6 Officers in Tailhook Case Get Desk Jobs : Navy: Group includes leader of a carrier and head of Blue Angels team. Action is first since report was released.

Six senior Navy officers, including some who were on flight status, were reassigned to desk jobs so they can be available to the admiral deciding if they should be disciplined for their roles in the 1991 Tailhook sex scandal, officials said Thursday.

The group includes the executive officer of the carrier Constellation, the leader of the Blue Angels flying team and an officer who was investigated for misconduct in the 1992 Tomcat Follies sex scandal at Miramar Naval Air Station but was cleared.

Navy officials said the reassignments were administrative and should not be interpreted as a sign that punitive action is planned against the half-dozen officers.

But two independent sources familiar with the Pentagon’s Tailhook investigation said that of the 140 officers singled out for disciplinary action, between six and eight have been recommended for court martial.

The reassignments of the six officers were the first actions taken by the Navy and Marine Corps since the final Tailhook investigation report was released last month.

“The admiral doesn’t want them at sea, doesn’t want them on an exercise or in a plane, he wants to have access to them,” an unidentified Navy official in Washington told the Associated Press.

Vice Adm. J. Paul Reason and Marine Lt. Gen. Charles C. Krulak were assigned to follow up on the Pentagon inspector general’s recommendation that Navy and Marine officers be disciplined for their conduct at the 1991 Tailhook convention in Las Vegas.

A Navy official in Washington said the six officers were being reassigned in order to facilitate the ongoing probe by Reason and Krulak. Navy officials identified only five of the six officers. They are:

* Capt. Richard Braden, who was cleared in the Tomcat Follies scandal. In that case, a group of Miramar aviators put on a bawdy skit that included sexual references about Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.). Schroeder, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, was a critic of the Navy’s investigation of the Tailhook scandal.

* Cmdr. Mark Milliken, executive officer of the San Diego-based Constellation.

* Cmdr. Robert Stumpf, commanding officer of the Blue Angels demonstration flying team.

* Cmdr. Gregory Tritt, commanding officer of a squadron of EA-6B early warning aircraft at Whidbey Island, Wash.

* Cmdr. Thomas Sobieck, commanding officer of VF-124, an F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron at Miramar.

The sixth officer was not identified by the Navy because he is not a unit commander.

The VF-124 squadron hosted a suite at the Tailhook convention that featured nude strippers, sexual intercourse by a couple in the presence of aviators and public sex acts by aviators, the report said.