Togo West Jr., 75, Dies; Army Secretary in Time of Transition
'Togo D. West Jr., who as secretary of the Army in the 1990s oversaw its wrenching post-Gulf War conversion to a truncated peacetime fighting force that granted women more combat roles and vowed to shield them from sexual abuse, died on Thursday on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. He was 75.
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Hilary Carter West said.
Mr. West was the second black Army secretary and the second African-American to hold the cabinet-level position of secretary of veterans affairs, appointed to both posts by President Bill Clinton.
After the Army department was flooded with thousands of complaints of sexual harassment in the mid-1990s and three male instructors at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland were accused of rape in 1996, Mr. West responded by greatly tightening penalties for sexual transgressions and ordering an internal investigation.
It found that “sexual harassment exists throughout the Army, crossing gender, rank and racial lines.”
“Sexual abuse is not endemic throughout our Army,” Mr. West said at the time. “Sexual harassment, however, continues to be a problem.”'>>>
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