.

“That’s if and when we’re able to resume our ties to the Navy,” he added.

However, he and other Tailhook officials are confident that the controversy surrounding the 1991 Tailhook Assn. convention will eventually be overcome. Officially, the Navy has severed its ties to the group, but there is still a lot of support for Tailhook among the Navy brass in Washington, Millikin said.

“We have a huge number of supporters in Washington, among the admirals and others with ties to carrier aviation. Our supporters talk to the policy makers at the Department of Defense and Navy. There’s a quiet door-knocking campaign going on on our behalf. I’m confident that the door will be open to us again some day soon,” he said.