Senate to Retire Kelso at 4 Stars, After Fiery Debate

The Senate, capping a heated and for many of its male members a deeply uncomfortable debate over sexual harassment, voted Tuesday to allow the Navy’s top admiral to retire without a demotion despite allegations of a role in the Tailhook scandal.

For the first time since the still-overwhelmingly male Senate agonized over Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation to the Supreme Court, partisan politics took a back seat to sexual politics as the lawmakers voted, 54 to 43, to allow Adm. Frank B. Kelso II retire as a four-star admiral.

Thirty-six men joined the Senate’s seven female members in voting against the motion to let the chief of naval operations retire at his 4-star rank, as recommended by President Clinton and Defense Secretary William J. Perry. Because the Senate must approve the retirement of all 3-star and 4-star officers, the motion’s defeat would have meant Kelso’s automatic demotion to 2-star rank and a corresponding reduction of nearly $17,000 per year in his $84,340 retirement pay.

Although the outcome was never in doubt, male after male member of the Senate felt obliged to take to the floor to explain that votes in favor of Kelso--who was officially exonerated of involvement in the 1991 Tailhook scandal--were not being cast along gender lines.

But any doubt that the emotional daylong debate would turn out to be anything other than a skirmish of the sexes was dispelled when all seven female senators served notice that they intended to oppose what the Senate leadership originally hoped could be a pro forma motion to retire the admiral at his current rank.

“It was the first time, and quite possibly the last, that (Barbara) Boxer and Kay Bailey Hutchison have voted on the same side” of a controversial issue, a Senate aide noted, referring to California’s liberal Democratic senator and the conservative Republican from Texas.

It was also, added Boxer, the first time that the women--five Democrats and two Republicans--have stood together to raise the issue of sexual harassment and force a debate on gender politics on the Senate floor.

The women said afterward that they were not disappointed by their loss because they knew from the outset that they had little chance of winning, but hoped to use the debate to send a message to the military that Congress will not tolerate sexual harassment or discrimination on the basis of sex.

“What the women are saying is that the culture of the U.S. military must change,” Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said before the vote.

“Win or lose--that’s not the point,” Hutchison added. “The point is we’re taking a stand . . . we are debating this issue and we are putting everyone (in the military) on notice that promotions like this are not going to be pro forma when questions like this are involved.”

The unexpectedly close vote reinforced that message, she added.

The women’s bipartisan effort to defeat the Kelso motion got under way last week, when they met informally to coordinate their strategy for the floor fight. They conferred again over the weekend at a Democratic retreat.

There was a bit of stage-managed drama when nine women from the House, led by Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), marched to the Senate to show their solidarity with the women senators.

The maneuver was meant to evoke another scene from 1991, when a group of women from the House stormed across the Capitol grounds and were denied entrance to the Senate Democratic policy lunches.

And win or lose Tuesday, the women also were not unhappy about the prospect, in one Senate aide’s words, of “at least making their male colleagues squirm a bit” as they considered what, in an election year, could end up being a politically risky vote.

And squirm they did.

“This is a completely unpleasant and distasteful exercise,” bemoaned Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who delivered an emotional speech on Kelso’s behalf.

“There was a lot of emotion expressed about this in the caucus,” Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.) conceded as he emerged from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats earlier in the day.

It was perhaps not insignificant that one of the men voting to deny Kelso retirement at his 4-star rank was Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who came under intense criticism from women’s groups for his sharp questioning of Anita Faye Hill during Thomas’ 1991 confirmation hearings.

However, the most eagerly watched vote was the one cast by Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), who is under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee on allegations that he harassed some two dozen women over two decades. Packwood kept a low profile during the debate but in the end quietly voted against Kelso.

Besides Boxer, Hutchison and Mikulski, the women voting against Kelso included Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California, Patty Murray of Washington and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois and Republican Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas.

The vote crossed party affiliations, with 23 Democrats and 31 Republicans voting for Kelso’s retirement at full rank and 30 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting against it.

His future became a political issue earlier this year when a Navy judge ruling on the Tailhook scandal accused him of not telling the truth when he denied having seen any wrongdoing at a 1991 convention of Naval aviators sponsored by the Tailhook Assn.

More than 80 women had complained of widespread harassment and sometimes-violent sexual abuse by male pilots attending the Las Vegas convention.

Kelso was the highest-ranking officer at the convention. He has steadfastly denied witnessing any misbehavior, and a Navy investigation exonerated him. But questions about his role resurfaced after the naval judge accused him of manipulating the official inquiry to protect himself and other senior officers from blame.

The issue’s sensitivity was underscored last week when the Senate Armed Services Committee held an unusually heated hearing on Kelso’s retirement. After hearing Perry and other senior officials testify that there was no credible evidence tying Kelso to the scandal, the committee voted, 20 to 2, to recommend that the full Senate approve his retirement at the 4-star rank.

Endorsing that conclusion before the vote, Clinton said in a television interview Tuesday that the “evidence is not sufficiently compelling” to deny Kelso retirement at full rank.

“That’s a very severe thing to do, and I don’t believe the evidence warrants it,” Clinton said.