No Retreat, No Surrender at Tailhook ’93

In a mood of anger and defiance, the embattled Tailhook Assn. ended its annual meetings Saturday, with most in attendance vowing no significant changes and refusing to acknowledge that any serious wrongs were committed at its 1991 convention in Las Vegas.

That gathering, the last held by national aviation booster group before this weekend, left more than 140 servicemen implicated in a sexual misconduct scandal in which 83 women were assaulted, according to a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general.

The convention two years ago was attended by about 4,000 of the organization’s 15,500 members. This year’s event, which the organization called a “symposium” instead of a convention, was attended by 700 members, only six of them active-duty aviators. That is in contrast to the thousands of servicemen and servicewomen who attended the Las Vegas convention.

If any theme emerged from this year’s meetings, it was that seemingly no one on hand felt contrite, responsible or guilty for the earlier events. In fact, they blamed others for putting the Navy’s reputation at risk.

“I’ve seldom seen a time when the media have behaved so disgracefully, when politicians have behaved so disgracefully, when senior members of the Administration have behaved so disgracefully,” said keynote speaker Eldon Griffiths, a foreign policy expert and former member of the British Parliament.

Griffiths and others blamed this year’s poor attendance on such factors and on the Navy’s severing of official ties with the organization. A recent memorandum from Navy brass stipulated that active-duty Tailhook members could only attend the convention by taking leave and wearing civilian clothes.

Griffiths, who now lives in Orange County, said “no one would condone the drunken behavior of a bunch of jocks.” He dismissed what happened at the last convention as “minor incidents.”

Such incidents involved pornographic movies, striptease acts in hotel rooms and an infamous hallway gantlet, through which women were pushed, groped at, pinched and fondled by drunken aviators.

But it was in the hospitality suites of the Las Vegas Hilton where scores of women were assaulted and where fliers wearing “Women Are Property” T-shirts exposed their testicles to female passersby and drank from a penis-shaped drink dispenser.

The Pentagon report later described the chief activities in the suites as “streaking,” “mooning” and “butt-biting” and called the rooms “a type of free-fire zone” in which aviators could behave “indiscriminately and without fear of censure and retribution.”

The only fireworks at this year’s convention came Friday night, when protesters from the Women’s Action Coalition in Los Angeles confronted Tailhook members at the entrance to the hotel ballroom, and anger and insults flew back and forth like rocket rounds.

As more than 125 demonstrators surged toward the entrance to the Town & Country Hotel, where the two-day symposium was held, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brad Taisey glowered at them from behind glass doors.

“Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!” shouted the mob, which included gay and women’s groups, men and children and whose every action was filmed by the major television networks, including a CBS crew from “60 Minutes.”

“You people are . . . ,” Taisey said, ending with an obscenity.

Taisey, 37, who was one of the half a dozen active-duty servicemen on hand, said he attended to show support for the association, which has lost 80% of its corporate sponsorships and whose name is now synonymous with sexual hi-jinks.

Although a vote is months away, most members at the meetings on Saturday said they oppose changing the name of the organization.

Taisey, who flies F-18s out of North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado, and other members used the occasion of the protest to seize on what they call the underlying reasons for the bad publicity about the 1991 convention--fears stemming from post-Cold War downsizing of the armed forces and the debates over women in combat and full recognition of homosexuals in the military.

“Gay people have been in the military forever, obviously,” Taisey said. “But so have child molesters and so have rapists and so have murderers.”

Retired Navy Cmdr. John Rochford, 62, of Camarillo, one of the more outspoken members at Saturday’s meetings, put the blame for Tailhook ’91 on the women who brought forth the accusations.

“There’s a group of women’s lib types out there that have not helped themselves one bit with the Navy,” Rochford said.

More than a few members spoke out against 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 hallway crowded with drunken airmen.

Most said they did not believe the Pentagon report and felt that many women who testified against active-duty Navy personnel were making up their stories. Several commented that the women should have known better than to walk down hallways where gantlets were taking place.

Although scores of servicemen were said to be involved in the Tailhook scandal, only two Navy fliers and one Marine Corps officer are facing charges of assault stemming from the scandal.

“Along with the rest of the nation, we’re appalled by what happened in 1991, and we intend to be at every Tailhook convention from now on to protest it,” said Laleh Soomekh, a spokeswoman for the women’s group.