No Further Punishment for 2 Admirals : Tailhook scandal: Acting Navy secretary’s decision is contained in letter to Defense Dept., whose inspector general is assailed.

The acting secretary of the Navy has decided not to punish further two admirals who were criticized in a Defense Department report for their handling of an initial investigation into alleged sexual assaults at the 1991 Tailhook convention, according to a letter obtained by The Times.

Secretary Sean C. O’Keefe also assailed the Defense Department’s inspector general--who reviewed the handling of the case--for releasing “facts and conclusions” about the probe that were later disputed by individuals involved.

The decision of the inspector general to release conclusions without first corroborating them “place in question . . . the evidentiary standards underlying information included in the report and the standards of proof required to support the conclusions,” said the letter, sent to the Defense Department last Thursday.

The memorandum is the Navy’s first official response to findings by the Pentagon.

In early September, Derek Vander Schaaf, the department’s inspector general, issued a report that scored the Navy’s investigation of the alleged assaults of more than 26 women--more than half of them officers--in a Las Vegas hotel during the aviators’ convention.

He focused his criticism on three naval officers and a fourth civilian official, J. Daniel Howard, the undersecretary of the Navy. Howard is the only official of the four who remains in the post he filled at that time.

O’Keefe last month asked for and accepted resignations from Rear Adm. Duvall M. Williams, then the commander of the Naval Investigative Service, and Rear Adm. John E. Gordon, who retires Friday as the Navy’s judge advocate general. A third admiral, Rear Adm. George W. Davis VI, the Navy’s inspector general, was reassigned.

While O’Keefe’s decision is relatively good news for Williams and Gordon, neither man got the support he sought from the Navy secretary.

O’Keefe conceded that the Navy’s early investigation “did not result in the comprehensive inquiry and report that the department needed and deserved.” But he added that on the basis of the “entire record,” he would entertain “no further action” to punish the officials involved.

The Navy secretary’s decision not to take further action will allow both men to retire in their current grades, although both officers contend that their reputations have been unfairly damaged by the case.

For Williams, especially, O’Keefe’s decision represents a significant reprieve. Williams was sharply criticized by the Pentagon inspector general for making comments disparaging women’s role in the Navy and for proposing repeatedly to terminate the investigation.

In strong language, Williams denied that he had ever made the comments attributed to him by two senior Navy civilians and a Naval Investigative Service investigator.

Among those remarks was one in which the admiral was reported to have asserted that most women in naval aviation are “go-go dancers, topless dancers or hookers.”

In a memorandum to O’Keefe, Williams defended as proper his agency’s focus on criminal activity in its investigation of the alleged sexual assaults. He further rejected charges lodged by the Pentagon inspector general that he resisted prodding to interview admirals in connection with the case.

In a memorandum to O’Keefe, Gordon also defended his role in overseeing the legal aspects of the Navy’s investigation and rejected the criticism lodged against him by the Defense Department inspector general’s report.