Officials Drop Tailhook Case Against Marine : Inquiry: New witnesses clear Capt. Gregory J. Bonam of sexually assaulting Lt. Paula Coughlin. She was the key whistle-blower in the scandal.

In the most celebrated case to arise from the Navy’s Tailhook scandal, criminal charges were dismissed Thursday against a Marine Corps fighter pilot accused of sexually assaulting Navy Lt. Paula Coughlin, the woman whose accusations triggered the scandal.

The case against Capt. Gregory J. Bonam, once considered solid on the basis of Coughlin’s identification of him, began to unravel this month as new evidence indicated that Bonam was not the man who attacked her during the 1991 Las Vegas convention of the Tailhook Assn., an organization of Navy and Marine fighter pilots.

The dismissal means that no legal action is likely to result from Coughlin’s experience at the convention, which drew national attention and caused widespread disgrace for the Navy.

It also demonstrates the uphill battle military prosecutors have fought in attempting to hold accountable more than 100 male military officers who were found by a Pentagon investigation to have assaulted 83 women inside the hotel.

Now, only two Navy aviators still face felony assault charges.

“At the outset of this, everybody believed her, and she was sort of the lightning rod for all this,” Bonam’s attorney, Patrick J. MacKrell, said of Coughlin.

“They had victims going on (ABC-TV’s) “PrimeTime Live” complaining about it,” he said. “The world was saying the whole established hierarchy of the Navy was out groping women in Las Vegas. They accepted everything that Lt. Coughlin said as gospel, and anything to the contrary was rejected out of hand.”

The dismissal was ordered by Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Charles C. Krulak, who, as commandant of the Marine base in Quantico, Va., spent nearly 100 hours examining the case.

He determined that “referral to a trial by court-martial was not warranted by the evidence.”

In the first pretrial hearing in the case in August, Coughlin was the only prosecution witness to take the stand, and she stumbled when she described her initial difficulties in identifying her assailant, who attacked her in a crowded third-floor hotel hallway that had been turned into a “gantlet” of drunk officers.

But the major turning point came last week when three new defense witnesses testified that Bonam was not the man who had assaulted Coughlin. The identification of the true assailant, seen by only one of the new witnesses, remains unknown.

“The decision to dismiss the charges against Bonam reflects the facts of this particular case,” Krulak said.

“While the identity of her assailant may remain undetermined, this in no way diminishes the seriousness of the incident nor the moral courage of Coughlin in reporting the incident and insisting that it be fully investigated. . . . Her indignation at what took place at Tailhook ’91 is shared by the Marine Corps.”

Coughlin, 31, who is suing the Tailhook Assn. and the Las Vegas Hilton, met with Krulak in Quantico on Wednesday so the general could explain his reasons for dropping the charges.

“I am disappointed with the decision, but it is in line with the indignation and pain that I and my family have experienced over the past two years because of my attack,” she said in a statement released by her San Diego attorney, Nancy Stagg.

“No one has been judicially disciplined for the attack on me or any other victims of the gantlet. I do not believe justice has been served.”

She added that she remains firm in her belief that she correctly identified her assailant.

MacKrell said Bonam preferred not to make any statements about the dismissal. The 30-year-old aviator was accused of grabbing Coughlin’s buttocks, lifting her off the ground, forcing his hands down the front of her blouse and squeezing her breasts.

He had been charged with indecent assault and conduct unbecoming an officer. He will now return to full duty as a flight instructor based at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss.

Had he been convicted at a court-martial, he would have faced up to five years in prison and expulsion from the military.

Bonam said as recently as last week that he is considering leaving the Marine Corps, a possibility repeated Thursday by his lawyer.

“Greg’s had options to go to law school on a full scholarship,” MacKrell said of his client, a decorated Marine described by character witnesses as a gentleman and devout churchgoer. “He’s considered options all along. But at this point he just wants to focus on being a Marine and not making any decisions before he puts a good wide berth between himself and this incident.”

MacKrell added that Bonam feels no bitterness toward Coughlin and believes that the assailant should be apprehended.

“Nobody is saying what happened to her is right,” he said. “Greg believes that. He’s never tried to downplay what happened to Lt. Coughlin.”

The other remaining felony assault charges involve two Navy aviators, Lt. David Samples and Cmdr. Gregory E. Tritt.

Samples, 28, is scheduled for a court-martial next week on charges that he lifted a woman in the air and stripped her of her clothing during the convention. The case against Tritt, 43, who is charged with touching women on the buttocks, is still in pretrial phase.