Last Charges Are Dropped by Navy in Tailhook Probe

The Navy wrapped up its Tailhook sex scandal investigation Friday with a decision not to revive charges against the last aviators facing misconduct trials.

Vice Adm. J. Paul Reason, who handled Tailhook discipline, said “no further judicial action” will be taken, although he said he plans to write letters to three officers who had charges against them dismissed Tuesday.

Reason acknowledged that some guilty aviators probably went unpunished.

“I’m almost certain of it,” he said at a news conference. “But what would you have me do about that? Evidence is a requirement.”

Several investigations implicated 140 officers in the scandal over a 1991 convention of Navy and Marine Corps aviators. Dozens of women said they were assaulted at the Las Vegas gathering of the Tailhook Assn.

About 50 officers received administrative discipline, but none went on trial. Adm. Frank B. Kelso Jr., the chief of naval operations, attended the convention and received a letter of caution.

At a news conference Friday, Kelso again denied a Navy judge’s accusation that he witnessed some of the lewd conduct and interfered with the investigation.

“I’ve been accused of lying, I’ve been accused of manipulating the system to protect myself and others, and I categorically deny that,” a visibly angry Kelso said at the Pentagon.

“I am not happy about this,” he added. “I am an honest man. I did not lie or manipulate any investigation.”

The 60-year-old Kelso said he intends to remain in office as the Navy’s top admiral until his scheduled retirement at the end of June.

“I said from the beginning I didn’t see anything untoward at Tailhook and I stick by that. I did nothing to influence the process,” Kelso said in an interview. “I’m going to continue to serve in my job.”

Reason said no one tried to influence his handling of any cases.

A statement issued Friday by Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton said he intends to complete his review of the case next week and then will make a decision “as to how to proceed with respect to Adm. Kelso.”

The Navy judge, Capt. William T. Vest Jr., dismissed charges against Cmdrs. Thomas R. Miller and Gregory Tritt and Lt. David Samples, saying that Kelso’s appointment of the person handling Tailhook discipline was inappropriate.

Reason could have appealed Vest’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Military Appeals or sent the cases to Dalton for review on whether to revive the prosecutions.

Miller and Tritt were accused of witnessing misconduct by junior officers at Tailhook and failing to stop it. Samples had been charged with participating in an indecent assault on a woman who was stripped while being passed over the heads of men in a gantlet on the third floor of the Las Vegas Hilton.

All three men said they were innocent. They can now return to duty.

In another development, Lt. Paula Coughlin, who blew the whistle on the scandal, has announced that she is resigning from the Navy.

“I’d hoped that she’d be able to stay in the Navy and make it a career,” Kelso said Friday.

Coughlin said in a letter to Dalton that the assault “and the covert and overt attacks on me that followed have stripped me of my ability to serve.”

In a statement released through her attorney, Coughlin said she has no specific plans, other than concentrating “on regaining my physical, emotional and mental health.”

“I have no regrets about the course of action I chose in reporting the assault,” she said. “This is simply a personal decision forced by my own current needs.”

Coughlin is expected to remain at the helicopter combat support unit in Norfolk where she is assigned for the couple of months it will take to process her resignation.