Navy Leader Says Officers Assisting Tailhook Probe

WASHINGTON —  Acting Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe, the 36-year-old Wunderkind tapped to steer the Navy through its politically stormy times, said Tuesday he is confident that Navy officers are now cooperating fully with Defense Department investigators probing allegations of sexual assault at the 1991 Tailhook convention in Las Vegas.

The result, O’Keefe said, is certain to be an “unvarnished” report that will once more plunge the Navy into controversy. And O’Keefe--son of a naval engineer and until a month ago, the Pentagon’s comptroller--is eager for the time of reckoning to come and go.

“If anything, this is the eye of the hurricane,” said O’Keefe, who is using this relatively quiet interlude to rebuild the Navy’s tattered credibility on Capitol Hill. When the report of the Defense Department’s inspector general is completed, he says, “it’s going to be another bounce all over again. But as long as this (report) hangs out there, we are on a rotisserie.”

In the Tailhook case, scores of military aviators allegedly sexually harassed and molested as many as 26 women. O’Keefe said that in spite of his eagerness to put the case behind the Navy, he has not asked Defense Department Inspector General Derek J. Vander Schaaf, who is directing the investigation, for dates or details. He said he has asked Vander Schaaf only to alert him to any resistance on the part of Navy personnel to the investigation. Since he has received no calls from the Pentagon’s chief investigator, O’Keefe said, he believes that the lack of cooperation that tainted an earlier probe has ended.

“Everything that has been indicated to me . . . thus far in terms of the conduct of the review is that people are cooperating,” O’Keefe said.

In his first news interview since he was named acting Navy secretary July 7, O’Keefe acknowledged that the Navy’s credibility among lawmakers has suffered serious damage from its handling of the Tailhook case, as well as from a series of bungled or controversial programs, including the canceled A-12 fighter and the V-22 aircraft, which Congress has kept alive over fierce Pentagon objections.

That suspicion could hurt the Navy in positioning itself for future budget battles, said O’Keefe, the Navy’s top civilian, who served for almost a decade on the Senate Appropriations Committee staff and then three years as the Pentagon’s comptroller. And, he said, that is all the more reason he has labored to restore relations with lawmakers and shore up the Navy’s position in tough budgetary times.

“The general impression on the Hill is that the Navy just is not cooperative, that (they are) anchor-draggers,” O’Keefe said. “In the last 30 days, my impression is we’ve turned that corner a little bit, the people are clearly understanding that we’re not a bunch of Neanderthals. We’re starting to get some credibility back. Is that important to the budget battle and debate? Sure, absolutely. If we’re not perceived as being credible and straightforward in the way we’re responding, we’re never going to get the benefit of the doubt on a damn thing, and don’t deserve to.”

O’Keefe’s openness not only has made him a regular fixture on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers said he is well-liked; it has made him the sounding board for disgruntled taxpayers, who have called him at home with their complaints and sought him out during visits to naval bases.

“This is a public institution. It must be publicly accountable,” O’Keefe said.

But he added, referring to charges of widespread sexual harassment in the Navy: “It is an incredibly emotional issue, no doubt about that, and that makes it difficult. And every single thing you do to try to deal with the case is judged by some as too much, too little, too late, too this, too that. That, you can be absolutely sure about.”