Navy Secretary Asks New Probe of Tailhook Case

Stung by suggestions of a cover-up, Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III has asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate the alleged sexual assault and harassment of 26 women by Navy and Marine officers at a Las Vegas convention last fall.

“Criticisms of the investigations, along with rumor and innuendo of cover-up, have eroded seriously the Department of the Navy’s credibility to investigate further the Tailhook ’91 matter,” Garrett said in his request to Pentagon Inspector General Derek Vander Schaaf.

Relatively few naval officers have cooperated with two separate naval investigations of the episode and “those who did generally minimized their own involvement and/or failed to identify others who were present,” said Garrett, who also attended the convention.

The Tailhook Assn., a group of active and retired Navy aviators that staged last year’s event, has canceled its fall 1992 meeting, a move that Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams called “prudent.”

Fifty-seven Navy and Marine Corps officers have admitted being present when the women, 14 of whom also were Navy officers, allegedly were fondled and groped as they were pushed along a gantlet in the hallway of a hotel.

As many as 70 male officers were believed involved in the episode and officials have said that 11 could face criminal sexual assault charges. Questions also have arisen about Garrett’s knowledge of the events.

Garrett has maintained that he was on an outdoor patio at the time of the incident but one witness told naval investigators that the secretary was in a suite adjoining the hallway where the gantlet was formed.

On Tuesday, the Navy issued a statement saying that Garrett was near, not in, the hotel suites where the gantlet occurred but contends that he saw no “inappropriate or offensive conduct.”

Garrett has asked Van Der Schaaf to look into the apparent inconsistency.

Navy investigators have been criticized for focusing too closely on criminal charges and failing to determine whether lesser charges, such as sexual harassment, might be appropriate.

Both the incident and the Navy’s response have prompted criticism of the branch’s treatment of women in uniform. Only by launching an independent investigation, said Garrett in his prepared statement, can the Navy “focus efforts on the vitally important task of making the cultural changes that are necessary.”