Tailhook

YOU know what really stinks?" the young Navy officer asked me.He pushed aside his third scotch and leaned across the table in a chain restaurant near the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Va., where the Tailhook prosecutions have crept along for more than a year and where he was one of the dozens accused of "conduct unbecoming."

WASHINGTON - Speaking aboard a carrier whose warplanes helped destroy Saddam Hussein's regime, President Bush declared last night in front of thousands of cheering sailors that major combat in Iraq has ended but that the U.S.-led success in Iraq was just one phase in a broad war on terrorism. "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," the president said, standing on a stage set on the enormous flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is returning home after a 10-month mission.

All presidents complain about isolation, but George Bush sometimes seems to be encased in concrete.My research indicates that what is national news to the rest of us, sometimes takes an extraordinary amount of time to penetrate the presidential consciousness.Our case study for today:Sept. 7, 1991: Naval aviators gather at the 35th Annual Tailhook Convention at the Las Vegas Hilton. Aside from doing a reported $23,000 damage to the hotel (including throwing a pressed ham through a window onto the crowd below)

WASHINGTON - The Navy is investigating allegations of misconduct at last week's convention of the Tailhook Association, the private naval aviators' organization whose 1991 annual meeting dissolved into a drunken spree of debauchery and sexual assault, implicating more than 100 officers and becoming a synonym for grossly unacceptable behavior. This year's Tailhook convention marked the first time since 1991 that the Navy had allowed its top officers to participate. Navy officials said yesterday that a man and his wife, both civilians whom they refused to identify, alleged that several dozen people, not in uniform but believed to be part of the three-day convention at John Ascuaga's Nugget casino and resort in Sparks, Nev., verbally assaulted them as they tried to return to their hotel room shortly after midnight last Saturday.

*TC She has lost her career, most of her friends, and nearly a third of her weight. She has been called a man-hater and a slut, a disgrace to the Navy and a crybaby who should have known better.But last week, a federal jury said that Paula Coughlin, the woman who blew the whistle on Tailhook, was right. She had been hurt and she had been wronged, and for that, said the jurors, she should be compensated to the tune of $6.7 million."Even if I never see one penny, it is worth it," says Ms. Coughlin, 32, without hesitation, "because for the first time in a very long time, I am proud of myself.

"Tailspin: Women at War in the Wake of Tailhook," by Jean Zimmerman. 295 pages. New York: Doubleday. $24.95Most people remember the Tailhook convention of 1992 and some of its fall-out: the forced resignation of a four-star general, for example, or the award of nearly 7 million in damages to a Navy helicopter pilot named Paula Coughlin. Very few people realize to what extent the chagrined military has since attempted to "change warrior culture," how sweepingly the Pat Schroederites were allowed to use a weekend stag party as a lever to transform procedure and direction.

WASHINGTON -- The final report on the Pentagon's Tailhook investigation, expected to be released later this month, alleges an assortment of sex acts by Navy officers that go beyond grabbing and fondling female aviators and expands the potential targets for prosecution and discipline.In confidential memorandums expected to accompany the long-awaited report, Inspector General Derek J. Vander Schaaf is expected to recommend that about 15 officers face courts-martial on charges of assault or indecency, according to knowledgeable sources.

The opening sequence of "She Stood Alone: The Tailhook Scandal" pretty much tells you all you need to know about the ABC docudrama airing at 9 tonight on WMAR (Channel 2).The film, which stars "NYPD Blue's" Gail O'Grady in a look at the Navy's 1991 sexual assault scandal, begins with a little girl about 8 years old looking at the sky as a trio of fighter jets soars overhead."Is that Dad?" the girl asks her mother, who is sitting on a park bench nearby."Yes, it is," Mom says."Wow," the little girl replies, her eyes wide with wonder.

SAN DIEGO -- The tone for the Tailhook sex scandal that erupted in the hallway of a Las Vegas hotel was set a few hours earlier in a workshop where about 2,000 male aviators raucously hooted the idea of women as combat pilots, said three Navy officers who attended.The mostly male audience roundly cheered speakers who opposed deploying women as combat aviators, according to a videotape of the Sept. 7, 1991, workshop, and jeered female officers who asked about their futures in naval aviation.

WASHINGTON -- Holding the top echelon of the Navy and Marine Corps accountable for the Tailhook scandal, the Pentagon censured three admirals yesterday and reprimanded another 30 top-ranking officers for failing to stop or report sexual assaults that occurred while they were attending the group's 1991 convention in Las Vegas.The disciplinary actions were taken by Navy Secretary John Dalton with the approval of Defense Secretary Les Aspin. Among the 30 receiving reprimands was Adm. Frank B. Kelso II, the nation's top naval officer, whom Mr. Aspin decided not to fire last week as punishment over the Tailhook incident.

SPARKS, Nev. -- At 12: 30 Sunday morning, in the hotel that is playing host to this year's Tailhook convention, the hallways were stone silent. A handful of pilots drank beer in a suite with the door open; two women passed by, without incident. As 1 a.m. neared, one of the men peeled off to bunk down for the night.This is what the Tailhook Convention looks like eight years after a sexual misconduct scandal that came to symbolize what critics said was an official tolerance for swaggering libido in the armed forces.

WASHINGTON -- Navy Secretary John H. Dalton, who led the sea service during more than five years of tumult and change marked by the aftershocks of the Tailhook scandal, widespread cheating at the Naval Academy and greater integration of women into the fleet, announced yesterday that he is resigning at the end of the year."

In rushing to show they "get it" after Tailhook, Army leaders have infected the sexual misconduct case at Aberdeen Proving Ground with the same explosive gender politics the Navy's scandal brought to the armed forces six years ago, say military and legal experts.The result is low morale among male Army instructors, rampant criticism from across the political spectrum, and none of the results Army leaders promised. A key test of the Army's case begins today with Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson's court-martial on rape, assault and other charges involving 18 female recruits.

WASHINGTON -- The Army's handling of the alleged sexual harassment of trainees at an Aberdeen Proving Ground school suggests it has learned from the Navy's mistakes during the 1991 Tailhook scandal.But while the Army may have learned lessons from Tailhook, it faces an even graver, more troublesome and widespread crisis than the Navy did five years ago.Tailhook related basically to a single night's debauchery, whereas the allegations at Aberdeen cover the period between summers of 1995 and 1996.

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 -- In a belated aftermath to the 1991 Tailhook scandal, Navy Secretary John H. Dalton yesterday denied a Senate-approved promotion to a decorated Persian Gulf war veteran who is now training for a mission to Bosnia.Though he originally sponsored the promotion, Mr. Dalton withdrew it after a Senate committee -- which also initially approved the promotion -- had second thoughts.The committee changed its mind after discovering details of the officer's attendance at the aviators' convention where dozens of women were sexually harassed.

QUANTICO, Va. -- Except for a brief encounter when she picked him out of a lineup, they met yesterday for only the second time: She the main whistle blower in the notorious Tailhook affair; he the sole Marine charged with assault in the 1991 scandal that reverberated throughout the nation's military.Their first meeting, she alleges, occurred in a crowded Las Vegas hotel hallway, where 20 Navy and Marine airmen had set up a gantlet and were entertaining themselves by sexually attacking the women who passed through it.The setting yesterday was a small courtroom on the Marine Corps base here, where a military investigating officer heard testimony aimed at helping him determine whether she should be believed and he should stand trial at a general court-martial.

NORFOLK, Va. -- The Tailhook-related assault charge pending against a Navy flier will be dropped on the recommendation of a reviewing officer, an attorney for the flier said yesterday. And the 1991 president of the Tailhook Association was cleared yesterday of any misconduct at that year's fateful convention.The reviewer's recommendation in the case of Cmdr. Gregory E. Tritt, 43, means that only one naval or Marine Corps officer -- out of 137 cases originally recommended for possible punishment by Pentagon investigators -- faces court-martial on an assault charge stemming from the 1991 Navy fliers' convention in Las Vegas at which investigators say dozens of women were fondled or groped.

"Tailspin: Women at War in the Wake of Tailhook," by Jean Zimmerman. 295 pages. New York: Doubleday. $24.95Most people remember the Tailhook convention of 1992 and some of its fall-out: the forced resignation of a four-star general, for example, or the award of nearly 7 million in damages to a Navy helicopter pilot named Paula Coughlin. Very few people realize to what extent the chagrined military has since attempted to "change warrior culture," how sweepingly the Pat Schroederites were allowed to use a weekend stag party as a lever to transform procedure and direction.

The opening sequence of "She Stood Alone: The Tailhook Scandal" pretty much tells you all you need to know about the ABC docudrama airing at 9 tonight on WMAR (Channel 2).The film, which stars "NYPD Blue's" Gail O'Grady in a look at the Navy's 1991 sexual assault scandal, begins with a little girl about 8 years old looking at the sky as a trio of fighter jets soars overhead."Is that Dad?" the girl asks her mother, who is sitting on a park bench nearby."Yes, it is," Mom says."Wow," the little girl replies, her eyes wide with wonder.