WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Navy is considering restoring official ties to the Tailhook Association, the naval aviation booster group whose 1991 Las Vegas convention produced a sex scandal that focused attention on sexual harassment in the military.
Rehabilitating the Tailhook Association is a remaining piece of "unfinished business" in the Navy's effort to put the scandal behind it, Adm. Jay Johnson, the chief of naval operations, said in an interview.Johnson said he has set aside political considerations to weigh only the practical question of whether Tailhook belongs back in the Navy fold as an organization meant to foster camaraderie and professional enrichment.
"I'm seriously at work with the leadership of the Tailhook Association, working to make sure that we've learned the lessons we needed to learn -- which we have -- and that we've institutionalized those lessons," Johnson said.
In response to the debauchery of the 1991 convention in Las Vegas, the Defense Department Inspector General implicated 117 officers for sexual assault, indecent exposure and other acts, and faulted the Navy's leaders for failing to stop the behavior.
In October 1991 the Navy ended all support "in any manner whatsoever, direct or indirect" for Tailhook. For several years afterward, the Senate required that it be informed of any Tailhook participation by any Navy or Marine Corps officer whose nomination for promotion was before the Senate.
Johnson said he has great confidence that Tailhook's new leaders will set the right course.
If the organization has really changed its ways, "then I would be in a position to support it," he said.
The admiral said he would make a recommendation to Navy Secretary Richard Danzig shortly.