Talk:Tailhook Association

What happened to the Tailhook scandal?

This reference says the women who went to these parties year after year knew full well there would be sex there. So Wikipedia should have an article which balances the public perception of nasty unfair men taking advantages of innocent, pure women with this source's contention. Uncle Ed 21:58, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Notes for tailhook incident

The background is that wild parties went on, with drinking and LOTS of sexual activity. Nudity, strippers, consensual sex, plus The Gauntlet.

My personal take:

A woman who couldn't get a date or wasn't "in the mood" decided to challenge the Gauntlet. She was overpowered, of course. Then she decided to press charges: "How dare they assault me, when I was simply minding my own business?"

This is dishonest, because it was common knowledge that anyone who walks on the "third floor" would be given the Gauntlet treatment. It was a game. She chose to enter the game area, but did not want to play by the rules.

Now whether it was a fair game or not; whether men who play games with women can or ought to be made to suddenly "stop playing" upon request - is the unasked question of the entire affair.

"No means no." No matter how a seduction begins, if a woman changes her mind and says stop, the man ABSOLUTELY MUST STOP. He has no "right" to continue, and he can't offer the defense that she was "teasing" him.

Ordinarily, this would be true. At a drunken frat party, a girl tells Mike Tyson "no" and he ignores her, he's convicted of rape.

But a gauntlet is a tradition, game or activity in which the group and an individual challenge each other for mastery. 50 people on each side, and the individual tries to get through, enduring whatever injuries come his way. Gangs use it for initiation. There the English expression, "running the gauntlet". The idea was not unique to the Tailhook parties at the Las Vegas hotel.

Ideally, there would have been a designated referee and each girl would be given a safeword permitting her to stop the action instantly. That would have taken all the fun out of it.

Who would go into a situation where drunken, lustful men were known to be pawing women with impunity? Especially when it was the same floor of the same hotel, year after year?

Only someone who expected special treatment. Or who thought better of it after it happened. Or who was acting irresponsibly and was looking for someone other than herself to blame afterwards.

If I go to bar, can I complain afterwards that I was subject to social pressure to drink? If I stop and talk to a prostitute on the street, can I complain of sexual harassment or assualt if she touches my crotch? If a riot is going on, and I decide that it has nothing to do with me and try to cross the street - while everyone around me is hitting each other - and I get knocked down, do I have an absolute legal right to bring criminal / civil charges against my "assailant"?

I'm not surprised that this article was impossible to find. It's hard to write, because it mixes up two highly-charged issues: violence and sex. Military men are expected to be aggressive, but in a controlled, measured way to accomplish the legitimate objectives of the nation. Yet they are also traditionally allowed to "blow off steam".

The Secretary of the Navy himself was at the party! Then he tried to settle the whole thing by cancelling all future parties. He would have been wiser to issue a decree:

1. anyone who KNEW there was rowdiness, nudity and sex going on there - and consciously chose to get near it - is TO SOME DEGREE responsible for the consequences.
2. in the future, however, anyone who needs to pass close to (or through) wild partying should request escort from hotel staff or wear a distinctive "not me" badge or say a certain phrase

But if I were in charge, I would never have let the thing happen in the first place. I would insist that members of the armed forces not have wild sex parties at all. If for no other reason that there is no way to keep things from getting out of hand. But more because there can be no unit cohesion if service members are allowed to form intimate, exclusive relationships having the degree of closeness that sexual activity engenders.

Yes, I would insist that active-duty Naval personnel not be allowed to have sex with ANYONE to whom they are not married. Hey, if you can't find someone who loves you enough to marry you, then tough: you can't have sex. If you don't like it, look for another job. Uncle Ed 16:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Sources?

I have removed the following claims that contradict the sources given in the article.

Despite claims to the contrary, no sexual assault was reported, but the sexual aspect was siezed upon by the news media, since the controversial Supreme Court hearings for Clarence Thomas had ended just two weeks previously.

Years later, it was determined that the abusers may have numbered as few as a dozen, including foreigners and members of other U.S. armed forces.

To quote one of the sources [1]:

While some of the women were there willingly, there were 80 to 90 victims — including six officers' wives — who were not. Secretary of the Navy H. Lawrence Garrett, III, immediately ordered the Navy and Marine Corps to begin disciplinary action against some seventy officers. Over 50 were implicated in forcing women to run the "gauntlet" and six were accused of blocking the investigation.

And another [2]:

I have five separate reports of young ladies, several of whom had nothing to do with Tailhook, who were verbally abused, had drinks thrown at them, were physically abused and were sexually molested. Most distressing was the fact an underage young lady was severely intoxicated and had her clothing removed by members of the Gauntlet.

Also, what is an "official cover-up"?

- Kwi | Talk 15:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

This page is distinctly lacking in detail that should be addressed. The Tailhook Scandal represented a massive failure of leadership at multiple levels within the USN and the Department of Defense. It also touched on multiple social issues and continued to have echoes for a number of years.

Leadership Failure: The Navy leadership failure took place throughout the chain of command. Not only did officers on an individual basis forget the "special trust and confidence" placed upon them by virtue of their commissions, the Navy as an organization failed to display any loyalty downward to the majority of Naval Aviation.

By engaging publicly in acts that could be called into question by the public, individual officers failed of the expectation of their employers: the American public. By throwing aviators to the wolves and engaging in a blatant witch-hunt, the Navy's senior leadership, the Department of Defense and by extension the Executive Branch of the US Government failed the public, any true victims of assault, and the vast majority of Naval Aviation personnel who had nothing whatsoever to do with the events at the Tailhook Convention.

Individual unit commanders failed to exercise leadership to rein in the excesses of their personnel at the convention. Higher level units failed the public trust by appropriating government transport for officers to attend the convention, mostly for no purpose other than an annual junket to Las Vegas. The upper-most echelons, to include the C.N.O., failed to rein in any of these activities and when the scandal exploded completely failed to handle it in a professional and military fashion. When the witch-hunt character of the resulting investigation became apparent, officers at lower levels again failed of the public's trust by obstructing justice. Distrust for service intentions toward individuals involved in incidents echoed down to the Aviano Cable Car Disaster and the destruction of a video tape made during that flight.

Flawed Investigation: The investigation was conducted in an extremely poor and haphazard fashion, eventually requiring massive attempts at correction. Investigators were put in the position of attempting to track down everyone at the convention months later across the face of the globe. The passage of time made it virtually impossible to obtain coherent testimony, impeding the efforts to bring and substantiate charges.

Witness Credibility: In the midst of the investion rumors (and reputedly pictures) surfaced which severely damaged the credibility of the key witness, Paula Coughlin. This included allegations that she had made past and strategic accusations of sexual misconduct when it benefitted her career to do so, and allegations that she had the night before the supposed assault been engaged in various debauched acts in one of the squadron suites. Coughlin also proved unable to conclusively identify her supposed attacker. Added to the fact that Coughlin had an apparent motive to embarrass the Navy after being publicly snubbed by a senior officer in an open discussion forum, it became increasingly difficult to make a case on her testimony.

Senior Leadership "C.Y.A.": The presence of the Secretary of Defense and the C.N.O. at the convention seriously damaged them politically. Instead of responding according to military honor, the senior parties publicly promised to seek out and punish the juniors they held responsible. Military honor and tradition would have placed greater merit on their immediate acceptance of responsibility and statements of an intent to immediately correct the matter and then resign. Instead, it was made plain that the C.N.O. had no initial intentions of stepping down over the affair. The Secretary of Defense's past as a military officer also made his response appear less than honorable. As a result, many officers below them felt compelled to protect themselves where they might normally have cooperated, thereby damaging any serious investigation of the allegations.

"Witch-Hunt" and Morale Damage: Abandonned by senior leadership, damned as a body regardless of involvement or guilt, and treated by the media as guilty (even if proven innocent), Naval Aviators suffered massive morale damage due to the subsequent investigation and attempts at prosecution. Promotions were suspended for up to 18 months while investigators attempted to recover from the initial botched efforts at investigation. Any officer even present at the convention whether or not they were even on property, much less on the Third Floor, was subjected to scrutiny and special written declarations for promotion regardless of guilt or innocence. Naval Aviation was looked down upon by the other arms of the service, shown undue scrutiny by superiors, and generally treated as reprobates. The flyers' feeling on their treatment were evident in the production and sale of bootleg flight jacket patches showing the Bart Simpson character in a flight suit, tied to a stake to be burned. The patch was worn on the inside of the flight jackets as further mute testimony to how the flyers felt the senior leadership would react. Added to the damage done by the draw-down of military forces in the post-Cold War period, the morale damage of the Tailhook Scandal led to a hemorhage of Naval Aviation personnel in the year groups represented by the younger flyers at the convention. The Navy was eventually forced to pay excessive bonus sums to retain flyers in these year groups and prevent them from migrating to the airlines, where normally these flyers might have voluntarily remained with the service. Feeling there was no loyalty toward them in the Navy, many of these flyers felt no loyalty toward the Navy in return.

Destruction of Traditions and Enforced Political Correctness: Political and media authorities took the Tailhook Convention as license to attack the traditional culture of Naval Aviation, the Navy and the military in general without regard for whether the traditions actually caused any harm. This extended to forcing individual flyers to change their call-signs if "higher authority" felt they were politically incorrect. Entire squadrons were forced to change their traditional livery going back decades if anyone in authority found it even slightly offensive. The most eggregious cases were stripping the VX-5 squadron and the VMAQ-2 squadron of their traditional white Playboy rabbit head silhouettes on black-painted vertical stabilizers of their aircraft. The rapacious destruction of squadron and aviation traditions was not checked until female avaitors protested attempts to strip them of call-signs that higher authority thought sexually offensive, but which they regarded as traditional and good-natured. The resentment of aviators toward being stripped of a portion of their identities as embodied in their community-bestowed call-signs and their squadrons' sometimes hard-won and honorable liveries was very real.

Role of Women in Naval Aviation: Women had been gaining ground and acceptance in Naval Aviation for many years. However, certain activists and female officers sympathetic to the activists views did not feel progress was fast enough. Paula Coughlin voiced such an opinion in an open forum and was promptly shut down by a flag officer who correctly pointed out just how much advancement had taken place. Coughlin was unsatisfied with the response and took it as a slight, although it seems likely from the record that she would have been unhappy with any response that was not in accord with her own views. This has been cited as a possible motive for her to make false accusations, assuming that she did. Suspicion of Coughlin, coupled with politically mandated changes forced upon Naval Aviation due to a media-fueled political agenda on the part of feminists to create a backlash that actually damaged the position of women in Naval Aviation. They were uniformly treated as objects of distrust to be avoided whenever possible lest any inadvertant move be interpreted amiss according to draconian new rules of conduct. Worse, forced measures to "level the playing field" for women, materially compromised the standards of the service. This fact eventually came to light in association with the Kara Hultgreen crash several years later. The fact that Hultgreen, as a result of post-Tailhook political pressures, benefitted from more opportunities to overcome low marks than any male aviator would have been afforded was quashed by her family and various feminist political interests. This fact was submerged by blaming the well-known fault with the TF-30 powerplant of her F-14A and ignoring her improper response to the emergency it presented, as well as her past record that should have precluded her ever being in that situation in the first place. Some corrective measures were taken after the Hultgreen crash to restore appropriate standards of qualification and training. Only then did women begin to reacquire some degree of acceptance, mostly due to the deliberate efforts of female aviators to fit in and become a part of Naval Aviation culture rather than trying to force it to change to suit them. Once women assimilated into the existing culture, it began to gradually change from within to better accomodate them on a consensual basis.

What Happened and What Should Have Happened: What really happened will never be known, but certain things are obvious. The convention was known for bawdy behavior and had experienced cycles of more or less restrained acts of revelry over the years. Corrective measures had been taken in the past and were probably overdue to take place again. This permissive atmosphere coupled with an understandable euphoria in the immediate aftermath of the first Gulf War which proved massively successful and with shockingly few losses. These factors combined to create an atmosphere of excess.

At the same time, societal forces in the country had created a hyper-sensitive awareness of womens' rights that produced an artificial standard demanding the untouchable respect of women in overcompensation for centuries of perceived deprivation. That this standard had absolutely no realistic basis in actual male-female interaction was ignored. Thus, an environment which was known to be sexually rowdy and willingly frequented by women happy to engage in such conduct became a minefield waiting to be set off by the first woman who chose to take offense.

The societal perception of womens' rights was also fueled by various politicians and activist groups with a vested interest in a cause celebre. It was also fueled by a media presence favorably disposed toward said issue, and unfavorably disposed toward the military. This was particularly true of several well-known reporters from the Southern California area that assumed prominent positions in the coverage of the story.

It is almost certain that some women were subjected to treatment they should not have been at the Tailhook conventional, although the character and degree of this mistreatment were probably absolutely no different from any other major convention. It is certain that these activities were not concealed and a number of women who later professed shock and dismay knew full-well what they were in for entering "The Gauntlet" and later protested too much. This is comparable to the well known example of the man who chooses to walk down a dark alley with $50 bills dripping from his pockets. To later express dismay at being robbed would be disingenuous on his part, and he would bear a degree of responsibility for engaging in such a foolish act, the criminality of the act by the robber in no way absolving the victim of his own lack of common sense.

This is in no way to condone the activities of the "The Gauntlet." This was conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline, and the public perception of the service and its honor and should not have taken place. Any accusations of assault should have been promptly and professionally investigated and acted upon appropriately, just as would be expected of such accusations at any other convention.

Into this volatile mileau was dropped Paula Coughlin, a woman quite possibly possessing an agenda and hurt pride if her detractors are to be believed. Whether she was assaulted, and whether she made true or false accusations, she was the match that ignited the conflagration. Political haymaking and media sensationalism fanned the flames, and utterly inept and politically-oriented handling of the matter by the Navy simply dumped gasoline on the inferno.

The investigation was botched, morale and internal trust destroyed, the Navy's and particularly Naval Aviation's image thoroughly tarnished, and the internal culture of the Navy thrown into disarray with ruinous effects for the parties politically motivated actors supposedly sought to help. It was a thorough-going disaster and should never have taken place.

What should have happened is that various officers--particularly the Secretary of the Navy, the C.N.O., flag officers present and unit commanders--should have acted to limit or halt, and remove from public view the activities on the Third Floor. Once accusations were made, they should have been immediately and professionally investigated. Once the larger problems of behavior became known, the C.N.O. in particular should have taken personal responsibility instead of ordering a witch-hunt. A proper investigation respectful of the rights and honor of the officers under investigation should have been undertaken in a fashion that would not foster obstruction on the part of other officers and particularly subordinate commanders. The investigation concluded properly, any substantiated charges should have been filed and tried, and all others dismissed due to reasons made public. Moreover, lessons-learned should have been publicly released identifying areas of failure and corrective measures taken, particularly with respect to the misuse of government transportation. Under no circumstances should any entries have been made in any officer's record unless actually charged and brought to trial, nor should promotions have been held up 18 months, nor made to be continuingly dependent upon addition scrutiny and additional investigations after the fact. Given the massiveness of the leadership failure revealed, the C.N.O. should then have immediately resigned instead of attempting to serve out his term in a quest for additional retirement pay. Moreover, the Navy should not have arbitrarily severed its ties with an organization that had served it well and loyally for decades.

Tailhook was partly such a disaster because senior naval officers chose to conduct themselves and the affairs of their service by the lax standards of politicians and public figures. They should have instead conducted themselves and the affairs of the service according to their honor, the service's honor, and the "special trust and confidence" placed in both by the public. It was also a disaster because subordinate naval officers failed of their obligations in the public's eye, at least in part due to a disastrous leadership example provided by a generation of officers who entered the service in the "Hollow Force" years following Vietnam. Those officers inducted in those years, and more senior officers who advanced in rank during those years proved more "careerists" than leaders.72.146.75.153 05:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

A response to this article

I'm flagging this to be checked for its neutrality as it is so openly one-sided and makes poor use of citations. I can't respond to it further or more specifically as I found it so sexist that I could barely stand to read it. Would appreciate the review of someone more willing to deal with this. Unsunnedsnow 05:44, 25 September 2007 (UTC)unsunnedsnow

Agreed. Flagrantly one-sided. 128.195.106.76 23:27, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I agreed there was no real evidence of any wrong doing and many navy personal were unfairly attacked. This is a dark day in America where we turned on the men that keep us safe. The investigation was completely a which hunt, since that time no women has come forward with any valid complaint. I think this speaks to the unrealistic expectation that women will ever tell the truth about sexual harassment. This article doesn't even address the actual complaints, anyone who researched the subject realizes that nothing took place and many men were unfairly treated. What they should do is have the women making false accusations or baseless claims be stuck in a dark room with a single light and try to break them. I think asking a man who was never accused of anything when they last masturbated is actual harassment. But we can't change the past, but we can at least make this article more fair and clearly express the truth, that little or no wrong doing occurred. That many men were unfairly punished, and way to much time and money was investigating effectively nothing and in the end almost every complaint was proved unlikely, baseless or simply false. We need to make it more clear in this article that there was little or no wrong doing and the men were all treated unfairly and the nation as a whole should apologize to them.Mantion 01:04, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Well we are not here to present our opinions only verifiable facts, and by the way It is "witch hunt" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.228.235.238 (talk) 20:03, 1 February 2008 (UTC)