Tailhook 'injustice' righted

The Bush administration has overturned a Clinton administration decision and approved the post-active-duty promotion of one of the most prominent Navy officers caught up in the Tailhook scandal. Retired Cmdr. Robert Stumpf will be elevated to captain, six years after he quit the service in disgust when it blocked his promotion despite four inquiries that cleared him of wrongdoing at the notorious aviation convention.

"I conclude at this time that an injustice has resulted in not promoting petitioner to the grade of captain," wrote William Navas Jr., assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs, in a July 23 memo. He authorized the Board of Correction of Naval Records to amend Cmdr. Stumpf's personnel file to show he retired as a captain, with date of rank of July 1, 1995.

Mr. Navas found "no error" in the decision by Navy Secretary John Dalton to stop Cmdr. Stumpf's advancement. But Charles Gittins, the pilot's attorney, sees it otherwise. "Secretary Dalton acted in response to improper political pressure from a few members of the Senate concerned with feminist backlash," the lawyer said yesterday.

The victory for Cmdr. Stumpf is both symbolically and monetarily rewarding. His career as a Navy pilot remains over, but the Navy is now saying the way he was treated was unjust. Plus, the 23-year officer will receive six years of back pay for the difference in a commander's and a captain's retirement pay, and collect a retirement check of about $500 more monthly. The ex-flying ace came to symbolize what some pilots and conservative groups saw as a "witch hunt" against naval officers who attended the 1991 Tailhook convention in Las Vegas.

Cmdr. Stumpf is now flying cargo jets carrying night-run deliveries for FedEx. But in the mid-1990s, he stood as one of the Navy's best fighter pilots. Decorated for 22 combat missions over Iraq during Desert Storm, the F-18 Hornet pilot commanded the prestigious Blue Angels flying team. The Navy selected him for promotion to captain and command of a carrier air wing, making his reaching the rank of admiral seem a matter of time.

The Senate unanimously approved his promotion to captain in 1994. But Mr. Dalton pulled his name off the promotion list and ordered what was the fifth inquiry into the officer's conduct at Tailhook, the name given an association of past and current naval fliers. Leery of another inquisition after previous inquiries cleared him, Cmdr. Stumpf retired. Mr. Gittins, his attorney, began a battle within the appeals bureaucracy to overturn Mr. Dalton's decision.

In June, the naval records board, a group of Navy civilian officials, recommended that Cmdr. Stumpf be promoted. On Monday, a Navy lawyer informed Mr. Gittins that Mr. Navas, a Bush appointee, had accepted the board's recommendation.

Cmdr. Stumpf issued a statement saying, "My family and I are exceptionally pleased by the Navy's decision. We hope this is the beginning of a measured re-examination of the injustices accorded to hundreds of naval officers whose promising careers were terminated prematurely during the shameful political hysteria following the 1993 investigations. "While it is nice to set the record straight after all these years, I sincerely regret that I was forced to leave active service before my tour of duty as a carrier air wing commander, a position for which the Navy had invested so much in preparing me. Likewise, it remains painful and frustrating to have to watch from the sidelines while my former colleagues prosecute the war on terror."

With hundreds of other Navy fliers, Cmdr. Stumpf attended Tailhook '91 to bask in carrier aviation's stellar performance in the Persian Gulf war a few months earlier. But the gathering was marred by drunken and lewd behavior by some fliers, sparking a full-blown investigation by the Pentagon inspector general.

The commander faced two issues: Junior officers in his squadron paid for a stripper to perform in a private hotel suite to celebrate a pilot's promotion. Cmdr. Stumpf also used an F-18 to fly to and from Las Vegas to receive a squadron award.

The Pentagon IG, a Navy board of inquiry, Mr. Dalton himself and a Navy admiral all looked into his actions and cleared him. A Navy captains' board recommended promotion, and the Navy sent his name to the Senate, which concurred.

But in 1995, the Senate Armed Services Committee advised Mr. Dalton not to promote Cmdr. Stumpf. A letter urging no promotion was signed by then-committee Chairman Strom Thurmond, South Carolina Republican, and Sam Nunn of Georgia, then the ranking Democrat. They said the Navy erred in not forwarding Cmdr. Stumpf's Tailhook file when the committee initially acted. The lawmakers said if they had seen the information, they would not have voted to promote.

The pilot had one strong committee ally, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and a former Navy combat pilot. Mr. McCain fought strenuously for Cmdr. Stumpf in closed-door committee meetings in 1994 and 1995.

In June, he sent a letter to Navy Secretary Gordon England endorsing a retroactive promotion. "Cmdr. Stumpf was subjected to a humiliating, highly unprofessional investigation regarding the events at the 1991 Tailhook Association Symposium," Mr. McCain wrote. "Although this matter called for a serious, meticulous, by-the-book investigation, solid officers such as Cmdr. Stumpf instead were interrogated unfairly and effectively denied due process. It is well past the time for the Navy to right this wrong."

Mr. Dalton heeded the committee's advice and took Cmdr. Stumpf off the promotion list. But a second Navy promotion board again recommended him for captain. Mr. Dalton then ordered a new "fresh look" investigation. Fed up, Cmdr. Stumpf walked out of an interrogation at the Pentagon and retired.

Navy officials strenuously defended Mr. Dalton's action. They said he publicly backed the pilot but had no choice but to order a new investigation when the Armed Services Committee advised him not to promote the pilot.

Having been involved personally in one of the Clinton administration's little witch-hunts I can sympathize with the Commander. What was, (and remains) uppermost in importance to those pursuing allegations of sexual harrassment is hides on the barn, and it does not matter in the least whose, so long as somebody suffers. This is the dark side of the class-warfare model of politics that took over feminism some time in the mid-80s - individual guilt is not so important as it is that a member of the despised class be made to pay as visibly as possible.

I think most conservatives and libertarians would classify this as injustice because they regard the individual as the focus of moral rectitude, and that their principal disconnect with the murky thought processes of this sort of leftist is precisely here. "Social justice" has absolutely nothing to do with the individual.

as for the rest

You're painting with an awfully broad brush...

Tailhook was nothing but orchestrated political theater, designed to further the goals of self-absorbed Women in the Military (TM) who believe that their right to do any job, no matter how biologically or socially unsuitable, supersedes the interest of the U.S. military in winning wars.

...it lead to a media witch-hunt.

You have to remember several things:

The Tailhook "scandal" took place in September, 1991
the "scandal" came to full flower under the Democrat-controlled House, Senate, White House, and mainstream media in 1992-1993
this "scandal" was necessary to politicize the Navy
Both House and Senate were controlled by the Democrats until Nov 1994
The Democrat media was not countered by entities like a powerful Free Republic until late 1997

I guess you have chosen not to do a bit of looking. While the whole "scandal" reached un-merited proportions it did, in fact, begin with criminal behavior by USN Officers. The position you take, that it was "concocted" as part of some PC/Clintonista/Left Wing Conspiracy, sounds a bit too Hillary-esque. The behavior was criminal. Women were assaulted. If you chose to live in denial about it then any future argument you make about any issue will be diminished by your circle the wagons and keep the truth out history. We win by being better and more honest about everything than the other side. Your approach puts us at the same low level. I'm sure that that is not what you want.

You are right, my statement was too inclusive. I exercise my right to amend my own statements....There were SOME Naval officers who behaved exactly the way the mob in Central Park did at the parade. It was this criminal behavior (research the eyewitness reports) that started the scandal. It was more than just a few. These guys got what they earned, the same way those punks in the park did. Women were assaulted. Please let us know when that became acceptable.

As for the politics of it, you are on the right track....but the plain fact is that it was the officers who created the situation by their lack of control and decency. The left just exploited it.

As Wesley Pruden once said apropos the Tailhook affair, there are times when the indefensible must be defended when those mounting the attack are doing it with an ulterior motive even more indefensible. Coughlin was a plant at Tailhook. She had obviously been worked on by someone to convince that renown and career enhancement would be the reward of her sacrifice. The same cabal that got their mole in new full well there would be a degree of destructive rowdyness that might include statutory violations at Tailhook. What happened was actually somewhat tamer than a number of previous gatherings. At one Tailhook in the 80's in Las Vegas the convention site hotel incurred major interior damage and the Las Vegas PD had to be summoned in some force to deal with an incipient riot. I have no doubt that some officers may have violated statute law at the event in question. If they were prosecuted for criminal acts than so be it. However, the way this event was played showed all the lines of a predetermined media campaign to produce a given result. The result desired was to break the Navy command structure for its "misogyny". The net result of this campaign was to damage and weaken the morale (an unquantifyable but decisive element in warfighting) of the naval air arm. Along with this scores of officers trained at great expense to the tax payer and with many years of flying ahead of them retired or left the service early due to having their careers destroyed by merely attending this meeting. So in this case yes the indefensible must be defended against those who would use a bogus pose of morality to damage or weaken a vital part of the armature of national defense. And yes I do thin that Hilabat was involved in cooking this scheme up. To what degree we are unlikely ever to know, however, "the will of the Godfather is known whether it is ever spoken".

Thank you all; thank God for FR; and thank God for George Bush.

I a very happy that my understanding of the Tailhook incident was not accurate.

Of course the American "mainstream" newsmedia cannot be be believed, and neither can politicians and others who value their agendas more than truth.

Thank you all, again.

--Savage Beast

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.