March 26, 1999
Follow Me?
With the assault underway against Serb forces in and around Kosovo, let us say as clearly as possible that we hope for the success of the President's initiative. As he bombed Iraq during the impeachment proceedings, he is no doubt trying now to re-establish his position of national and international leadership. Yet political motivations will be easily forgiven if they produce policy success, if the bombing in fact stops the killing in Kosovo.
It is hugely ironic, still, that Bill Clinton is tying his personal and political fortunes to the success of the American military, in which he evaded service years ago, and in particular to Naval aviators, supposedly tarnished by the infamous Tailhook controversy. All the more so since we can be sure that one issue on the minds of every man and woman in uniform is whether there will now be two standards of conduct--one for all of them and another for their commander in chief. It falls to us, we suppose, to lay this out clearly, so that it isn't simply blinked into oblivion.
The list of senior military officers punished for sexual misconduct the past few months grows longer. The latest name to be added--the week the bombing started--is that of the commander of the pilots now over Kosovo. Rear Admiral Paul Semko, in charge of U.S. naval air forces in the Mediterranean, was relieved of command on charges of conduct unbecoming an officer--the conduct in question being an adulterous affair and lying to investigators. The Admiral had an extramarital relationship--with a civilian, not a subordinate or another officer--and then gave false statements about the affair to Navy investigators. A veteran of nearly three decades of service, he has now received an official letter of reprimand that means the effective end of his Navy career.
This comes, of course, after the weeks in which we absorbed a daily din of arguments by the President's allies, and sophisticates from coast to coast, assuring us that everyone lies about sex. Everyone who was normal, the argument went, would lie--under oath or not under oath--and they would do it to protect their families, or simply because, well, everyone lies about sex.
This is not the view in the armed services, members of which are now facing death on orders of the commander in chief.
The Admiral's case followed on the heels of the more notorious case of Army General David R.E. Hale, concluded just last week. The highest ranking officer court-martialed since 1952, General Hale was accused of having conducted affairs with the wives of four subordinate officers. The notoriety in this case had to do mainly with the fact that the General had been allowed to slip quietly into retirement while complaints against him were being investigated, which raised questions about a double standard for officers and enlisted men; Sgt. Major Gene McKinney was the subject of a headline-making court martial in 1997 on charges that he had forced subordinates into sexual compliance. The Sgt. Major was acquitted of all but one charge.
Among the accusations against General Hale (described by the Washington Times military affairs writer Rowan Scarborough, who broke the story last March) was a charge by one subordinate's wife that the General had threatened and pressured her into a sexual relationship. Though a Pentagon investigation concluded the relationship was consensual, General Hale pleaded guilty to seven counts of sexual misconduct and one count of lying. This brought the notably mild punishment of a $10,000 fine, with an additional thousand dollars a month to be deducted from his retirement pay for a year.
Also, Rear Admiral John T. Scudi pleaded no contest in December to charges of adultery, obstruction of justice and the steering of military contracts to a woman with whom he was having an affair. For this he received punishment of 30 days' house arrest, and the loss of half his pay for two months.
Early in 1998, when a Navy flier came up for promotion, the then Secretary of the Navy, John Dalton, knew he had a problem on his hands--a black mark on the candidate's record because of charges that he had, while in the Navy, engaged in oral sex at a party. Secretary Dalton decided that the flier had to be struck from the promotion lists. The trouble was that it required the President to do that--a delicate matter, given his own problems. For months the Pentagon delayed dealing with the matter, until finally, the Secretary of Defense solved the problem by deciding that the flier's name should remain on the promotion list.
Obviously the military has its hands full determining charges and punishments for lying, obstructing justice and other charges of unbecoming conduct. None of the accused in the military, of course, had Alec Baldwin and a host of Hollywood luminaries and New Yorker intellectuals out arguing that everyone lies about sex, and vilifying the military prosecutors. Yet it seems that efforts to exculpate the President may indeed be eroding those values long thought essential to military loyalty, pride and successful performance in battle. For the sake of the troops, the republic and even the President, we should hope that the results of that erosion do not show up over Kosovo this week.
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