Salem Reveille

In this new witch hunt, the military is pressing a puritanical morality
that has long infected U.S. history. How public should personal matter be?

By GREGG EASTERBROOK

BRUSSELS'In the years of the witchhunting mania, people
were encouraged to inform against one another," one historical
text tells of Salem in 1692. The military's sexual paroxysm
has now reached this stage. Maj. Gen. John F. Longhouser,
commander of the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, was just
compelled to retire at reduced rank because of the disclosure that
he had an affair with a civilian woman while separated from his wife.
No one claims Longhouser mistreated or harassed any woman: The
indictment is simply that he had an affair. And how did this private
matter become known? The Army has set up a nationwide hotline
for sexual allegations. Someone who doesn't like Longhouser called
to lodge an anonymous accusation against him. In the manner of
witch hunts, that an accusation was made was all that mattered.
"Do not judge, so that you may not be judged," Jesus warned,
"for with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the
measure you give will be the measure you get." This teaching should
be high in people's minds, as the sanctimonious desire to judge
others for private sexual conduct now veers completely out of
control. Samuel Parris, chief accuser at Salem, would feel right at
home in 1997.
Within the Pentagon, sexual controversies are genuine issues.
Because of the emphasis the military must place on obedience,
female service members are doubly vulnerable to sexual predation,
and there is no doubt many have been harassed or victimized. Bans
on fraternization are valid for organizations in which officers may
order subordinates into danger. Drill sergeants who push themselves
on effectively powerless female trainees commit a grave offense.
Bomber pilots who lie to superiors break a code of honor that is
enforced for good reason.
But the witchhunt atmosphere has now expanded far beyond
such valid concerns. Last week, Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston
withdrew from consideration as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
solely because he once had an affair with a civilian while estranged
from his wife. This private matter has no relationship whatsoever to
the performance of Ralston's official duties. Air Force bomber pilot
Kelly Flinn was discharged less than honorably for lying about an
affair, but the reason she lied was to evade intrusion into a private
matter. At Aberdeen, some female trainees assert, Army
prosecutors threatened women that unless they accused sergeants
of rape, they themselves would be prosecuted for sexual
encounters. Creating crimes by bullying people into denouncing
others was a standard tactic of the Spanish Inquisition.
Dozens of military personnel around the country have been
discharged, face imprisonment or are already imprisoned not for
any form of forcible or criminal sex, but solely for consensual
intercourse. Prisonfor love affairs!
Sexual involvement is sometimes a bad idea, especially if
marriage vows are broken. But these are private matters to be
resolved between men and women, their clergy and counselors, not
aired at courts martial or congressional press conferences. Over the
last few weeks, top Pentagon officials, White House staff, senators
and media pundits have spent countless hours debating the fine
points of exactly under what circumstances Ralston and Flinn got
laid. Certainly the Puritans, who lived to pass judgment on other
people's weakness of the flesh, would approve this diversion of
society's resources to tormenting the unwary. But is it 1692 or
1997?
Women's groups cheering on the controversy seem to reason
that prosecutorial intrusion into sexual privacy is now justified
because men occupy more top positions and, therefore, men will be
hurt most if having an affair becomes cause for official persecution.
But though Flinn may now have become a celebrity, fielding movie
offers, she is the only person likely to benefit from Salem 1997.
Other service women are having their lives ruined. So far, the worst
price was paid by a woman, Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Tew, who in
March placed a shotgun between her eyes and pulled the trigger
after being courtmartialed solely for a consensual love affair. Tew
killed herself before the courtmartial paperwork went through to
preserve survivor's health benefits for her daughter, who has a brain
tumor. Air Force prosecutors tried to get Tew's husband to
denounce her, but he refused. Lecherous inquisitors forcing spouses
to denounce each other was a running theme of witch trials.
Those outside the armed services should not think this
controversy will never touch them. If it becomes accepted for
military investigators to pry into people's private sexuality looking
for something to punish, how soon will it be before the police, the
FBI, the IRS, employment bureaus and corporate personnel offices
begin asking who you've had sex with and how many names you
will name to save yourself. That may not seem probable today, but
how probable did the Flinn story seem a year ago? Surely, at least
half the U.S. population has had sexual experiences outside
marriage. Any shift by lawenforcement or employment agencies
toward treating love affairs as matters for the public record could
bring misery into the lives of millions who will not get the
opportunity to state their defense on "The Today Show," as Flinn
did.
Among the worst aspects of the Salem witch trials was
hypocrisy at the top, and that recurs in abundance today. President
Bill Clinton has not spoken out, though the situation cries out for him
to say, "The government has no business in your bedroom." Clinton
fears drawing attention to the Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit. But if
private, voluntary love affairs are punishable infractions, the
president is almost surely guilty, and it is pretension worthy of
Cotton Mather for the White House to exempt itself while lesser
persons have their lives thrown over.
Other examples of toplevel hypocrisy are rampant. Until
recently, W. Anthony Lake was nationalsecurity advisor, near the
top of the U.S. defense hierarchy. While working in the White
House, Lake left his wife and began a romance with one of his
direct subordinates, an act far more brazen than anything Ralston or
Flinn are accused of. Yet, while lesser people in the security chain
were prosecuted for lesser indiscretions, no action was taken
against Lake.
Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Widnall has shown herself an
eager witch hunter, ordering that Flinn's and other prosecutions for
consensual affairs go forward. Widnall seems to feel her career will
be served by proving she can be as inept, insensitive and soulless as
any man. But if private romance is relevant to U.S. defense, why
doesn't Widnall disclose the details of her own sexual life? For
example, is Widnall willing to announce how many times she has
performed fellatio? According to the Washington Post, a female Air
Force officer was asked just that by Pentagon inquisitors, shortly
before being discharged recently for a consensual love affair.
There is a class component to Washington's acquiescence to this
scandal. White House personnel, Pentagon civilian officials,
senators, representatives and media pundits are white collar, while
the collar shade for most of those in the armed services is blue.
Members of the Washington upper class, who might move to stop
the witch hunt, seem smugly confident the puritanical impulses now
amok in the services will never touch them: They will continue to do
as they please sexually, while others of lower station or less
education are punished.
Some have supposed that runaway military sexual persecution
represents the internal throes of a macho institution attempting to
adjust to accommodate homosexuality and female roles. There is
some of that, but what this miniinquisition suggests more is the
preschool frenzy of a decade ago. In the McMartin Preschool case
in Southern California, the Fells Acres Day School case in
Massachusetts and others, emerging awareness of childhood sexual
abuse combined with the political ambitions of prosecutors and
media delight in a new source of sordidness to create an outpouring
of demand that someone be strung up. During the McMartin trial
and other cases, prosecutors and interest groups fairly danced with
delight: Somebody was being made to suffer for general pentup
bad feelings about the world. That, in McMartin and other cases,
they got the wrong somebody didn't matter to the majority of those
who, like most citizens of Salem, endured no personal harm but did
get to watch others in entertaining anguish.
Surely, the same dynamic is at work here. There is cause for
pentup anger regarding the unjust nature of sexual relations and
abuse of women in the workplace. But valid anger over the reality
of sexual mistreatment hardly justifies the persecution of anyone,
including any woman, who commits any act with the word "sex" in
it. Just as the preschool prosecutions were eventually discredited,
so, too, will the military sexual witch hunt ultimately be viewed as a
source of dishonor for the Pentagon and of shame for all those, like
Clinton, who were afraid to speak out.
But as in the preschool hysteria, lives ruined in the name of
public spectacle will stay ruined. There is still time to stop the
spread of harm. Remember: "The measure you give will be the
measure you get."


Gregg Easterbrook Is a Contributing Editor to the Atlantic Monthly.
His New Book, "Beside Still Waters" Will Be Published Next Year

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