Navy Plans to Punish 3 Admirals : Tailhook: Dismissal is possible, sources say, on charges of not strongly pursuing reports of sexual assaults by aviators. Undersecretary also is reportedly criticized.

Three of the Navy’s admirals and one of its highest-ranking civilians will be censured--and the admirals could lose their jobs--for failing to aggressively investigate the alleged sexual assaults of 26 women, some of them officers, by naval aviators at the 1991 Tailhook convention in Las Vegas, sources said Wednesday.

The sources, who spoke only on the condition that they not be identified, said the four men are named in the widely anticipated report to be released today by Pentagon Inspector General Derek Vander Schaaf. The report marks a major step in the first independent probe of the Navy’s response to the sex scandal that has shaken the service to its very core.

Three of the men were identified by sources as the commander of the Naval Investigative Service, Rear Adm. Duvall M. Williams; the Navy’s inspector general, Rear Adm. George Washington Davis, and the Navy’s judge advocate general, Rear Adm. John Gordon. Also criticized was Undersecretary of the Navy Dan Howard, the sources said.

Specifically, the report found that the four failed “to aggressively pursue” the men who attempted to hide their participation in the episode or who covered up for colleagues involved in the attacks, the sources said.

It recommended that the admirals be “relieved of their commands, reprimanded or replaced.” It reportedly made no such recommendation for Howard, whose position as the service’s second-highest-ranking civilian gave him responsibility for overseeing the initial Navy investigation, which was harshly criticized for failing to find and punish those involved in the scandal.

Acting Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe scheduled a noon news conference at the Pentagon.

None of the officials reportedly named in Vander Schaaf’s finding could be reached for comment.

A senior Navy officer told The Times, however, that Gordon arrived Tuesday in San Diego to be the main speaker at a change-of-command ceremony Wednesday at the Navy legal service office, but that almost as soon as his plane touched down, Gordon was ordered to return to Washington.

The Navy source, who is stationed in San Diego, also said Williams had been ordered Tuesday to return to Washington from a trip to Europe.

Sources said the three admirals met Wednesday evening with Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Stanley R. Arthur to discuss the report. Two of the admirals offered to retire but it was unclear whether they would have that option, the sources said.

Any of the three admirals could be dismissed, they said.

Vander Schaaf’s investigation also criticized what it said was a lack of coordination and communication between the Naval Investigative Service and the Navy’s inspector general in conducting the probe. One of the central features of O’Keefe’s response today will be to address a recommendation that the relationship between the two investigative arms be improved.

Vander Schaaf’s report addresses only the alleged cover-up by Navy officials and investigators and does not deal with the underlying accusations that an undetermined number of Navy and Marine Corps aviators sexually abused at least 26 women at the September, 1991, convention of the Tailhook Assn. in Las Vegas.

Those accusations are the subject of a separate, parallel investigation, and officials have said they expect to file “multiple assault” charges after they finish gathering evidence later this year.

The Navy Investigative Service began its inquiry into the reported abuses last fall after receiving complaints from alleged victims.

The women charged that they were pushed along a gantlet of drunken Navy and Marine Corps officers in a hallway of the Las Vegas Hilton, where the 1991 Tailhook convention was held. The women asserted that the men grabbed at their breasts and crotches and in some cases pulled off their clothes.

Naval investigators reportedly were hampered by uncooperative witnesses, and many of the aviators allegedly involved were shielded by higher-ranking officials. The investigators eventually identified only six officers suspected of direct involvement in the abuses and only two as primary suspects.

Actions against them was suspended pending the outcome of the latest investigation.

The initial findings drew cries of protest from victims and several members of Congress, who said the Navy had botched the inquiry.

On June 18, then-Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III responded by asking Vander Schaaf to begin investigating independently.

Three weeks later, Garrett resigned. Although he insisted that he had seen or heard nothing about misconduct while attending the Tailhook convention, several witnesses originally interviewed by Navy investigators disputed his account. But those remarks had not been included in the Navy report.

As the investigations progressed, sexual harassment of women in all branches of the U.S. armed forces became the subject of public and congressional discussion. The incident also renewed debate over whether women should be granted full combat status, rather than assigned their current, more limited roles.

The Navy has since cut its ties with the Tailhook Assn., whose name refers to the hook that helps stop planes when they land on an aircraft carrier’s deck. This year’s convention of the association was canceled.

O’Keefe has said he believes that Navy and Marine Corps officers have now cooperated with Pentagon investigators, and he predicted that Vander Schaaf would provide an “unvarnished” report.

A House Armed Services Committee report released last week said public confidence in the Navy is “not likely to be restored until there is a full accounting of Tailhook activities.”

Times staff writer H. G. Reza in San Diego also contributed to this story.