2 Dispute Chief Accuser in Army Sex Case

An Army sergeant on Monday contradicted details in Brenda Hoster’s account of the night she says she was accosted by Sergeant Major of the Army Gene McKinney.

Sgt. 1st Class Larry Laws also said the atmosphere in McKinney’s office was stressful and that when Hoster, then a sergeant major, was criticized, “she took it personally.”

Laws, who worked with Hoster on McKinney’s staff at the Pentagon, testified at a military hearing to determine if McKinney should be court-martialed on sexual-misconduct charges. McKinney has denied the allegations.

Hoster testified Friday and Saturday that during a trip to Hawaii in April 1996, McKinney came to her hotel room, kissed her and asked her to have sexual relations with him. She said she rebuffed his advances and he left her room. She has since retired.

Immediately after the incident, Hoster said, she told Laws what had happened. He was staying in an adjacent room.

Laws said that he was in Hoster’s room when McKinney came there and that the Army’s top enlisted man told him he wanted to talk to her alone.

“A few minutes later I was asleep,” Laws said. He said he heard nothing from the next room.

“Did you have any conversation that evening with Miss Hoster?” asked Lt. Col. V. Montgomery Forrester, a McKinney defense lawyer.

“No,” said Laws, adding that he did not recall Hoster knocking on his door. He said he didn’t learn of the alleged incident until a month later.

Laws said that “at times it was stressful” working for McKinney. “Most of the time it was mellow, but expectations were very high,” he said.

Laws said that when McKinney was unhappy with staff performance “he was harsh on all of us.”

But he said Hoster took criticism more personally than the others.

Laws said there was unhappiness within the staff over the fact that McKinney was often vague about what he wanted done.

Another witness, Col. Robert Gaylord, deputy chief of public affairs for the Army, differed with Hoster’s account of a meeting he had with her.

Gaylord said that during his meeting last summer with Hoster “she relayed the feeling he [McKinney] was sort of backing her against the wall. At one point she said she thought he was going to kiss her.”

Gaylord did not recall Hoster saying McKinney actually kissed her. Asked if he recalled Hoster describing any of the other acts she alleged in her testimony, Gaylord said he did not.

“I would think if it got that graphic, I would recall it,” he said.