Henry L. Garrett III

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Person.png Henry L. Garrett III  Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(civil servant)
Henry Lawrence Garrett III, official Navy photo, 1987.jpg
BornJune 24, 1939
Washington DC
InterestsTailhook scandal
United States Secretary of the Navy who resigned after bad handling of sexual assault scandal.

Employment.png United States Secretary of the Navy

In office
May 15, 1989 - June 26, 1992
DeputyJ. Daniel Howard
Preceded byWilliam L. Ball
Succeeded byJ. Daniel Howard

Employment.png Under Secretary of the Navy Wikipedia-icon.png

In office
August 6, 1987 - May 15, 1989
BossWilliam L. Ball

Employment.png General Counsel of the Department of Defense Wikipedia-icon.png

In office
February 5, 1986 - August 6, 1987

Henry Lawrence Garrett III (born June 24, 1939)[1] was made 68th Secretary of the Navy from May 15, 1989, to June 26, 1992, in the administration of George H. W. Bush.[2] Before leading the Department of the Navy, he served as General Counsel of the Department of Defense.

Garrett ultimately resigned due to the Tailhook scandal.[3]

Career

Garrett at the commissioning ceremony for the USS Arleigh Burke with Arleigh Burke and wife present and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney delivering the keynote address in July 1991.

Garrett served in the U.S. Navy from October 1961 to November 1981,[4] initially as a machinist's mate aboard USS Sea Poacher during the Cuban Missile Crisis,[5] before getting commissioned as a naval flight officer in 1964. He served with VP-50 in the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1967 and was awarded the Air Medal two times during his military career. Garrett was the 68th United States Secretary of the Navy.

Tailhook scandal

The Tailhook scandal was an American political affair from the years 1991/1992, which broke out due to sexual riots at the 35th Tailhook Symposium, which was mostly attended by naval aviators, from 5th to 8th September 1991 in Las Vegas in 1991. As a result, 14 admirals and around 300 other officers of the United States Navy had to resign or suffered some other serious career setbacks. There were no criminal convictions for the sexual assaults.

After or during the convention, at least 10 women made sexual assault complaints to the Las Vegas Police Department. The Navy was forced to investigate the behavior of its officers. The result was a 2,000-page investigative report compiled by the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) and the Navy's Inspector General, released in April 1992. The report was soon heavily criticized for apparently not telling the truth in some areas so as not to give a bad public image. For example, the role of senior officers (squadron commanders and admirals) was only mentioned in passing. In response to the vocal criticism, on June 18, 1992, Secretary of the Navy Garrett called an inquiry into the inquest. It was conducted by the Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General. His report, published on September 22, 1992, harshly criticized the NIS investigation. Apparently, the investigators had been slowed down at behest from above when they realized that they had poked a wasp's nest. At a later date, the DoD Inspector General wanted to present his own investigation into the tailhook incidents. This report was completed in mid-February 1993 and published on April 12, 1993. He listed 90 victims of sexual assault, 83 women and seven men, as well as numerous other cases of behavior unworthy of an officer and convicted 50 officers of lying.[6]Investigative files on the conduct of 140 named officers (119 Navy and 21 Marine Corps) have been turned over to Acting Secretary of the Navy Sean O'Keefe for possible prosecution.

The most notorious victim of the Tailhook incidents was Lt. Paula Coughlin, then a helicopter pilot and staff aide to Naval Air Test Center Commander Admiral Snyder. On Saturday night she became a victim of running the gauntlet. She was initially jostled and held on the buttocks. Other men tugged at her clothing and grabbed her breasts. Kicking, Coughlin tried to break away from the group and twice bit one of the attackers on the arm. Eventually she was able to escape to one of the suites.

Coughlin lodged a complaint through official channels. Admiral Snyder declined to pursue the case, arguing that Coughlin should have known that if she deliberately exposed herself to "a deck full of drunk aviators," the things mentioned could happen to her. She decided to go public with her case. On June 24, 1992, a report on the ABC evening news shook the nation.

Coughlin was able to identify their main attacker, but there were no witnesses who could corroborate their story. The investigation was stopped. Subsequent investigations revealed that all of the officers questioned had either lied, allegedly not remembered from drinking too much, or stonewalled to protect their comrades.

A real campaign against Coughlin began as a "tit for tat". Anonymous allegations have been circulated that Coughlin deliberately subjected herself to running the gauntlet and himself engaged in lewd behavior that night. It wasn't until the DoD investigation, which found that there were no witnesses to these allegations, that Coughlin's reputation was cleared. While there had been cases of women enjoying the Gauntlet treatment, Coughlin was not one of them. consequences'.

On October 29, 1991, Secretary of the Navy Garrett withdrew official Navy support for the Tailhook Association in a letter to the Chairman of the Tailhook Association, Captain F. W. Ludwig, expressing his deep disappointment at the behavior of many officers at the convention. as Lt. Coughlin went public with her story, public pressure forced Garrett to resign from his post. He had also been present at the convention but denied having witnessed any instances of bad conduct.

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References

  1. Appropriations, United States Congress Senate Committee on; Defense, United States Congress Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on (10 February 1988). "Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1989: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, Second Session, on H.R. 4781 ..." U.S. Government Printing Office – via Google Books.
  2. Sweeney, Jerry K.; Kevin B. Byrne (2006). A handbook of American military history: from the Revolutionary War to the present. University of Nebraska Press. p. 278. ISBN 978-0-8032-9337-3.
  3. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/navy/tailhook/disc.htm
  4. http://www.epnaao.com/BIOS_files/HONORARY/Garrett-%20H.%20L.pdf Template:Bare URL PDF
  5. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/27/us/friends-see-secretary-as-honorable-but-ill-served.html
  6. William H. McMichael: The mother of all hooks: the story of the U.S. Navy's Tailhook Scandal. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick in NJ 1997, ISBN 0-585-33725-X, S. 113 f.
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