Admiral Loses Command Over Tailhook Brouhaha : Aftermath: Navy officials say he ignored a female aide’s complaint that she had been sexually harassed.
WASHINGTON — An admiral has been fired from his naval aviation post after he failed to act on a complaint by a female aide that she was sexually harassed during a September convention of a San Diego-based naval aviation group, Navy officials said Tuesday.
Rear Adm. John W. Snyder Jr. was removed as commander of the Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center in St. Mary’s County, Md., for “his apparent failure to take timely and appropriate action†when the aide complained that she had been abused by male aviators at the annual Tailhook Convention in Las Vegas, a brief statement from the Navy public affairs office said.
The woman, a lieutenant and helicopter pilot who has since been transferred to a new job at the Pentagon, was one of at least five women who complained of sexual, verbal and physical abuse by drunken junior officers attending this year’s gathering of carrier-based fliers and senior Navy leadership.
The allegations, coupled with a $23,000 damage bill from the Las Vegas Hilton, are the subject of a continuing Navy investigation.
Last week, Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III severed the Navy’s longstanding support for the convention and the Tailhook Assn., the Miramar-based private organization of Navy fliers that sponsored it.
In doing so, Garrett expressed his “absolute outrage†and deplored the “personal abuses, behavioral excesses and quite possibly criminal conduct†of some Navy officers who attended the three-day convention.
Snyder, 47, was ordered transferred by Adm. Frank B. Kelso, chief of naval operations, to a lesser, unspecified job at the Naval Air Systems Command in Crystal City, Va., effective last Monday. No other action has been taken against the admiral, such as a demotion in rank, Navy officials said.
Officials familiar with one of the reported incidents said naval pilots had formed “a gauntlet†in a hotel hallway. They called out “admiral’s aide, admiral’s aide†to a female aide who had accompanied Snyder to the convention, then tried to tear off her clothes and grabbed her.
A retired Navy official familiar with the incident told The Times that one Navy officer “pressed ham†by pressing his naked bottom so hard against an upper-story window that he pushed out the glass, which fell to the ground. The retired official said the hotel also complained of cigarette burns and alcohol stains on the carpets.
Snyder, a past president of the Tailhook Assn., reportedly minimized the incidents and failed to act promptly, sources said.
A Navy source said that, after Snyder’s aide complained to him that she had been molested at the convention, “my understanding is that the admiral had basically said, ‘Boys will be boys,’ and she wouldn’t accept that.†The aide subsequently took her complaint to Navy officials in Washington, sources said.
Steve Millikin editor of Hook Magazine, which is the Tailhook Assn’s. quarterly publication, said Tuesday that the group’s officials had not heard about Snyder’s firing. Millikin said Snyder had served as president of the association, but said that he no longer has any official connection with the group.
The Patuxent station is one of the Navy’s chief flight-testing bases in the United States. The Naval Air Systems Command is in charge of the service’s purchases and weapons development.
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