Air Force Academy Scandal May Bring Outside Review

Under sharp questioning from outraged lawmakers, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche said Monday that he would consider seeking an outside review to help the Air Force Academy overcome a sexual misconduct scandal.

Senators from both political parties made clear that any independent review of the academy should be thorough and unsparing of past and current cadets and leaders.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the Air Force had allowed academy leaders to evade responsibility.

“It is abundantly clear that the secretary of the Air Force has proved himself totally incapable of handling this issue,” he said in calling for an independent probe.

Previously, Roche and the Air Force top brass had insisted that problems raised by allegations of rape, sexual assault and harassment at the elite officer-training school in Colorado should be addressed first and foremost within the military.

But five days after announcing a shake-up in the academy’s leadership and new rules meant to deter assaults and encourage victims to come forward, Roche told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Air Force is ready to seek independent expertise.

“Certainly this is the first step,” Roche said of the reform plan he announced last week, “and we have no problem bringing in outsiders.”

The civilian leader of the Air Force did not specify who those outsiders would be or what they would be asked to do.

It was not clear whether an outside review as conceived by the Air Force leader would investigate potential misconduct at the academy or whether it would serve as a sounding board for policy changes.

Roche noted that the Air Force’s inspector general and the Defense Department’s inspector general are conducting investigations.

In recent weeks, following the emergence of the scandal in January, the Air Force acknowledged receiving 56 allegations of sexual misconduct involving the academy since 1993.

Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), a committee member, said he and his staff have heard from about 40 current and former cadets who said they had been sexually assaulted or raped. Some of them apparently had not reported their cases to the academy leadership, fearing damage to their military careers.

“Let’s be honest: This has been a catastrophic failure of leadership and process,” Allard told Roche and Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff. “We must learn from these mistakes and strive never to repeat them.”

Roche and Jumper had resisted calls for outside help, saying they were seeking the advice of senior female Air Force officers and others within the service who know the academy’s culture.

On March 11, Roche told The Times: “My Harvard Business School training is you don’t turn to outsiders. You study something yourself, you master it yourself, so that you know what you’re talking about and you can lead.”

Last week, asked why the service had not sought help from outside the military, Jumper told another Senate panel: “We believe that this is the Air Force’s problem to fix.”

At that same hearing, Roche backed up Jumper’s view -- though he did not rule out seeking outside experts later.

Roche said at the time that the initial military-only response to the situation would ensure that incoming cadets -- especially the 218 newly admitted women -- would feel safe when their class enters the academy.

His comments Monday signaled that the inquiry soon may enter another phase.

If that is the case, some senators were still irate at how the Air Force handled the first phase.

Several demanded that Roche explain why he declared last week that outgoing leaders of the academy were not to blame for a climate that discouraged women from reporting sexual assaults.

On Wednesday, while naming new academy leaders, Roche praised the records of current leaders, including Lt. Gen. John R. Dallager, academy superintendent, and Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III, commandant of cadets.

Dallager is retiring in June, as previously scheduled, and Gilbert is being reassigned to the Pentagon. Neither is being disciplined.

Roche said the troubles at the academy predated their tenure. But he held out the possibility of discipline against any officer implicated in subsequent investigations.

Senators belittled that explanation Monday.

“I don’t care whether someone inherited a problem,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Roche and Jumper. “Presumably being part of the leadership of the academy makes it your responsibility to correct these problems.”

Gilbert, meanwhile, told Associated Press on Monday that he agreed with the decision to change the academy leadership and that he regretted making statements suggesting a cadet had invited a sexual assault.

“When you take an organization in a very different direction, the easiest way that we found in the Air Force to do that is to bring in a new leadership team,” Gilbert said.