Tailhook Probe Finds Lurid Cases of Sexual Misconduct : Inquiry: Report alleges officers went beyond fondling female aviators. Fifteen may face courts-martial.

The final report on the Pentagon’s Tailhook investigation, expected to be released later this month, alleges an assortment of sex acts by Navy officers that go beyond grabbing and fondling female aviators and expands the potential targets for prosecution and discipline.

In confidential memoranda expected to accompany the long-awaited report, the Defense Department’s inspector general, Derek J. Vander Schaaf, is expected to recommend that about 15 officers face courts-martial on charges of assault or indecency, according to knowledgeable sources. Vander Schaaf also identified a similar number of officers for discipline in less formal proceedings for lesser offenses.

The investigation grew out of the 1991 Tailhook convention in Las Vegas. The report, roughly 300 pages long and illustrated with explicit photographs taken by those attending the convention, offers a much more detailed account of the lurid incidents than has emerged so far.

It also indicates that punishment may extend well beyond those who harassed or assaulted female colleagues or those who mishandled the subsequent investigation of the matter.

The investigation, which included interviews with more than 2,100 Navy and Marine Corps officers, found that the conduct of the aviators went beyond earlier reports of drunk men groping female officers in a hotel hallway “gantlet” during a party on the final day of the convention.

The Tailhook convention was a meeting of an organization of Navy and Marine aviators that takes its name from the device on the underside of planes that allows them to stop short on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

The new findings include allegations that some men exposed themselves in the hotel. In another incident, a man was said to have engaged publicly in oral sex with women, sources said. Under a military law prohibiting sodomy, oral sex could be prosecuted as a criminal offense.

“There was a lot of public sex,” said one source who had seen an early draft of the report. “It’s a pretty tawdry picture,” the source added.

The Navy and the Clinton Administration are awaiting the report with conflicting sentiments. Navy leaders are girding for what several described as a final and devastating assault on the service’s image, and they are eager to move beyond a scandal that has preoccupied the service for more than a year.

Some Clinton Administration officials said they expect that the new disclosures of sexual misconduct, combined with recent reports of attacks on gays by military service members, will help erode public support for the military leaders’ fight to maintain a longstanding ban on homosexuals in the armed forces.

On Navy and Marine Corps installations with large aviator communities, the report is being awaited with fierce resentment and grim resignation.

“We know what’s coming,” said one aviator who was questioned in the case. “It isn’t good, and it isn’t fair, but we understand it doesn’t need to be fair because there’s nothing we can do about it.

“This thing started in an effort to find out who attacked (Lt.) Paula Coughlin, and then it turned into a fishing expedition, and it seems they’ve hauled a bunch of people in for poor conduct. There was poor conduct, but people are getting caught up in a dragnet. Originally we were looking for a criminal assault, and now we’re dragging people in who had prohibited sex.”

A source said many of the photos included in an early version of the report are likely to be expunged from the final document--both because they would violate the privacy rights of the officers depicted and because they would probably be considered obscene.

Knowledgeable officials said concerns about privacy and fair trials means that none of the officers possibly facing disciplinary action will be named in the report.

“The reason for that is they want to protect names and not jeopardize future courts-martial with premature publicity,” said a source who requested anonymity.

Early last month, then-Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe laid the legal groundwork for Tailhook-related disciplinary actions. O’Keefe ordered the Navy and the Marine Corps each to designate a single officer to determine whether cases against individuals should be resolved by a legal proceeding or by punishment meted out by an individual’s commanding officer.

At the time, O’Keefe noted that the Navy and Marine Corps would not necessarily accept whatever recommendations Vander Schaaf eventually made for legal action. By leaving the choice of how to proceed with individual disciplinary cases to service attorneys, O’Keefe said, “the ultimate goal is a fair hearing and a fair resolution of each case.”

Some of the approximately 15 officers recommended for disciplinary action, rather than courts-martial, were cited for conduct unbecoming an officer. Many engaged in raunchy sexual behavior, including “ball walking,” the name given to a common practice at Tailhook conventions: Officers walk around the Las Vegas Hilton casino with one testicle hanging out of their pants or shorts.

In at least one case described by the report, an aviator was said to have publicly engaged in oral sex with several different women within a short period. The act was reportedly consensual--at least one of his partners was a prostitute, the report said.

Indeed, the prospect that several officers could be court-martialed under the military’s sodomy statute is certain to thrust the Tailhook case into the debate over President Clinton’s proposal to lift a ban on gays in the military.

Already, gay and lesbian activists have said the Tailhook scandal demonstrates that heterosexuals are guilty of the kind of sexual misconduct military leaders fear will become common among homosexuals if the ban is lifted.

But the use of the sodomy statute in Tailhook-related disciplinary proceedings may instead strengthen the hands of those who oppose the lifting of the military’s longstanding ban on gay men and lesbians in the military.

Those who oppose lifting the ban have used the sodomy statute as a key weapon. They argue that as long as the military’s sodomy statute remains and is enforced against both heterosexuals and homosexuals, it is an important means of maintaining military discipline. And as long as the statute remains in place, they contend, practicing homosexuals cannot be allowed in the military without undermining the military’s code of justice.

The seven-month Tailhook investigation has been one of the most extensive ever into alleged military misconduct. By early December, 1992, investigators had interviewed 1,865 Navy officers and 251 Marine Corps officers.

John Comey, the inspector general’s director of criminal oversight, summoned 15 Tailhook victims, including military officers and female civilian dependents, to a secret conference at the Oceana, Va., Naval Air Station on Jan. 21.

The women were lodged at the base’s bachelor officers quarters for two days. Sources familiar with the gathering said the women were shown hundreds of photos of aviators who were questioned by Defense Department investigators.

Healy reported from Washington and Reza from San Diego.