Navy Secretary Said to Want Kelso to Resign Over Tailhook

Navy Secretary John H. Dalton has accused the Navy’s top admiral of a “lack of leadership” and said he should resign over the 1991 Tailhook sexual harassment scandal, a senior Pentagon source said Friday.

Dalton recommended to Defense Secretary Les Aspin that Adm. Frank B. Kelso, the chief of naval operations, step down from his post, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Aspin has not yet made a decision,” said the source, who added that Kelso was faulted for a “lack of leadership” in connection with the scandal over sexual assaults at a 1991 convention of Navy aviators.

In a report Friday, CBS News said Dalton also recommended that Aspin discipline a dozen other admirals for their handling of the Tailhook scandal. Pentagon spokeswoman Kathleen deLaski had no immediate comment on that report.

Dalton has been reviewing files of senior Navy admirals who attended the Tailhook Assn. convention in a Las Vegas hotel where some 83 women and seven men reportedly were assaulted. The association is a booster organization for naval aviators and had close ties to the Navy.

Kelso’s resignation, if it is obtained, would be the biggest shock yet in the two years that the scandal has rocked the Navy.

In June, 1992, Dalton’s predecessor, H. Lawrence Garrett III, took responsibility for “a failure of leadership” that allowed the event to occur and resigned.

In September, 1992, then-acting Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe stripped three admirals of their jobs for failing to investigate the incident aggressively. Two of them retired.