Naval Operations

The Sun's coverage of the Naval AcademyThere have been a number of articles about the U.S. Naval Academy in your newspaper in the past several months that have been misleading, one-sided and biased.We have tried to work with your editors to keep the coverage fair and balanced. However, the article Sept. 15 headlined, ''Admiral kept investigators in the dark,'' is filled with several blatant falsehoods; let me point out two.One, your paper states that I was forced to apologize last week for knowingly violating military regulations.

25 years agoThe Anne Arundel County Council ended its month-long legislative session with only an authorized 25-cent property tax increase, instead of the original proposal for a 70-cent property tax increase. -- The Sun, June 1, 1971.The 1971 color girl at the Naval Academy which marks the 100th anniversary of the tradition, will be Miss Donna J. Donahue, a brown-eyed nurse from Newton, Mass., picked by midshipman Jack Conrad. -- The Sun, June 3, 1971.Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., chief of naval operations, addressed the 859 graduates and 18,000 spectators at the 125th graduation at the U.S. Naval Academy.

WASHINGTON -- Adm. Jay L. Johnson, an understated 1968 Naval Academy graduate and naval aviator, has been selected by President Clinton to lead a Navy still reeling from the suicide of its top officer, White House officials said last night.A four-star admiral for only the past two months, Johnson has been acting chief of naval operations since Adm. Jeremy M. "Mike" Boorda shot himself in the chest last month. Johnson is expected to be officially selected today -- his 50th birthday, officials said.

The Navy's next chief of naval operations has received some free advice from some of his fellow admirals: Put Tailhook behind you.The man who replaces Adm. Jeremy M. "Mike" Boorda should get a "good handshake" from Defense Secretary William J. Perry and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee "and say, 'I want to go to the Navy and say [Tailhook's] over,' " said retired Adm. Stanley Arthur.Arthur said yesterday that the Navy is still reeling from the infamous 1991 naval aviators' convention in San Diego, where women were groped by drunken fliers.

WASHINGTON -- Adm. Jeremy M. "Mike" Boorda, the Navy's top admiral, who killed himself Thursday, left a suicide note contending that he made an "honest mistake" in wearing Vietnam-era combat decorations that he had not earned.The chief of naval operations wrote that he was killing himself to avoid becoming the center of another Navy scandal."He didn't want another reason for any negative perception of the Navy," said a senior Pentagon officer familiar with the note Boorda left to his sailors.

At the U.S. Naval Academy, somber officers and midshipmen paused yesterday afternoon to grieve the death of their leader.Even though he was the first enlisted sailor to rise through the ranks to become the Navy's commander, Adm. Jeremy "Mike" Boorda had a deep affection for the academy and was a regular visitor to Annapolis.Boorda also was remembered as giving an inspiring speech just last month that cheered the beleaguered school in the wake of several embarrassing cases of student wrongdoing.

WASHINGTON -- Adm. Jeremy "Mike" Boorda, the first sailor ever to rise from the ranks to become the Navy's top admiral, apparently killed himself yesterday at his home in the Washington Navy Yard. About two hours earlier he learned that his right to wear two Vietnam-era combat decorations was being questioned.Boorda, named chief of naval operations by President Clinton two years ago, left behind two written messages that officials described as suicide notes. They were sealed by investigators on the scene and not made public yesterday.

The Navy's top officers have lost their "moral courage," abandoning their battle-tested comrades to Tailhook and "political correctness" and standing silently by while the fleet has been shrunk, former Navy Secretary James H. Webb charged yesterday.In a speech before the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis that provoked an angry exchange and a tug of war over the microphone with a former Navy undersecretary, Mr. Webb drew a scathing portrait of Navy leadership.Some admirals -- including the current and former chiefs of naval operations -- would rather preserve or promote their careers and curry favor with politicians than support the service, he said.

WASHINGTON -- Three years ago, the high-flying military career of Joseph W. Prueher seemed finished -- grounded by an incident during his tenure as a top official at the U.S. Naval Academy in which a female midshipman was handcuffed to a urinal.Several Navy officers in the past few years have seen their careers tarnished or short-circuited by criticism over their handling of sexual harassment cases. But thanks to patient support from the top ranks of the Pentagon, Admiral Prueher managed to survive, even flourish.

A female Navy recruit at an Orlando, Fla., boot camp was allegedly ordered into a shower, kicked and beaten with broom handles by three company commanders -- at the same time the Navy was cracking down on harassment of its female sailors.The recruit, one of the first women to enroll in the Navy's integrated boot camp, reported the Aug. 12, 1992, incident, but no action was taken against the enlisted instructors, according to an internal Navy document obtained by the Virginian-Pilot and the Ledger-Star.