THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 1996 TAG: 9605220003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 51 lines
More than just Navy personnel - active duty, reserve and retired - and members of Congress will be keenly interested in President Clinton's next nomination, expected within days, for chief of naval operations.
The shocking, saddening suicide of CNO Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda, whom Clinton had appointed, abruptly made it clear to countless Americans previously inattentive to the Navy's troubles that CNOs in the post-Tailhook period risk damage to reputation and health.
Adm. Frank Kelso II resigned the post because he was at the Las Vegas Hilton during the infamous Tailhook Convention. Kelso's tenure as CNO was made unhappy by, among other woes, a flawed inquiry into the cause of the April 1989 USS Iowa turret explosion that claimed 47 lives and clumsy official responses to sexual-harassment incidents at the Naval Academy and elsewhere in the fleet.
Admiral Boorda was tasked to right the Navy's course. He tried, ordering stand downs to focus on sexual-harassment and aircraft safety. He expanded career opportunities at sea and in the air for women in the Navy - an effort seen by his critics as the pursuit of ``political correctness'' at the expense of combat readiness and morale.
At the same time, the Naval Academy was further tarnished by scandals - drugs, cheating, sexual discrimination, auto theft. Boorda was taunted for and haunted by his failure to fight for confirmation of the nomination of Adm. Stanley Arthur as commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific; Arthur had come under fire in Congress for affirming the dismissal from helicopter training of a woman officer who charged that she was flunked out of the flight program in reprisal for filing a sexual-harassment grievance against her instructors.
Meanwhile, Tailhook continued to reverberate. The personnel files of officers who had been targeted by investigators were flagged, whether or not they had been cleared of wrongdoing. Officers tainted by Tailhook were denied promotion. Other officers' careers were ruined by their responses to sexual-assault and sexual-harassment complaints, Tailhook-related or not.
Boorda had to deal with the emotionally charged questions raised by the demand by gays that they be permitted to serve openly in the military, a demand that some courts and some politicians approve. Additionally, crashes by Navy F-14s raised doubts about the qualities of the sea service's top warplane.
The next CNO will inherit all these thorny challenges and the pain and demoralization that attend Boorda's suicide. Whoever is named top sea dog must pass muster with a Republican Congress in a presidential-election year and bring special qualities of temperament and character to the job, plus willingness to step into a snake pit. For the nation's sake and for the Navy's, may Clinton choose well. by CNB