THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200486
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: DALE EISMAN
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
After five years of trying to repair an image shattered by the alcohol-fueled lust of some of its aviators, probably the last thing the Navy needs is a trial that puts the disgrace of Tailhook '91 back on the front pages and the evening news.
But that may be what the service is about to get - and it has only itself to blame.
Cmdr. Robert Stumpf, an Oceana-based pilot who attended the notorious Las Vegas gathering of Navy fliers but by all available accounts did nothing illegal there, is suing Navy Secretary John H. Dalton over Dalton's refusal to promote him to captain. He wants a federal judge to order his advancement.
Stumpf's story should be familiar by now - he and his lawyers have led a nationwide publicity campaign on his behalf and have generated a shipload of sympathetic newspaper editorials. Here's a synopsis:
Stumpf was recommended in 1994 for promotion to captain. The Armed Services Committee endorsed his nomination and he was confirmed by the Senate.
Before Stumpf could assume his new rank, the Navy discovered that it had failed to tell the committee of his attendance at Tailhook and of a Navy Board of Inquiry's findings, which cleared Stumpf of wrongdoing.
After taking months to review this evidence, the Senate committee withdrew its support for Stumpf. It did not detail its reasons, but said that because Stumpf had been confirmed, the final decision on his future was Dalton's.
Dalton announced that because the original error - the failure to inform the committee - was the Navy's, he was withdrawing Stumpf's name from the promotion list. The secretary continues to insist that he personally believes Stumpf should be promoted.
After an unusual public discussion of the case last week, the committee reiterated its position, again without elaboration.
That neither the secretary nor Stumpf's opponents on the committee are eager to have the issues fought out in open court was evident last week.
Dalton, for his part, all but pleaded with the senators to withdraw their objections to Stumpf. The secretary never said what he'd do in that case, but Navy officials assured reporters Stumpf could be promoted, probably through action by a board empowered to correct mistakes in Navy records.
The committee, meanwhile, sought cover in a legal opinion written by - of all people - the Navy's top legal adviser. General counsel Steven S. Honigman's research indicates that even if senators gave Stumpf their blessing now, Dalton could not ``act unilaterally to promote'' him.
That's true, but it's not the whole truth. In fact the opinion holds that Dalton can promote Stumpf if the flier will first petition the records board. And even if the board finds no error in the records, Honigman wrote, the secretary can overrule it and ``award complete relief, including back pay, (and) date of rank.''
``The legal opinion . . . is nonsense,'' one retired Navy lawyer observed last week. If Dalton can ignore the records board's recommendation, he suggested, the secretary surely doesn't need to convene the board in the first place.
As the president's designee to run the Navy, Dalton's authority over promotions is so great that it probably dooms Stump's legal challenge, the lawyer and another military law specialist said Monday. The courts, they noted, are loathe to interfere with a service's internal workings.
But what a trial may get Stumpf, whose career probably is beyond saving anyway, is the satisfaction of some score-settling - with senators who oppose his promotion but won't say precisely why, and with a secretary who calls Stumpf a credit to the Navy but refuses to follow through on that conviction. by CNB