Word: tailhookers
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WASHINGTON -- Admiral Frank Kelso, his pension intact, isn't the only naval officer retiring in the wake of the Tailhook scandal. Lieut. Paula Coughlin, the pilot whose charges of sexual assault launched the official investigation, is leaving the service next week, bitter because she feels her complaints were ultimately brushed off. Adding insult to injury, the Navy's personnel bureau had been claiming she owed it nearly $19,000 of a prepaid pilot bonus that she now cannot "earn" because she is leaving four years ahead of schedule. But the Navy, worried about how Kelso's and Coughlin...
...press of other business was about to draw the curtain over the part Admiral Frank Kelso played in the disgrace known as Tailhook. There would be no prosecutions. It was a done deal in the Senate to whisk Kelso off to a four-star retirement at full pay as if nothing untoward had happened on his watch. Then an astonishing thing occurred. Two of the most venerable forces in Washington -- the Pentagon and the Senate Armed Services Committee -- were confronted by one of the newest: seven women Senators. And for a moment the militarists were forced to regroup. Kelso...
...Tailhook is one more sorry example of the practice of conceding that mistakes were made without punishing those who made them. A Navy judge found that Kelso was on the third floor of the Las Vegas Hilton when women -- not just Top Gun groupies but also 15 female officers -- were assaulted. The judge accused Kelso of lying about his presence there and of trying to manipulate the investigation to shield himself. A Pentagon inspector-general report found otherwise, but Kelso decided against a further inquiry to sort out the discrepancies in favor of stepping down two months early. He bargained...
...lopsided Senate vote in Kelso's favor would have been the expected end of it. Instead, a bipartisan group of women forced a daylong debate. Those who tried to defend the admiral were reduced to praise for a solid 38-year career -- minus Tailhook and logic. Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Arkansas asked his female colleagues to "remember that ((Kelso is)) a father of two young women who are very sensitive of their father's role in this matter" -- whatever that meant. John Warner of Virginia worried about the hardship Kelso's wife would bear if he were...
...urging of top Pentagon officials, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended 20 to 2 that Admiral Frank Kelso be permitted to retire with his four stars -- and accompanying pension -- intact. This despite his role in the Tailhook scandal, which remains in dispute. The full Senate is expected to agree...