Moral Compass Key to Getting Navy on Course

Cmdr. Joseph A. Gattuso has no doubts about what the Navy must do to get back on course in the wake of last month’s suicide of Chief of Naval Operations Jeremy M. Boorda: It must focus on the character issue.

In Gattuso’s view, the Navy’s crisis since the 1991 Tailhook scandal has been largely of its own making. Had the service moved quickly to deal with Tailhook and the spate of other problems that have surfaced since then, he says, it would not be in trouble today.

“If the new CNO wants to heal the Navy, he must make sure that it is imbued with a moral foundation,” argued Gattuso, an F/A-18 fighter pilot attached to the Naval Strike Warfare Center at Fallon, Nev. “The rest will flow from that.”

Gattuso’s view may be surprising to some of the Navy’s more cynical critics, but it is being voiced increasingly out in the fleet as the sea service prepares for a new and, it hopes, smoother passage with the naming of Adm. Jay L. Johnson to take the helm. Senate confirmation of Johnson’s nomination as Boorda’s replacement is expected soon.

Five years after the Tailhook episode, the Navy is rent by a dichotomy: While it is strong militarily, its morale remains battered, and frustration over the continuing criticism and turmoil is building.

Intensified by Boorda’s death, a debate is now raging from the highest admirals to the lowest of the enlisted ranks about the extent of the service’s problems and what it will take to resolve them.

“It’s time for the Navy to be able to put this thing behind it,” said James H. Webb Jr., an Annapolis graduate and former Navy secretary. “It’s gone on long enough, and it is driving too many good people out.”

Many agree with Gattuso that the service must restore its moral compass. Others take aim specifically at its admirals, whom they see as a hidebound society often more worried about protecting themselves than curing the Navy’s broader internal problems.

Foremost, perhaps, many insiders are now saying publicly that it is time for the Navy to stop acting wounded, that it must stand up and begin aggressively defending its positions even if this risks more political fire.

The debate is spilling forth furiously, and sometimes in public.

After Webb, who was Navy secretary during the early 1980s, delivered a bluntly worded speech that excoriated the Navy’s Tailhook-period leadership, Dan Howard, who briefly held the same post during that time, confronted Webb at the podium, almost coming to blows.

But things could be worse. As Louis Hicks, a Navy watcher at St. Mary’s College of Maryland points out, unlike the days of the “hollow forces” that the U.S. military experienced after the end of the Vietnam War, the Navy’s difficulties today do not seem to be showing up in its operational performance.

Measures of training and readiness remain high. “There’s no evidence of any of that [kind of deterioration] in the Navy today,” Hicks said.

Yet Don M. Snider, a defense expert formerly with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warns that unless the Navy’s new leadership succeeds in changing the current climate, military effectiveness will begin to erode.

“The Navy needs a vision of where it’s going and good, inspiring leadership to take it there,” Snider said. “Boorda was starting this. That’s the tragedy of this [suicide].”

The list of mishaps and scandals that have plagued the Navy in the last eight years is staggering. Besides the Tailhook episode, there was the explosion on the battleship Iowa, the downing of an Iranian airliner by the cruiser Vincennes, a series of embarrassing spy cases, a spate of scandals at the Naval Academy and, more recently, a raft of Navy warplane crashes.

The Tailhook incident continues to produce fallout. Although no one was punished by court-martial, dozens of admirals have been denied advancement or forced out, and the promotions of hundreds of lower-ranking aviators have been blocked.

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In one controversial case in 1994, the Navy withdrew the nomination of a well-known admiral, Stanley R. Arthur, to become commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific because lawmakers questioned his indirect role in processing a sex-discrimination case.

The decision stunned many officers, who took it as a sign that any career would be sacrificed to avoid political questions. Boorda later admitted that he regretted pulling the nomination back.

Many around the service, however, say they believe that the Navy has made some headway.

Lt. Cmdr. Lori Tanner, a 13-year Navy veteran who serves as an F/A-18 test pilot, said the Tailhook scandal served as “a kind of watershed” that has changed attitudes significantly within the service.

“From what I’ve seen, we’ve learned a lot from it,” she said. “When you have a leader who exhibits what a leader should, as we do in my squadron, then people follow. I think people have to realize that there’s human nature here. We’re not perfect.”

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But suspicions linger from the history of Navy officials’ attempts to hush up major problems rather than address them. Examples range from the awarding of a medal to the captain of the Vincennes after his ship had mistakenly downed the Iranian airliner, to the Tailhook cover-up, to the suspect handling of Naval Academy cheating scandals.

Richard L. Armitage, a former assistant secretary of Defense, said he sees integrity--or more accurately the lack of it in dealing with such incidents--as a “common thread.”

Armitage pointed out that the Navy “never did the kind of soul-searching” and institutional overhauls that the other services did after the debacle of the Vietnam War. “To some extent, we’re reaping the results of that now.”

David R. Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland, said the biggest problem so far has been that the Navy’s leadership seems to be “in deep denial,” unwilling to admit that the service has serious cultural problems that need to be solved.

Webb had argued that what the service needs is a graybeard--a widely respected, charismatic leader who can tell critics, “Stop this!” and give officers and sailors some breathing space.

“If that happens, you’ll see morale soar,” Webb said.

Cmdr. Gerard D. Roncolato, commanding officer of the Sullivans, a guided-missile destroyer, said it is important for the new CNO to be seen as standing up for his officers and crews, assuring Americans that the service will face its problems.

Some are even hoping that Boorda’s suicide will serve as a catalyst to marshal the institutional spirit to jolt the Navy out of its rut.

The Navy is “at a crossroads,” with much of its future dependent upon the credibility and skill of the new CNO, said retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, now at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Whether the low-key and uncharismatic Johnson will be able to get the Navy back on course remains to be seen. Although skeptics point out that he was one of the Navy’s most junior admirals before being chosen as CNO--a status that could prove difficult for him when he tries to put his stamp on the service--others regard him as one of the brightest and most capable officers in the fleet.

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“I’ve seen him operate with battle-group commanders, and . . . he has been able to win the respect of everyone,” said retired Adm. Paul David Miller, who himself was a relative youngster when selected for flag rank. “I’m sure he’ll be able to articulate the role of naval forces effectively.”

Still, virtually all sides concede that the healing process and transition will take time.

Armitage said the most important step would be a new emphasis on honesty. “Integrity has to be seen as the sine qua non of all the leadership. It has to be seen as something that is valued.”