Subj: Adm. Boorda's Death: Blaming Feminism
Date: 96-05-22
From: James Vincent Holton

Greetings,

I was reading the Washington Times yesterday and found three editorials about Adm. Boorda's suicide. All three articles in some way blamed the feminist movement as a contributing factor in the Navy's recent troubles, and indirectly, in Adm. Boorda's death.

The Washington Times, also known as the 'Morning Moonie' is not one of the nation's better papers. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed a trend of blaming feminism in the CNO's death, or if the Times is a sorry exception.

The articles referred to Boorda as "NOW's admiral," and accused Boorda of fostering a "ladies' Navy," and made references to admirals falling over themselves to please Pat Schroeder and worrying about "feral feminism." One columnist said that Boorda had had a tough job because he had to contemplate sending "19 year old boys and 19 year old pregnant girls" into combat and made a reference to the USS Yosemite "Love Boat" scandal of a few years back (if anyone can provide more light on this particular issue, I would appreciate it).

Does anyone out there have an ear close to the ground on this issue?

Jim Holton
George Washington University
holton@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

Date: Thu, 23 May 1996
From Linda Grant De Pauw, H-MINERVA
Reply-To: H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: ADM Boorda and the Navy

From: JAYNE REED

Am I the only person who thinks the medal issue is a crock??? If all the other crap the navy has been up to lately didn't bother him, I can't see how a year-old "controversy" would drive him to suicide. Remember, when other crap the navy has been up to lately didn't bother him, I can't see how a year-old "controversy" would drive him to suicide. Remember, when the question first came up, he just took the "v" off.

There's the medal of honor, silver star, bronze star, purple heart--everything else is costume jewelry.

Jayne Reed

Date: Thu, 23 May 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw H-Minerva
Reply-To: H-MINERVA
H-NET List for the Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: Comment: ADM Boorda

From: Prendergast, Eloise C.

Jayne, NOTHING is worth committing suicide over - a medal issue, or a spouse's affair - - - really sad. Unfortunately, it's done. Eloise Prendergast

Date: Thu, 23 May 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw H-MINERVA
Reply-To: H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Adm. Boorda's Death: Blaming Feminism

From: Maureen Phillips

RE Co-opting Boorda:

I have been working on a dissertation about hostile work environments in the military. I've been holding my breath since Boorda's "brave act" (he apparently offed himself to save the Navy from further suffering over his mistake) waiting to see if such rhetoric would begin. The military culture is so utterly predictable when it comes to the cycle of sexual harassment and how it gets relayed in language. Now that Boorda, who was supposedly friendly to women (and I question how/why the Navy thought it important to bring an enlisted man up to the rank of admiral while they simultaneously destroyed many women's careers) is dead, they're using his corpse to launch a counter-strike against the gains women have made in the Navy.

My guess is that favors were done for this white guy who played the game well. I personally wonder whether Boorda was not simply hyper-aware of his own duplicitous position. Sure he was a nice guy, sure the enlisted folks loved him, he was still a white male promoted as a token up through the elitist hierarchy of the Navy. Who can survive there who doesn't have a high pucker factor? At any moment, those who put you there can erase you. Now that's pressure. Who leaked the bullshit story about the valor device to Newsweek anyway? Why? Was Boorda *too* woman-friendly? Was he the next best thing to having a woman there? We in the military understand that the medals system is bogus in many ways. The awards and decorations program has long since lost its credibility. If Boorda was the star pupil that supposedly got him to his admiralty, a mere ounce of tin would not have prompted him to kill himself. Why couldn't he, as he had said before he left the office that day, simply told the truth? Maybe the truth was that the officers who "brought him up" told him to slap on the V so that their nepotism would look more legitimate.

It's utterly classic that they would then fail to blame themselves for the hypocracy of the culture and instead blame women. Collectively, women in the Navy need to stand up and call that the crime it is. I hope to see this debate and the investigation into Boorda's behavior played out. Too many people buy into these lies without critiqueing who's writing the pulp fiction.

Maureen Phillips

Date: Thu, 23 May 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw, H-Minerva
Reply-To: H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: ADM Boorda

From: Phyllis Soybel Butler

No Jayne, you're not. Especially in light of the comments he made about taking
responsibility for actions and correcting mistakes. In addition, being the
daughter of a mediacl examiner (and responsible as a teenager for filling out
his forms), people who commit suicide by shooting do not do it in the chest...

Phyllis

Date: Thu, 23 May 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw, H-Minerva
Reply-To:H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women and Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: ADM Boorda

From: Gene Moser

Jayne Reed wrote "am I the only person who thinks the medal issue is a crock??? "there's the medal of honor, silver star, bronze star, purple heart--everything else is costme jewelry" I'm not sure what the credentials of Jayne Reed are, but her comment is something of a crock. Despite the fact that the awards are very minor and are more than twenty years old, the fact that the "V" device may not have been authorized is important. I wouldn't wear my 2nd Infantry Division patch until I finally saw in writing from an offical source that it was okay to do so - and that's just a unit patch, not a decoration. You left out the Distinguished Service Cross/Navy Cross/Air Force Cross, as well as the Soldier's Medal (and sister service designations) as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross. While the Air Medal suffered from over exposure in Vietnam, the system has a handle on it again. Thank you very much, Jayne, but I busted my butt for my first decoration for achievement. Sorry that nobody thought my volunteering to probe for mines wasn't worth recognizing despite three wrecked vehicles in two days, three dead and I forget how many wounded, but they thought that was just what Artillery Liaison officers normally did, so nobody thought to give me a medal. As it stands, my Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, though far down on my "costume jewelry", means a whole hell of a lot to me. My father is proud of his European-Africa Campaign medal with its silver star, four bronze stars and an arrow head, his Korean Service Medal and its three bronze stars and his Senior Parachutist wings with its two bronze stars.

I don't know if Jayne is a civilian or not, but she sure proves a lot of reporters correct in saying that it's hard for somebody not in the system to understand the importance of awards - which, of course, is one of the reasons for the inflation that has occurred.

Gene Moser (LTC, FA, USAR, (ret)
p.s. El - I suggest a TOT on the next person who suggests that Molly Pitcher
is a myth - recommend DIVARTY 3, DPICM/WP - how copy?

Date: Fri, 24 May 1996
From:Linda Grant De Pauw, H-Minerva
Reply-To: H-Minerva H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Adm. Boorda's Death: Blaming Feminism

From: Josette Wingo

Hi. For what it's worth department. I read and clipped everything I could find in the LA Times, the local Santa Monica Outlook and the New York Times about Admiral Boorda's death (I no longer have the clippings because I sent them to a colleague to send overseas) and nowhere did I find the reference to feminism as a causative factor. I always revered Boorda because he did seem fairer than some to women in the Navy and I was looking for references.

It would seem to me that the Washington Times must have been talking to James Webb or those who are referred to as "Webbites"--it can't be a secret that James Webb has not made a secret of his belief that the decline of the Navy--(the Decline of the West?) began with letting women into the Navy. It is my understanding--remember I'm way out here in California and only getting my scuttlebutt by long distance. Perhaps that cohort of Webbites will pass away. One can only hope so. Meanwhile we say. Rest in Peace, wherever you are.

Josette Wingo

Date: Fri, 24 May 1996
From:Linda Grant De Pauw H-Minerva
Reply-To:H-Minerva
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Adm. Boorda's Death: Blaming Feminism

From: Connie Reeves

One columnist said that Boorda had had a tough job because he had to contemplate sending "19 year old boys and 19 year old pregnant girls" into combat and made a reference to the USS Yosemite "Love Boat" scandal of a few years back (if anyone can provide more light on this particular issue, I would appreciate it).

When sailors were shipped out to Desert Shield/Storm, some of the women aboard ship were already pregnant but not far enough along yet to have realized it. So their pregnancies became evident weeks after departing the U.S. and the automatic correlation made by many military observers was that they became pregnant ON the ship, which is not true. Moreover, most of the women were married and had conceived on land, with their husbands. Since most women don't begin to suspect they're pregnant until they've missed one period, it's fairly obvious how they wouldn't have known right away. Additionally, the percentage of women sailors who became pregnant was, I believe, lower than the percentage of civilian women in the same age bracket who become pregnant. Unfortunately, when women's pregnancies became known, the sensationalism of it blasted aside the more ordinary truth that these women weren't sleeping around with sailors on the ship (other women's husbands).

In another vein, a survey of military personnel asked the following question: Were you aware or had you heard of anyone participating in sexual activity while assigned to the combat theater? (or words to that effect) Virtually everyone said yes. This response was analyzed as meaning that virtually everyone had engaged in sexual activity or knew people that did. What it actually means is that each person who answered yes had perhaps "heard" the same rumors as everyone else, which were unsubstantiated, or were "aware" that people were having sex in the field. The answer to the survey question did not clarify whether the respondent actually knew someone who had engaged in sex and the respondent's answer certainly didn't imply that he/she had himself/herself engaged in sex. As a matter of fact, there could have been only a few, isolated cases that ran through the rumor mill and all 500,000 troops were "aware" or had "heard" of those few. But this, too, was blown out of context and improperly analyzed.

Connie Reeves

Date: Fri, 24 May 1996
From: H-Minerva
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Adm. Boord's Death: Blaming Feminism

From: Ruth McCreery

The following article, from the New York Times, does not blame feminism for Adm. Boorda's death, but does definitely blame the fallout from Tailhook. I can well imagine (and don't have to imagine it: I've seen some chat along those lines in the NYT forum) that people who regard attempts to rectify whatever it is about the navy that made Tailhook possible as destroying the navy would also regard those attempts as responsible for his suicide.

May 20, 1996

Navy Still Reeling From Effects of Tailhook Scandal

By PHILIP SHENON

[W] ASHINGTON -- As the body of Adm. Jeremy M. Boorda was laid to rest Sunday at Arlington National Cemetery, there was a sense among his friends and adversaries alike that when the Navy's highest-ranking officer took his life, he became another victim of a scandal that was born in the alcohol-soaked hallway of a convention hotel in Las Vegas, the scene five years ago of crimes that still traumatize the Navy.

Boorda, the chief of naval operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was nowhere near the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel on the night of Sept. 7, 1991.

But the events that evening at the annual Tailhook convention of naval aviators -- a vicious bacchanal at which scores of women were assaulted by drunken sailors, often with senior Navy commanders close by -- created a climate of scandal and shame within the Navy that Boorda was never able to overcome.

He was named as chief of naval operations in 1994 with hopes that he was the man to move the Navy beyond the disgrace of Tailhook, but still its legacy tarnished every day of his tenure at the Pentagon.

Last week, with the threat of a new scandal in which his personal honor would be questioned over the legitimacy of two Vietnam War combat medals, Boorda grabbed a .38-caliber handgun, turned it against the chest that once proudly bore those bits of ribbon and brass and pulled the trigger.

He left behind a suicide note addressed to "the sailors" in which, according to people who have read it, the admiral said he feared that a dispute over the medals would be one more burden to his beloved Navy, already battered by the series of scandals that began five years ago at Tailhook.

"The legacy of Tailhook has infected the Navy," said Norman Polmar, a prominent naval historian who has written more than 30 books, and who had seen Boorda frequently in recent years. "It began a chain of events that have devastated the Navy. It's going to take a very, very good man to lead them out of this."

While the U.S. Navy remains without question the most powerful one in the world, Polmar said that its rash of troubles have so shattered morale within the Navy that its performance as a fighting force may now be in question.

"I've got a feeling that this suicide has really affected morale," he said. "If we were still in the Cold War, I would have great concern about the readiness of the Navy to fight."

The Navy rejects the suggestion, insisting that its recent performance in places as far flung and treacherous as the Straits of Taiwan, Haiti and off the coast of Liberia have proved that it was ready to meet the call.

"There is grieving here, needless to say, and it will take some time for the wounds to heal," said Navy Secretary John H. Dalton, Boorda's civilian counterpart. "But I am absolutely confident that we'll overcome this and continue to press ahead. The Navy today is in terrific shape. We're on track for the future, and in large measure that is due to Mike Boorda."

Still, even if the Navy was fulfilling its mission on the high seas, its reputation back home had been so blackened that Boorda spent many of his days concerned not with matters of naval strategy or the welfare of the 450,000 men and women under his command, but battling to convince members of Congress and his counterparts in the Pentagon that the Navy had put Tailhook and the many subsequent scandals behind it.

For many of the naval aviators and sailors who attended the 1991 Tailhook convention, the events that have so humiliated the Navy are nothing but an alcohol-stained blur.

But for many of the women who found themselves at Tailhook, especially the 83 women who were molested or otherwise assaulted, the memories are as clear as the warm desert air over Las Vegas.

The worst of the assaults came when a group of drunken naval aviators lined a third-floor corridor at the Hilton and formed the now-infamous gantlet, lifting women, including women sailors, into the air and molesting them as they were passed from man to man. One drunken teen-aged girl had her clothes torn off as she was passed down, and was left half naked and semiconscious in a corner.

When news of the assaults was reported, the Navy came under siege on Capitol Hill, especially after it was learned that both the Navy secretary at the time, Lawrence H. Garrett 3rd, and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Frank B. Kelso 2nd, had attended the convention and may have seen some of the worst of the debauchery.

Both men denied it, but Tailhook still ended their careers at the Navy, with Garrett forced to resign and Kelso pushed into early retirement.

Kelso was replaced by Boorda, a proud, gregarious man used to tough decisions; it was Boorda who in 1994, as a NATO commander, ordered an air strike in Bosnia, the first offensive mission in the alliance's 44-year history.

Yet, no matter how hard he tried to burnish the Navy's image and distance it from the taint of Tailhook, memories of the scandal would not disappear.

Polmar, the historian, said that Boorda had talked of how "the thing that's killing the Navy is computers, because all a journalist has to do is hit a button on a computer and up on the screen comes the whole litany of Tailhook, and it all gets repeated" with each new Navy scandal.

And under Boorda, there were new charges of sexual harassment and insensitivity among Navy commanders, cheating and drugs at the prestigious Naval Academy, a series of crashes among the Navy's aging fleet of F-14 fighter jets.

Tailhook continues to destroy careers, with the Senate Armed Services Committee insisting that the promotion files of any Navy officer who came under investigation at Tailhook be tagged, even if there was no finding of wrongdoing.

The scandal had a scattershot effect, creating a level of paranoia and second-guessing about issues of sexual harassment that damaged the careers of distinguished sailors who had nothing to do with Tailhook, most notably Adm. Stanley R. Arthur, a naval aviator who flew hundreds of combat missions during the Vietnam War and was the commander of Navy forces in the Persian Gulf war.

Boorda found himself accused by his Navy colleagues of caving in to political pressure when he decided in 1994 to abandon the nomination of Arthur to be commander of American forces in the Pacific.

A small group of members of Congress had questioned whether Arthur had adequately investigated a woman pilot's claims of sexual harassment, and Boorda expressed fear that confirmation hearings for Arthur would drag the Navy through another long public debate about sexual harassment.

Boorda later told friends that by not fighting for Arthur's nomination, he had made "the biggest mistake of his career," and Navy officials say that the decision cost him the loyalty and respect of other senior commanders.

"I'm sure it's one of those things that he did feel bad about," Arthur, who is now retired from the Navy, said in an interview. "I know it weighed in his mind. Every time we saw each other after that, he'd ask if I was OK, and I'd tell him to put this behind him, and not to worry about me."

"Obviously something went wrong at Tailhook and needed to be corrected," Arthur said. "But that process should have been over and done with years ago. Here we are four and a half years later, and the Tailhook legacy is still alive and well. It's still dragging on."

President Clinton is expected to deliver a eulogy at a memorial service for Boorda on Tuesday at the National Cathedral in Washington. He was buried Sunday at a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, his gravesite only several hundred yards from the Pentagon.

--------------------------------------- Ruth S. McCreery The Word Works, Ltd. E-mail: rsm@twics.com MXA00712@niftyserve.or.jp

Date: Sat, 25 May 1996
From:Linda Grant De Pauw H-Minerva
Reply-To: H-Minerva H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Adm. Boorda's Death: Blaming Feminism

From: Susan Barnes

The "blaming feminism" stuff may be coming from an interview that former SECNAV John Lehman gave to CNN last weekend or the op ed piece he wrote that appeared in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago.

I don't know anyone in the Navy who believes the medal-story-as-cause theory. That was another one of Adm. Pease' ill considered spin efforts. Or maybe it wasn't so ill considered, since most of the media seems to have swallowed it!

Susan Barnes

Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 From: Linda Grant De Pauw H-Minerva
Reply-To: H-Minerva
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: ADM Boorda and the Navy

From: Lee R. Unterborn

My father was entitled to wear the WWII Victory medal and the Navy Good Conduct medal. He didn't consider his 3 years of WWII service, which entitled him to wear these trivial, just because they weren't combat, but service awards. I don't either. The question of whether any medal, combat or otherwise is earned isn't trivial. It is a question of honesty and honor, and to wear any medal you are not entitled to is an act of dishonesty. Lee R. Unterborn

Date: Tue, 28 May 1996
From:Linda Grant De Pauw H-MINERVA
Reply-To: H-Minerva H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: ADM Boorda

From: Angie Dorman

Actually, the chest shot is something a fair number of people do. Granted, head shots are more prevalent. In some areas of the country, the open casket thing is important to the person doing themselves in in consideration of the family. I can think off hand of one old man (who we never thought would have committed suicide) walking out the back door into the yard and pumping a .45 into his chest.

--Angie Dorman

Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw,H-Minerva
Reply-To: H-Minerva
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Adm. Boorda's Death: Blaming Feminism

From: Reina Pennington

This is a belated reply to Jim Holton's note of 22 May, in which he mentioned how several recent Washington Times editorials seemed to blame Adm. Boorda's suicide on his connection with feminism.

I have no idea whether that's a common link, but I thought I'd mention that I was at the Air War College last week, and the suicide was much-discussed over lunch at the O-Club. I sat at the big reserved table with eight or nine senior faculty, and we were joined by LtGen Kelly (the three-star commander of Air University). However, no one ever mentioned anything about Boorda's link with a "ladies' Navy" or even the Tailhook fallout. The discussion centered entirely around the V-device controversy.

Reina Pennington
University of South Carolina

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