Court-Martial Prompts Scrutiny of Pilots’ Club

In Air Force parlance, Lt. Col. Shelley Rogers was a “fast burner,” an F-15 pilot promoted quickly and given choice assignments. Lt. Julie Clemm had begun a promising career in intelligence.

Both have watched their careers ruined by charges, since dropped, that they had an affair a year ago while the 90th Fighter Squadron, under Rogers’ command, was on patrol over Bosnia.

Rogers and Clemm say they are the victims of a jealous second-in-command who sexually harassed Clemm, performed poorly for Rogers and then saw a way out of his trouble by linking them in a career-ending scandal.

Their accuser, Maj. Michael Cloutier, says Clemm came on to him even while having an affair with her commander.

Exactly whose story is closer to the truth may be less important than its effect on the three careers involved and the light it has shed on a fighter-pilot club called the Command Barstoolers Assn., an organization given to frat-boy drinking and miscellaneous hell-raising.

At Rogers’ court-martial at Elmendorf Air Force Base in September, Rogers’ lawyer argued that Cloutier relied in part on his clout as a member of the Barstoolers to get his charges heard.

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Rogers was found guilty of disorderly conduct (he drunkenly walked on top of several cars outside a pub) and having an unprofessional relationship with a subordinate. An adultery charge was dropped for lack of evidence. He lost his command and four months’ pay, about $16,000, and was reprimanded.

The Barstoolers are a semi-secret group of active and retired fighter pilots, all men, who gather annually in Nevada for a weekend of drinking, golf and carousing. Formed in the 1950s as a way for Korean War veterans to keep in touch, the association has about 1,000 members and chapters at Air Force bases around the world.

Members keep in touch with a newsletter, the Drink Booze News, which chronicles their drinking and other antics. New members must be nominated by current ones, and Cloutier has sponsored several officers at Elmendorf. The nomination letters can be profane, with an emphasis on drinking, anatomy and sexual prowess. The Stooler Salute is a raised middle finger.

The Barstoolers in some ways resemble the Tailhook Assn., the group of Navy and Marine aviators who held a 1991 convention in Las Vegas where several women were groped and otherwise harassed. The scandal led to dozens of reprimands and destroyed several careers.

Air Force officials say they are powerless to control the Barstoolers since it is a private club. And while the Elmendorf chapter meets in the base officers’ club, no laws have been broken, so nothing can be done to prohibit the gatherings.

But testimony of sometimes crude behavior by the 90th Fighter Squadron’s pilots in Italy, including a “mooning” along a country road, drew an unusual response from the general who oversees the Pacific Air Force.

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Gen. John G. Lorber has ordered all officers under his command to hold meetings to discuss the Air Force code of conduct.

In an Oct. 2 memorandum, the general, himself a former Barstooler, said some members of the 90th “conducted themselves as though they were in a wild fraternity, totally out of control with no mature supervision.”

He went on to suggest that standards of behavior have changed since the 1970s, when “we were not a world-class Air Force.” Lorber was criticized for that comment and later apologized to veterans who served in the ‘70s.

“If lewd behavior and debauchery in an Air Force squadron shocks you, then you are part of the team,” the memo said. “If it doesn’t, then it’s time you look for another profession. Our Air Force today does not tolerate such behavior, nor should it.”

One longtime military observer, William Kaufmann, a retired professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Pentagon official, said clashes between men and women are inevitable in an environment that rewards rank with privilege. He also wasn’t surprised to find fighter pilots in the middle of such a situation.

“This is very typical of the flying community,” the World War II Army Air Corps veteran said. “I remember turning in an officer for flying drunk, but this was sort of expected of you, that you lived a harum-scarum life, and Tailhook was a perfect example of that.”

For Rogers, the Alaska case has meant the last 18 months of a 20-year career probably will amount to meaningless work, the Air Force equivalent of digging holes and filling them in. He doubts he will ever fly an F-15 again.

Frank Spinner, Rogers’ lawyer, dismisses the idea of an outright conspiracy among Barstoolers to get Rogers. Indeed, several Barstoolers testified as character witnesses for Rogers.

Instead, he sees a more subtle problem with the Barstoolers: It’s an alternate chain of command that gives lower-ranking officers like Cloutier the feeling that they have friends in high places who will protect them.

The episode has soured Clemm on the Air Force just two years into her four-year ROTC commitment. Immediately after Cloutier told superiors in Alaska about the alleged affair, Clemm’s security clearance was revoked and she was ordered back to Elmendorf. She has not returned to her intelligence assignment. She has told her parents she wants to go to law school.

Clemm would not discuss the matter, but her parents, angry over their daughter’s treatment, are eager critics.

“I think she became an innocent victim of a much more sinister plot, and that’s that Cloutier knew he was in trouble because of his performance” in Italy, said David Clemm, her father and a West Point graduate. “The only thing they got messed up about is they picked the wrong lady. They thought they could bully her into saying something.”

Clemm was given immunity during the court-martial and denied having an affair with Rogers.

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As for Cloutier, he has been selected for promotion to lieutenant colonel and said he is not worried the scandal will affect his advancement.

Some in the Air Force are less optimistic. Cloutier admitted during the court-martial that he has cheated on his wife, a fact that could strengthen some of Clemm’s allegations of sexual harassment against him. Cloutier is awaiting the results of that investigation.

“If they investigate it thoroughly,” he said Monday, “they’re going to find nothing happened.”