Hegseth wants to return the military to 1990 -- a dark time in its history

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...story by Karen Tumulty

“What were the military standards in 1990? And if they have changed, tell me why. Was it a necessary change based on the evolving landscape of combat, or was the change due to a softening, weakening, or gender based pursuit of other priorities?” Hegseth said (at his presentation Tuesday at Marine Corps Base Quantico)

“1990 seems to be as good a place to start as any.”

“Pete Hegseth was about 10 years old in 1990,” said Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot who is the Democratic nominee for New Jersey governor. “I was entering the Naval Academy. So he has no idea what was going on. I had a first-hand look at it.”

In an interview, Sherrill recalled a 1990 story on the front page of The Washington Post about a female midshipman being chained to a urinal and photographed by her classmates. A 1979 article — still being widely circulated more than a decade later — by James Webb, a future Navy secretary and Virginia Democratic senator, was headlined “Women Can’t Fight.” Among his arguments was that women shouldn’t be exposed to witnessing their “vicious and aggressive and debased” comrades desecrating corpses.

And then there was the time, Sherrill said, when the chief of naval operations spoke to the brigade of midshipmen and was asked whether women would ever serve aboard submarines. “Not in my lifetime,” he said, bringing a standing ovation.

The Tailhook scandal, she said, marked a turning point because it “precipitated some of the changes that led to a more lethal, better fighting force that we see today.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hegseth-wants-to-return-the-military-to-1990-a-dark-time-in-its-history/ar-AA1NCf1p

...Tailhook scandal:

___Lt. Paula Coughlin, a 30-year-old helicopter pilot and admiral’s aide, was one of at least 26 women, more than half Navy officers, who were assaulted at the now-notorious Tailhook convention of Navy and Marine aviators last September. Her complaint about the attack triggered a far-reaching Navy investigation of the episode, which so far has implicated at least 70 officers and caused a major scandal in the service.

During a sometimes emotional two-hour interview at a relative's house in Washington, Coughlin described not only the terror of the assault, but also her frustration with its aftermath: her boss's lackadaisical response to her report of the attack, the refusal of some aviators to cooperate with the investigation, the whispering campaign by male officers who suggested "that someone was making a big stink about nothing."

The attack, Coughlin said, was bad enough. But her knowledge that the assaults had been carried out by Navy and Marine Corps officers -- men she had come to regard as comrades in arms -- made the episode that much more painful.

"I've been in the Navy almost eight years and I've worked my ass off to be one of the guys, to be the best naval officer I can and prove that women can do whatever the job calls for," she said. "And what I got, I was treated like trash. I wasn't one of them."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/06/24/a-gantlet-of-terror-frustration/fa9d95f4-e610-4a1c-a739-cec2b558716f/

fast forward to the investigation...

140 Officers Faulted in Tailhook Sex Scandal : Inquiry: Seven-month review of the infamous 1991 convention also blames Navy brass for a leadership vacuum that allowed a 'free fire zone' of debauchery and assaults. - Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-04-24-mn-26674-story.html


Pentagon Blasts Navy's Tailhook Investigation - Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — The Navy conducted a poorly coordinated, halfhearted investigation into sexual assault allegations stemming from the 1991 Tailhook convention, and did so under the direction of an admiral who apparently doubted that women belonged in the military, Pentagon investigators said Thursday in their first major report on the scandal.

As naval investigators turned up evidence of infractions other than sexual assault, the officials managing the effort failed to widen their inquiry, the Defense Department’s inspector general, Derek Vander Schaaf, concluded. And despite continued recommendations from colleagues, the admiral in charge of the Naval Investigative Service refused to allow interviews of senior officers, even after it became clear that some had witnessed improper acts and failed to intervene.

As expected, O’Keefe accepted the resignations of two admirals cited in the report, Rear Adm. Duvall M. Williams Jr., commander of the Naval Investigative Service, and Rear Adm. John E. Gordon, the Navy’s judge advocate general, its chief legal officer. A third admiral, Rear Adm. George W. Davis VI, the Navy’s inspector general, came in for less stringent criticism and has been reassigned.

Speaking to a junior naval investigator, Williams at one point observed that a female officer who had come forward with complaints had used profane language in describing her alleged assault. “Any women who would use the f-word on a regular basis would welcome this type of activity,” the female investigator quoted Williams as saying.

Williams’ comments, Vander Schaaf concluded, “demonstrated an attitude that should have caused an examination of his suitability to conduct the investigation.” Vander Schaaf indicated that Davis was willing to excuse officers’ tolerance for sexual misconduct by arguing that Navy culture had been indulgent toward such behavior in the past.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-09-25-mn-1182-story.html