Winds of Change.NET: Air Force Rape Scandal: Culture & Conclusions

March 14, 2003

Air Force Rape Scandal: Culture & Conclusions

by Joe Katzman at March 14, 2003 5:42 PM

My colleague Trent Telenko sometimes writes from his heart when his head would be better, but that same passion helps him do good work surfacing and confronting important issues. The U.S. Air Force Academy rape scandal is a good case in point, on both counts. Here's what he wrote as his opening:

"Can we entrust nuclear weapons to an institution that has rape as a primary value? That is the question Americans face with the U.S. Air Force Academy rape scandal."

That's a ridiculous opening, unfair on a number of levels... but the rest of his post addresses important issues. G. Haubold also chimes in via the Comments, adding worthy observations from someone who attended USAFA.

Now reader Tom Holsinger adds additional perspective via a very good article in the Washington Post, one that explains how this could have happened without pulling punches or going over the top. I'm going to bring those perspectives forward, deal with the complexity inside this issue, examine where I believe the leadership failed, then talk about some recommendations for action.

CTD...

...CTD

"Academy Culture Blamed in Handling of Rapes" offers some worthwhile points to ponder, starting with the story of Tammy Jones in 1982 and moving to the present day.

"The basic reason for the problems here, according to women who know the school, lies in the culture of the place. The academy remains an overwhelmingly male-dominated institution, 28 years after the first female cadets marched onto the starkly modern campus on a high plateau beneath the Rocky Mountains."

Let's put that into numbers: 54 reported sexual assaults over a 10 year period, in an institution where there are currently about 672 female cadets (16%) in each class of 4,200. One (1) court-martial. Very probably, more unreported cases - I would certainly think twice with those odds. Now, what are the dynamics behind the numbers?

"The heavy preponderance of males in the cadet wing means that the command structure among students is also dominated by men. For a woman, a male upperclassman may be a friend, or a romantic interest - but he is also a military superior, whose orders she must obey.

Which does create the potential for abuse, given the level of control described in the article and in Haubold's memories:

"...it's more like prison guards and prisoners - legally there can BE NO CONSENSUAL SEX under any circumstances between a prison guard and a prisoner. That's not too far from where the upperclass-doolie (1st year student) relationship stands at USAFA.

So there seems to be 2 parts to the problem: an institutional mentality to paper over small and large problems to cooperate and graduate, and the potential for male upperclassmen to act like idiots with female doolies...."

Authority and temptation - a bad combination at the best of times, as the the (male) Graney twins's story demonstates. One made worse by poor leadership under difficult circumstances.

Yes, difficult circumstances. I'm going to start with the complexity, because it's important. Then I'm going to explain the role of leadership in coping with it, and where I think it fell down.

"Some women have been disciplined - for offenses such as drinking or fraternizing with (dating) an upperclassman - because of information that came out in the investigation of the assault.... in the early 1990s, the academy established an "amnesty" program to protect women from such charges... But Air Force officials concede that amnesty is not always granted. "Some of these infractions may require amnesty, some not," said Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff.

[retired Lt. Gen. Bradley C. Hosmer, who set up the amnesty system] "In some of these cases, there's a group of students who were involved - maybe drinking at the same party where the assault happens," Hosmer said. "A woman may be reluctant to report something because, well, she may get amnesty, but the rest of the group is going to get in trouble."

Easy to criticize - but harder to say how the rules would change. Let's imagine that a female officer cadet is raped while AWOL (Away Without Official Leave, a very serious offense) with another cadet. The rape charge is real and very serious. So is the AWOL charge in a military culture, because that sort of thing can cost lives later. Ditto for drinking on duty. It's not that anyone "asked for it," more like - you're a policeman and someone is charged with raping his accomplice after they robbed a liquor store together.

You're in charge of the Academy. What would you do?

Blanket amnesty in all circumstances undermines the discipline and accountability the Academy demands of all cadets, and also creates a perverse incentive to use rape allegations as a "get out of jail free" card. Punishing the cadet for her conduct creates disincentives to reporting serious crimes. Either way, you lose.

This is where leadership makes the difference, and cannot be replaced by rules.

Cadets will always bend the rules, often to the breaking point. Which means rape allegations will often come with complicating situations attached. Real leadership would have understood the seriousness of rape, and the long-term damage it can do. It certainly would have understood that the time to face reality comes way before the point where one lies to a fellow officer.

The bottom line is, leadership means taking allegation of rape very seriously as an attack upon not just the female officer, but also upon all of the superior officers into whose care cadets are entrusted - and communicating that philosophy. All else flows from that, and to date it hasn't happened. Trent's analogy to the Catholic Church scandals seemed appropriate. That's a leadership failure.

Courageous and wise leadership would show itself willing to paper over mere indiscretions in major situations, but not in less significant instances. Currently, the culture seems to work the other way 'round. It would extend blanket amnesty in group situations, in order to deal with serious problems like rape. It would make it more difficult not to grant amnesty to a complainant, perhaps by requiring a formal report as to why not that forces people onto the record. Serious prosecution and a long, long stretch in a military prison for rapists also sends a much-needed message - and the fact that it hasn't happened much to date is the biggest indictment against the Academy. Seriousness also means real penalties for claims made that are found to be blatantly false or malicious, a difficult position to take in the current environment but one that is critical in an honour-based military culture.

The fact that this story is coming to light, so long after the first reported incidents, is troubling to say the least. At this point the Academy staff and the Air Force have blown their chance to handle the issue. Worse, a service academy is the fountain of its institutional values - and now it is those very values that sit under the gun. Tom Holsinger, speaking from his experience with wayward police departments, opines that:

"Drastic measures are necessary, and those can only be imposed from the outside. Failure to do so will perpetuate a problem rooted in the Air Force's institutional culture... You can't change institutional culture unless you change the institution, not merely its personnel."

I believe that measures from outside are now inevitable. The only question is: which measures? In his last post, Trent Telenko made some recommendations. Here's where I stand:

1) "Congress should hold public hearings where everyone involved, but beyond the reach of the UCMJ, is compelled to tell all via immunized testimony. This will blight the military careers of all the accused... The Air Force forfeited protection of the accused officers when it perverted the administration of the UCMJ. The Congress cannot be fair to the accused, but it can be thorough and provide public justice for the victims.

I agree with the first sentence, and the last sentence fragment.

If Tailhook is any guide, the careers of the present and 10-years past administrative (everyone since 1993) staff and more than a few people in the command chain are toast. I also agree with proceedings to obtain the full facts of such allegations so that the those for whom reasonable grounds for suspicion exists can be identified. I would support compelled, closed-door testimony that could terminate the careers of those for whom it appears likely committed such offenses (civil burden of proof), and made the procedings available to the accused and accusers if they wished to take it into civil legal prcedings.

DAIblog mentioned a Supreme Court case that would have helped the women involved here to sue, but was narrowly defeated on division-of-powers grounds. A Congressional finding of complicity or coverup in these situations would provide at least as much help, and begin paving the road to restitution by allowing for suits against the Academy itself.

This ensures that justice can be done, without creating an environment that could perpatrate abuses of its own. These are real people, who have worked to defend their country. Yes, get the truth. Yes, military careers are a privilege and can be terminated. Closed door testimony can do that. Information that finds its way into the public domain, however, should face a stricter standard. To me, the idea of public accusations of rape without even the protections of civil law strikes me as its own form of abuse. I can't condone that.

2) "Congress should demand a list of past Air Force Academy instructors, administrators and cadet leaders so that they may strike them from future promotion lists.

The instructors have nothing to do with this. As for the rest, Tailhook's aftermath suggests that it will probably happen anyway. Actually, what happened is that those associated with the incident would have their promotion applications placed under special review. That hurt a lot of good officers, but also raised the price of silence and complicity. In this case, I'd also support promotion review or denial for those believed to have been associated with problem situations through silence when they should have spoken up.

3) "The Congress should close the Air Force Academy. Just as clean water added to polluted water makes for more pollution. The only way to stop the Air Force's institutional rot is by killing the corrupting institution. The Air Force Academy should be replaced with Congressionally awarded full ROTC scholarships.

I think that should be considered. Killing a service's academy, however, especially one like the Air Force where certain specialized disciplines are involved, is a very serious step. I don't know if ROTC would really replace that, but we've received good comments on Air Force ROTC and it's certainly an option worth considering.

Tom Holsinger suggests a search for reserve officers who did not graduate from the Academy but do have administrative experience in civilian colleges and universities. He recommends a commission from such officers to write a report on reconstituting the Academy 4-5 years from now and, when the Academy is reopened, composing its administrative staff entirely of such officers.

I'm favourably disposed to this idea, which ties into the next recommendation. Again, however, closing an Academy is a serious step - I don't have enough information in front of me to sitt here and make that recommendation confidently. Congress certainly might, however, if the hearings were conducted intelligently.

4) "The time has come for Congress to eliminate the Academy Honor system entirely, whatever the fate of Colorado Springs. It doesn't work in a co-ed military culture... It would be better for cadet professional development if every cadet company were run by cadre of field grade officers and drill NCOs, provided by Congress for all 4 years."

Agree with this.

While they're at it, however, they should review the co-ed culture in the Academy. I think it's perfectly legitimate to question whether that serves any purpose, especially in the Air Force.

5) "The Congress needs to over haul the UCMJ on issues of sexual harassment and provide for the service of open Gays in the military.

I agree with this too, which makes for a conservative consensus here on Winds of Change.NET. The farce earlier this year with those discharged Arabic translators should have been the last straw. Military effectiveness? Didn't hurt the Spartans. Didn't stop Mark Bingham, either, and he should be a Medal of Honor winner. As a side benefit, it may also convince some of the more uptight servicemen that perhaps sexual harassment is an issue worth taking seriously, with policies that protect both sides.

Whatever happens, the most important thing here is action - not talk. We've had too much of the latter for the last 20 years, and not enough of the former. Time to change that balance by facing the issues squarely, cleaning up this mess properly, dealing with the victims honourably (for a change), and moving forward.

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Comments

#1 from Paul at 6:53 am on Mar 14, 2003

"The Air Force Academy should be replaced with Congressionally awarded full ROTC scholarships." :)

"The time has come for Congress to eliminate the Academy Honor system entirely" No.

#2 from Celeste at 3:26 pm on Mar 14, 2003

Another possibility that should be taken under consideration is added emphasis on OCS (Officer Candidate School) as a source for good officers. ROTC and the service academies are not the only way that we commission officers.

It's a bit off topic, but would also help alleviate some of the "Philosophy from the flight line" that Joe posted about.

I'm biased in favor of this method, because my father enlisted in the army at 17, went to OCS and served for 20 years.

#3 from Richard A. Heddleson at 3:35 pm on Mar 14, 2003

Eliminate the honor system because the Academies are co-ed?!?! Returning to single sex education is preferable if co-education has such a devastating effect on institutional culture. (One of the astounding discoveries of the 21st century will be that boys and girls are different and should be reared differently.)

If these guys can't manage peers properly in an Academy environment, I think Trent's opening sentence may not be so far off the mark.

I am surprised A. L. has not weighed in about the root cause of this problem.

#4 from markm at 4:56 pm on Mar 16, 2003

I was in the AF for nine years - and I have long suspected that it might be best to either break up the service and re-assign pieces to the Army and Navy, or at least to trim off some major commands. This has nothing to do with the Academy scandal - but if the service is dismembered, the Academy problem is ended...

The AF is divided into several "commands" corresponding to it's major roles. (Names change sometimes - I use the ones I am very familiar with from some 15 years ago.) Starting with the most useful ones in today's world of counterterrorism and small wars:

Tactical Air Command: Supposed to do three things, Close Support of ground troops, Interdiction bombing behind enemy lines to cut off supplies and reinforcements from the front, and Theater Air Defense to prevent the enemy's aircraft from doing the same to us. Two of those jobs are glamorous and receive full support from the AF brass, even though Air Defense is hardly a challenge anymore considering the countries we are likely to be fighting.

Close Support is dangerous, unglamorous, and a poor job for a pilot that hopes to be a general someday. It's also the most important thing an air force can do for actually taking or holding the ground, which is generally necessary if the political/humanitarian goals of the little wars are to be achieved. (You can't fly at 20,000 feet and arrest terrorists, search for buried weapons, prevent irregular light infantry from ethnic cleansing, or deliver much aid.) The AF does it poorly enough that the Army winds up maintaining a helicopter close support force that is probably larger than any other nation's entire air force. In the last 40 years, the AF has built just one airplane specifically for close support, the A10, and they keep trying to retire that.

Take this whole branch of the AF and transfer it to the Army, with maybe a bit for the Marines, if they want it (there are already Marine fighter squadrons). In the 1940's splitting the US Army Air Force off as a separate service possibly made sense because the old-line Army brass maybe didn't understand what airplanes were good for. This is no longer true - the Army understands combined forces very well, it's the AF that keeps dreaming about doing the whole job by themselves -from so high up that (in Gulf War I) they couldn't see the difference between an Iraqi tank and a British APC.

Air Transport Command: Gets the Army guys to the starting point, although their tanks usually have to travel by ship, and hauls much of the supplies for all three services. In the present system, flying these planes is good job training if you want to be a commercial airline pilot, but the fighter pilots get the promotions within the AF. I could see it as a separate service entirely, like the Coast Guard, but I think the best thing would be to attach it to the Navy, creating a Transportation command to get the men and stuff where they need to go by whatever means are best (ship, air, ground).

Spy satellites and airplanes: This is quite important since it collects much of the necessary intelligence without risking our people in places like Kandahar and Bagdad, but it's not necessarily a military program. The satellites are built by civilian contractors, launched by NASA, and the data they produce is analyzed by the NSA and CIA - I don't see that it much matters which services supply some military officers to the program. I think U2 spyplanes are military, but that whole program is basically a tiny detachment from whatever service supplies the people.

NORAD, SAC, and AF space programs: Now we get down to the stuff that really is a separate job from the Navy or Army - but also to the two commands that look most like misallocated resources. Against whom is Norad defending American air space? Make patrolling American skies a secondary job of the Army Air Force, and use National Guard pilots when the whole AAF has to deploy overseas. Non-nuclear strategic bombing has never been successful without at least the threat of an invasion on the ground to follow. (In the Kosovo affair, Serbia was pretty much bombed back to the stone age, but the Serbs came to an agreement only when half the US and Europe began talking about an invasion.) Transfer some bombers to the Army, stripped of the nuclear capabilities we'll never use, and mothball the rest. This leaves the ICBM's; we need a few to scare the Chinese and North Koreans, but it's getting hard to foresee a scenario where more than 1% of what we have will be fired before they rust away.

So I would leave a tiny remnant of SAC, military space operations, and spy planes as a very small separate "Aerospace Force", and task them with finding new roles.

#5 from David M Henze at 4:51 am on Mar 18, 2003

Mr Katzman,

Thank you for a more level and logical presentation of commentary on the Academy.

1. The Honor Code is not the problem here. The Cadet Disciplinary system is not the problem here. I want to set that straight right now. Do not ever attack my Honor Code ever again. If you have lived under it, and you have internalized the principles that is provides as guidelines, then you would understand. Our pride in the Honor Code is based in the simple fact that we hold ourselves to an institutionalized higher code of conduct than ROTC or OTS commissioned officers.

For example, a recent experience of mine in UPT: I somehow managed to sleep straight through my alarm last week and was late to work. The first thing I did was tell my boss that there was "No Excuse." The second thing I did was inform him that "I overslept." No IFs, no ANDs, no BUTs. The conversation was concluded with "Sir, I screwed up." And he replied, "Don't let it happen again." I can't count the number of people that came up to me after I put myself in hot water for telling the truth and said, "Why didn't you just tell him you had car troubles?"

It would have been so easy. I drive a car that is not entirely reliable. I could have made up any number of problems and been believed. But, I would have destroyed my honor.

The Honor Code is a good thing. If you are maintaining an honorable existence you have nothing to fear from it.

Cadet Regulations and the Cadet Disciplinary System on the other hand...I never missed a chance to "Mess up, Fess up" as a former Commandant used to say. If I was in violation of the regulations, I had a personal creed of immediately owning up to my violation when questioned. Yes, I got in trouble several times over my Cadet years, but I never lied to protect myself.

The Honor Code is a good thing. The Cadet Disciplinary System is a good thing. But, they are two completely different things.

2. If you plan on eliminating the Cadet Leadership, you might as well close down the Academy. How can you have a Leadership Laboratory when you never give Cadets a chance to lead? I had AOCs from whom I learned "how not to lead" and I had AOCs from whom I learned "how to lead." I had Cadet Commanders that were weak and had no idea on how to properly use their authority, and I have had Cadet Commanders that used the authority they were granted and then some and earned respect for taking the risks for their troops.

I myself being a Cadet Commander, albeit not as high as a Squadron Commander, took pride in taking care of my people. My team, my subordinates, knew that I would support them as far as the needed. They knew that I would stick my neck out to protect them and they knew that I would not tolerate quibbling from below. They knew that I would drop the hammer if they were not up to standards, and they knew that I would fight to grant them extra privileges if they exceeded standards.

It was a leader/subordinate trust relationship. Now, if there were only Officers and NCOs, would I have had those learning opportunities that have formed my basic images of a good Commander? No. I would have never been able to test my theories and ideas until I was Active Duty and affecting lives instead of Classmates and subordinate future officers. I also like to think that I passed some positive qualities of the job of Commander onto my subordinates.

3. At the risk of sounding like the Permanent Party at the Academy, I make my third point. There are three "truths" to every issue. Your "truth." My "truth." The real truth.

What we are seeing is the manifestation of "your truth," or "her truth" or "his truth." The media has latched onto this version of the truth and there is no possible way to present an alternate truth without becoming part of the problem in the eyes of the public and the media. "My truth," I cannot go into due to Privacy Act concerns and also to protect my subordinates. Other people cannot tell their "my truths" for the same reasons.

So, we have "your truth" and "my truth." But what, you ask, about the REAL TRUTH? Sadly, we are not likely to determine the real truth. It would take the media conceding that there are more sides than just the one they have presented. It would take the Permanent Party admitting that there is a problem and implementing controls to solve the problem. And it would take male and female Cadets to change the way they interact.

I would just like to conclude with a final thought. The Academy is not a University. It is not a College. It is a Military Institution. You can not treat it like you would Harvard or Yale. In fact, the recent years have seen much in the way of watering down the Military Institution with the Academia. Yes, an Officer should be a well rounded lady or gentleman. An Officer should be a modern Renaissance man or woman. But, an Officer should be trained with the full understanding that he or she may one day have to send subordinates into battle to fight and die.

There is a phrase, "The beatings will continue until morale improves." When you can understand this phrase, you can understand where I come from, you can understand the Academy.

Respectfully,
David M Henze

#6 from Kevin Gildea at 5:53 pm on Jun 12, 2003

David Henze's arguments only serve to heighten the level of the problem at the academy. I wish that I had seen his post sooner to post a response. The entire problem is that the cadets did not live up to the honor code. They did something far more serious than oversleeping. First they committed a felony and the "No excuse sir" was never forthcoming. A cover up and intimidation of the victims and witnesses ensued. Additionally, obstruction of justice could probably be added depending on the circumstances. Rather than acting like officers and gentleman your cadet leadership and the academy hierarchy acted like thugs and convicts.

These individuals ability to make sound decisions in high pressure situations is in doubt. They made very poor and felonious decisions and then couldn't honestly face the consequences of those choices. These choices only involved themselves and a few other people. How will they do when the stakes are much, much higher in a combat situation.