Only 3 in Tailhook Case Facing Assault Charges : Scandal: Accusations of possible unbecoming conduct and lesser infractions are being reviewed against others.

Although a Pentagon investigative agency determined that as many as 140 servicemen were involved in alleged sexual misconduct at the Tailhook Assn. convention in 1991, only two Navy fliers and one Marine Corps officer are facing charges of assault resulting from the scandal.

While lesser charges of unbecoming conduct and other infractions are still being reviewed against others, the three servicemen named in the more serious assault charges are accused of attacking only a handful of women.

However, the Pentagon Inspector General’s office concluded four months ago that as many as 83 women were sexually assaulted as they were forced through a gantlet of drunken males at a Las Vegas hotel and during other debaucheries at the annual Navy fliers’ convention there.

Officials said that while no more assault charges are likely, Navy and Marine Corps prosecutors are continuing to pursue various lesser charges against other officers who were present during the fliers’ convention.

Several Navy officers already have been charged with lesser offenses, such as unbecoming conduct and failing to obey superiors in the incident. But no members of the Marine Corps have been named in any lesser allegations.

Military prosecutors declined to discuss details Monday on why so few servicemen were charged with assault in the scandal, which rocked the military leadership here and has prompted calls for more respect and expanded opportunities for females in the armed forces.

Cmdr. John Tull, a Navy spokesman, said that the more serious assault charges were filed only when the allegations “were corroborated by independent evidence, such as a witness statement or a photo.”

Asked why more assault charges were not filed, he said: “Draw your own conclusions.”

But defense attorneys and other military sources said that, in many of the cases, the alleged victims either were unable to accurately identify their assailants or later changed their stories when they realized that they might have to testify in public.

In addition, the sources said, many of the officers present during the alleged assaults “closed ranks” and have refused to identify their colleagues and that even the assault charges that were filed appear to be on shaky ground.

“The evidence just doesn’t exist,” said Coast Guard Lt. Jeff Good, a defense attorney who was able to get two counts of assault dismissed against his client, a Navy flier. “The investigations have been shoddy and the evidence just wasn’t there to back up serious charges.”

The three assault cases, which carry maximum sentences of five years in prison, were filed against:

* Marine Capt. Gregory J. Bonam, a 29-year-old aviator who is assigned to the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss.

Bonam has been charged with assaulting Lt. Paula Coughlin, a 31-year-old Navy helicopter pilot who became the scandal’s whistle-blower when she said publicly that she feared she was going to be gang-raped as she was fondled and forced to walk down a Las Vegas Hilton hallway crowded with drunken airmen.

Bonam and Coughlin are scheduled to face each other at a hearing today at the Marines Corps base in Quantico, Va. The hearing will determine whether Bonam will be tried on the assault charges at a court-martial.

* David Samples, 28, a Navy flier from Whidbey Island, Wash.

Samples is accused of lifting a woman into the air at the Las Vegas Hilton and stripping her of her clothing “with intent to gratify his lust.” But the alleged victim, as well as several hotel employees, has declined to appear at a hearing on the charges in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, according to Samples’ attorney, Navy Lt. Tim Keck.

“We requested she be there but she’s refused,” Keck said. “And now she says she doesn’t remember a thing, so she’s not a good witness for the government any way.”

* Gregory E. Tritt, 43, a 20-year Navy veteran who served as a squadron commander at Whidbey Island.

He is accused of touching women on the buttocks, but his attorney, Lt. Cmdr. Diane Karr, said that the case also has evidentiary and identification problems.

“You have to remember that this was a party atmosphere with a large number of people who didn’t know each other,” she said. “It wasn’t like a party you might have with your family or friends from work, where everybody knows everybody else.”

A fourth serviceman, Navy Lt. Cole V. Cowden, 32, originally was charged with assaulting two women at Tailhook conventions in 1990 and 1991, including holding a female lieutenant “down on a bed, pulling off her underwear, kissing her thighs and touching her pubic area.”

But Good, his attorney, said that he was able to get those charges dismissed Friday.

He said that the woman involved in the alleged bed incident “was just not credible. . . . She admitted to lying about a great number of things.”

The second alleged victim, who accused Cowden of touching her chest, later “wanted nothing at all to do with this,” Good said.

Along with problems with victims and witnesses, sources also noted that many of the servicemen who attended the Las Vegas conventions are refusing to give the names of those who assaulted women.

“Closing of ranks is something that serves a lot of organizations really, really well when they have a code of silence,” said a military source close to the investigations, who asked not to be identified. “And I’m sure the military prosecutors were running into that problem.”

Nevertheless, advocates for the alleged victims said that, even if a large number of men are not punished for assault, life in the armed forces still will be improved because new safeguards will be put in place to prevent sexual harassment and abuse.

“To say this was a scandal is an understatement,” said Joseph I. Cronin, a Nevada attorney who is suing the Tailhook Assn. and the Las Vegas Hilton on behalf of Coughlin.