= N E W S B R I E F I N G
=
= OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
= (PUBLIC AFFAIRS)
= WASHINGTON, D.C. 20301
====================================================
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DoD News Briefing
Rear Admiral Craig Quigley DASD PA
Thursday, April 6, 2000 1:45 p.m. EDT
Rear Adm. Quigley: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me begin by updating all of you on the secretary's
travels. He is
in Manama, Bahrain, today, and will be visiting the aircraft
carrier USS John
C. Stennis tomorrow. He's roughly at the midpoint, I guess, of
his schedule
in the region, and I still anticipate his return on Wednesday
the 12th.
And second, I'd like to welcome 22 students and two
faculty members
from the Montclair Kimberley Academy to today's briefing. The
students are on
a class trip to Washington to reinforce their studies in
American history and
are touring the Pentagon today. Welcome to all of you.
And with that, I'll take your questions. Charlie?
Q: Craig, do you have any idea when this investigation
of General
Smith will be concluded? Is it being done as quickly as
possible?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, you all are prepared to go a
lot further on
this story than I am. I'm fully aware of the stories that ran
this morning,
but I'm not advancing this any bit further than we have from the
podium over
the past several days. So I have very little to say on the
stories that
appeared today.
Q: The Defense Inspector General is overseeing the case,
although the
Army Inspector General is doing the investigating. Is that not
right?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I can talk about procedures, but I'm
not going to
acknowledge the particulars of this case in any way. But I will
tell you that
in a normal process, the DOD Inspector General does review
service inspectors
general reports on senior officials within the various military
departments.
That review can be formal or informal. But on senior officials,
that is
typically the case -- not, though, on more junior officials.
Q: Can you even say -- can you even confirm that Larry
Smith is the
plaintiff -- excuse me, the defendant, or is at least this -- he
is the
correct one, Major General Larry Smith?
Rear Adm. Quigley: No, I will not.
Q: Can we try it a different way? Why was Major General
Smith not put
into the job that it was announced that he was being given --
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, I hate to dodge that one too,
but that's not
a process that DOD gets involved in. That is a service matter --
the
assignment of their flag and general officers.
Q: Let me try another one.
Rear Adm. Quigley: It's not true, of course, at the
service chief
level, but at two-star officer level, one-star officer level, it
is a service
issue.
Q: Does -- in the military, does sexual harassment
require that the
harasser be in a position of power over the person he or she is
harassing?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Hmm. I'm not sure how to answer your
question.
That's perhaps more a sociological issue than it is a service
policy issue. I
guess my answer to your question would be no.
Q: So you can't -- you don't have to be in a position of
power to --
Rear Adm. Quigley: I think that sociologists will tell
you -- and I
won't take issue with their professional opinions -- that sexual
harassment
is not about sex, per se. It is about power. I would make a more
extreme
analogy to rape as a crime, and a crime of violence, as opposed
to a -- some
sort of a sense of a crime of, again, of sex or of lust or of
something of
that sort. But harassment is about power, as opposed to -- and
again, I'm
going to go by the definitions of those whose opinion in the
field I consider
more qualified than mine.
Q: Why won't the -- why won't you acknowledge that even
an
investigation is going on?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Because at any time that an
allegation is made
against an individual in the armed forces, both the individual
that makes the
allegation and the individual against whom the allegation is
made have every
right to expect discreetness in the pursuit of investigation
into those
allegations. Some prove grounded in fact, some do not. And until
you're
dealing with a set of facts and not allegations, that is not
something we are
ever going to be in a position to confirm.
Q: But isn't it -- this is a case where -- these are
very senior
officers in the Army. In the one case, it's the highest ranking
female
officer in the Army. Doesn't the -- isn't the privacy concern
there
overridden by some form of accountability that we'd be able to
find the
answer to simple questions like, for instance, why General Smith
is not --
his career has been put on hold? Why can't you even acknowledge
that there's
an investigation, while urging, you know, that we withhold
judgment?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I guess I would say that it's a
commonly accepted
provision that as an individual becomes more senior in their
life's chosen
field, whatever that might be, whether that be business or
academia or the
military or politics, there is a sense that that person
continues to give up
an ever-larger slice of their private life. That's not a theory
that I think
the Defense Department buys into very far. And that an
individual, no matter
their rank, just because they serve in uniform in the military,
does not
indeed surrender their rights to privacy. And I would just
repeat my previous
answer that when allegations are made, you've got to discern
whether or not
this is based in fact or not. And while that investigation is
going on, in
all cases, both parties have an absolute expectation of that
process being
discreet.
Q: Admiral Quigley?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Pam?
Q: Could you share with us the factual definition in the
military,
under UCMJ or whatever law it is that you use, of sexual
harassment?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't know that it's described in
the UCMJ. Let
me take that. If it is, we can certainly look it out. I don't
have it here
with me.
Q: Is it UCMJ that oversees this, or is this civilian
laws that the
Pentagon is adhering to, or may or may not be adhering to, in
this case?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Say that again? I'm sorry.
Q: Is it UCMJ that would govern whether or not an
infraction has been
committed under sexual harassment, or is it civilian laws and,
like, civilian
litmus tests that would be used in the Pentagon on --
Rear Adm. Quigley: There is a broad element within the
Uniformed Code
of Military Justice that describes conduct unbecoming. I don't
think there is
a specific one for harassment, but we'll check. But the conduct
unbecoming
one is very broadly written because you can't -- you know, it's
very
difficult to try to describe the total universe of things that
that might
want to encompass.
Barbara?
Q: What is the military policy for women these days, and your
recommendations, to women who believe they may have been
harassed? What is it
that women should do? And how quickly should they do it, when
they think they
have been harassed?
Rear Adm. Quigley: The department, on purpose, provides
options. We
conduct training sessions and try to educate all people, men and
women, on
the options that are available to them. And let me just tick off
a couple. It
is truly a personal decision, on the part of the individual, and
we try to
educate them as to what those options are.
One might be a confrontation of the harasser, looking
that person
right in the eye and say: "Whatever you just did made me
uncomfortable. Stop
it." And we hope that using that direct and immediate approach,
if there is
the slightest question as to whether or not it was intentional,
that would
solve it and take care of it at the lowest possible level.
And that goes up. You can discuss it with a peer, you
can discuss it
with your boss; you can discuss it with a close friend and kind
of think
about it, talk about it, think it through, come to a decision in
your own
mind as to what sort of process you're comfortable with.
Ultimately, there is the formal process of reporting it
to an
inspector general. And we typically, here in the Pentagon,
discuss mostly
service inspectors general and the Department of Defense
inspectors general,
but there are lower levels of those individuals at major
commands within each
of the services. So that option is also available.
We lay those out and try to inform. But at every level,
it ultimately
is the individual's decision how and when they report that -- or
I should say
how and when they handle that.
Q: But does the military have any policy
recommendations, thoughts --
whatever -- on the issue of timing? Do you advise women, or
anyone who feels
they have been on the wrong end of wrongdoing, not to wait too
long? Do you
say -- you know -- "Whatever you decide to do, make a timely
decision"? Do
you feel that timeliness is an issue in these matters?
Rear Adm. Quigley: We try to not put a time limit on it,
at all.
Again, this can be a very difficult decision for an individual
to make. There
are no time limits, because of that human judgment and emotional
difficulty
in sometimes arriving at a personal decision as to how to
proceed. So we try
to honor their decision no matter the time.
Q: Do you think that women who feel they have been
harassed, should
at some point, let their chain of command or commanders, know so
as to avoid
the issue of commanders' being put in the position of not
knowing, of having
to come back and say, "I didn't know"?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not necessarily. We would probably
not
specifically make such a recommendation. Based on what I said
before, there
are alternatives to that, and it truly is a personal decision on
the part of
the individual.
Charlie?
Q: Craig, the Army confirmed when Major General Hale and
Gene
McKinney were being investigated. In fact, the Army confirmed
that McKinney
had been set aside so that somebody else could take his job
because it was
too much pressure involved. What's the difference between those
cases and
this one?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I can only tell you that there is no
cookie-cutter
approach to this. Each is treated in its own special and unique
way based on
the circumstances before us.
Q: So there's no cookie cutter in this. In other words,
it's all
right to protect someone's privacy in one case, but not in
another.
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, no, I don't think it's ever
appropriate to
violate someone's privacy. But in some cases in the past an
individual has
made a public statement, either the accused or the accuser has
made a public
statement which kind of obviated any sort of an attempt by the
department to
protect their privacy. In this case, there has been no public
statements by
any party. I'm fully aware of the articles; you've read them
just as well as
I have. But that does not change our position on that.
Bill?
Q: Yes. Admiral, is not Claudia Kennedy, Lieutenant
General Claudia
Kennedy among the most -- the persons of most integrity in the
whole
military? Is she not just one of the most trusted and credible
people?
Rear Adm. Quigley: We are -- to be selected for a
general or a flag
rank in any of the branches of the armed forces signifies a
special trust and
confidence in that person. But I personally do not know
Lieutenant General
Kennedy.
Nick?
Q: Given the secretary's zero tolerance policy on sexual
harassment,
what is the level of frustration, concern on the part of DOD
that we continue
to have these highly publicized sexual harassment cases crop up
in the
military?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, again, without reference to any
of the
stories that we've been seeing or hearing or reading here
recently, in a
general sense I will say that it is our most fervent goal that
there would
never be any instances of sexual harassment in the armed forces.
We are
heartened by the -- every time we see a tallying of those
reported incidents
going down, we're heartened by an individual that takes proper
action and
would hope that those trends continue.
But your goal is zero. If you can have the numbers head in the
right
direction, it's satisfying and that's -- it's a process that we
hope to see
continue in that way. But the goal remains zero. It's a tough
one.
Q: And by continuing to neither confirm nor deny that
there's even an
investigation, aren't the Army and both DOD leaving themselves
open to
critics who will contend that this is nothing more than circling
the wagons
around one of their generals?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I think we have a pretty good track
record of
after an investigation has been conducted, of disclosing the
details of that
finding. And that is the appropriate time to do it, not while
it's ongoing.
Barbara?
Q: You said the trend is -- you said the trend is
downward. Can you
tell us any statistics over the last couple of years that
indicate that?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't have them with me, but I
think -- I know
that I have heard from, if not all the services, from a couple
of them
anecdotally that their findings show a greater awareness of the
issue among
men and women in uniform of all ranks, and that at least
reported, now -- and
that's the only statistic you can go by -- reported instances of
harassment
have shown a decline. And again, as I responded to Mik, that's
heartening. We
wish it would be zero, but we'll be satisfied with that number
going down.
Pam?
Q: Is there any concern on the part of DOD about an
appearance of
impropriety that the Army IG might be investigating one of its
own?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't believe so. I have not heard
that, no.
Q: DOD IG is not overseeing this? DOD has not become
involved in any
situation with the Army?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, again, without acknowledging
the specifics
in the issue we're talking about, as I -- I think it was the
first question
-- just in mechanics of process, any time a service inspector
general is
conducting an investigation on a senior member of that
department, there is a
review of that investigation performed by the DOD IG. That is
not true at
more junior levels, but it is true at more senior.
Q: (Off mike.) I'm sorry. Does that take place after the
fact, or
simultaneously?
Rear Adm. Quigley: After the fact.
Q: Is there any consideration being given to -- since
the military
has conducted several studies recently, both the Pentagon and
the Army, into
harassment of gays, is there any consideration being given into
doing a study
on harassment of women?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I'm aware.
Q: At least on these high-profile cases?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I'm aware of, Charlie.
Chris?
Q: Do civilian employees of the Defense Department enjoy
the same
sort of insulation from public information on this that
uniformed military do?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes. Again, the transition from
allegation to
based-in-fact is one that is best done discreetly, and then
disclose publicly
the findings when that process is complete.
Q: But given the public nature of some other
investigations along
these lines, a la Senator Packwood and the president of the
United States, is
it policy that if DOD were investigating a civilian employee,
that this would
not be made public, and even after made public, held back until
the process
has been completed?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Neither of those individuals are
subject to the
Service inspectors general. I'll just stick to what I know.
Dale?
Q: Admiral, is there any statute of limitations for
offenses under
"conduct unbecoming"? Is an officer who might have committed
certain offenses
five, 10, 15 years ago, is he still subject, or she, subject to
--
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I'm aware of, but let me
check. We'll
take that and see if there is. Not that I'm aware of, though.
Q: Different topic when we're done?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yeah.
Q: May I just ask one more, please? For a personal
observation, as a
general officer yourself, can a general officer in the services,
can his
career even survive these kinds of allegations?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Nobody is perfect. Mistakes can be made. But
there are
levels of mistakes, Mik. There is a big difference between a
well-intended
shortcoming and a criminal act -- I'll use those as bookends.
Can you survive
a mistake? Yes, I think you can. But that statement is not an
absolute one.
Everything, every last thing is judged on its own merits, and we
trust to the
good judgment of our inspectors general and the review process,
that exists
within the services and within the DOD at that level, to use
that good
judgment that we vest them with to do the right thing.
Q: Are you aware of any instance where a general officer
or a flag
officer has been accused of sexual impropriety and survived the
accusation?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I know of, but I don't
purport to have a
historically accurate record of all such allegations throughout
the years of
the Defense Department.
Q: But isn't it true that, in fact, an allegation of
sexual
wrong-doing, whether it turns out to be substantiated later or
not, is
virtually always a career killer?
Rear Adm. Quigley: It's certainly treated seriously. But
we don't
provide a cookie-cutter approach to anything. We try very hard
to
individualize circumstances and actions taken.
Q: Different subject? Can you bring us up to date on
Kazakhstan?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes, to some extent, at least.
Information is not
complete here, but from what we know, we're very heartened by
what we've
seen, Barbara. As I think many of you know, the department has
embarked on a
program about three years ago, I believe -- I think it was part
of the fiscal
'97 authorization bill -- to work closely with the states of the
former
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Baltics to try to improve
and in some
places create a professional customs service and a border patrol
capability
within those nations so that they can control their borders. We
have provided
differing levels -- they're all a series of bilateral
agreements, but within
each of the various nations that we're talking about, there has
been a
combination of training and equipment provided to those border
patrols or
customs services.
In this particular case, the border guards at Uzbekistan
stopped this
truck in which were hidden 10 lead-lined containers, cylinders,
and using the
equipment that the United Sates provided them, and training,
there was a
level of radioactivity that was emitted from these 10
containers. The truck
was stopped, the material was confiscated, the people were
arrested by the
Uzbek authorities, and an analysis is ongoing. And I'm a little
unsure here,
but the approximation I'm being given is about a week before the
analysis of
the material is complete. But in any case, that is material that
clearly was
not just sitting in the back end of a truck and was not a part
of the normal
day-to-day commerce here.
Q: What can you tell us about who is doing the analysis
and where
it's taking place?
Rear Adm. Quigley: It's being done within Kazakhstan.
And I'm not
sure if they have asked for any outside help. I'm not sure. But
where within
Kazakhstan -- I'm sorry, not Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan-- where
within
Uzbekistan, I'm not sure.
Dale?
Q: A budget question? Or does somebody want to follow
this?
It appears now that there will be an extra pool of money
put in the
budget as the budget resolution works through the House and
Senate for
defense, and each of the services has submitted a list of
unfunded
priorities. I'm wondering if the department as a department is
going to
submit a list of unfunded priorities. And I'm thinking in
particular on the
issue of health care, since the secretary had said that dealing
with the
problem of health care, particularly for retirees, was a
priority. Will the
department be putting forth a proposal to spend any kind of
extra money that
might be available this year for defense?
Rear Adm. Quigley: That will -- no; the short answer to
you question
is no.
And specifically on the health-care issue, we have just
not chosen to
take that tack, that process I guess, instead of a supplemental
request for
additional monies. The tack we're taking is to work very closely
with the
relevant committees, in both houses of the Congress, to try to
craft a plan
that we feel is responsive to the needs of the men and women in
the services
and is both affordable and productive, and actually accomplishes
an
improvement in health care. That's an ongoing process. We don't
have a
finished product to report yet, but that's the tack that we have
taken.
While we're on the subject of the budget, let me just
say again, we
are very interested in having the supplemental, particularly for
Kosovo, move
along. As you know, that process is being actively debated right
now between
the House and the Senate. But from our perspective, we really do
need to get
the additional monies that's represented there, by some time in
the month of
May, in order to forestall any downstream decisions, throughout
the rest of
this fiscal year, that would have an adverse effect on our
readiness.
Q: Well, just to follow that for a minute: when the
services are
putting forward specific programs with specific dollar amounts
attached, to
try and get shares of that money, what kind of message does it
send to the
active-duty and the retiree communities, about the commitment of
the
department to the health-care problem, when you just say, "We're
working on
it," instead of saying, "Here is a specific proposal with a
dollar amount
attached, there are dollars out there that are available, and
we'd like to
get that much of that pool"?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, I think the message it sends --
and I hope
it would be received that way -- is there's several ways to skin
that cat.
And you can put a specific dollar request in, for a specific
program, to
accomplish a certain thing, or you can work with the committees,
as part of
the ongoing process. Both are effective, and you can point to
any number of
examples of both, in prior budget years. We just think this is
the better way
to go, particularly because it does cross all service lines.
Q: Admiral?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes, sir?
Q: Yeah. On the supplemental again, you said you really
need the
money by the end of May. Unfortunately, all of the procedures
they are
talking about on the Hill, seem like it's going to delay things
-- could
delay things quite a bit. If they don't make it by the end of
May, is there
any kind of graduation of impact, as far as the quarterly budget
--
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yeah.
Q: -- if they don't make it by the end of May,
naturally, not
everything's going to be, you know, stopped?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, what you see the services doing
is already
using some of their fourth-quarter money, bringing it forward to
spend into
the third quarter. And we're obliged to stay within our
budgetary maximums,
of course, for the fiscal year.
So if it -- if time passes -- and I can't draw a
specific line and
say, "There. One day past that date, and we fall off the end of
the Earth."
That's not the case. But about that time frame, the services
would have to
make some hard decisions on deferring training rotations, on
deferring
equipment maintenance and things of that sort. That's money that
they've been
bringing forward to the third quarter, and so that they don't
exceed that
overall budget maximum.
Q: And like if it runs out, say, end of June, July, is
there a way of
kind of recouping some of that or --
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't think that would be fiscally
prudent.
That's not our intention at this point. We -- if we couldn't
count on it
being there, we must be in compliance with the law. And we don't
dare go
beyond a point that we could reasonably have an expectation of
getting that
money recovered.
Q: Craig?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Bob?
Q: On the matter of Ken Bacon and Cliff Bernath and the
investigation
into their release of information about Linda Tripp, are you
aware that the
Justice Department has decided not to prosecute?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes. I don't know if I can advance it
any further
than Mr. Mancuso's testimony this morning before the SASC, but I
think he
pretty much laid it out. So the answer to your question is yes.
Q: What happens next? Will the Inspector General's
office release a
report?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Back to --
Q: Are they finished with their report? And have they
notified Bacon
and Bernath?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Back to the DOD Inspector General,
and that has
arrived back to him from Justice within the last week. And the
tentative
findings of the DOD Inspector General have now been provided to
both parties
in the investigation. They've been offered an opportunity to
provide further
comment. When those comments are back in the IG's hands, if they
choose to do
so, they would then consider those as part of the final report,
and then send
that on to the secretary.
Q: Is there a time limit there for the comment?
Rear Adm. Quigley: No.
Q: It's open -- I mean, how long would they wait to
receive comment
from Bacon and Bernath?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Oh, they're looking for comments back
from them
towards the end of April.
Q: The end of April?
Q: But the IG's office has decided that there are not
grounds to
prosecute. I mean, the Justice Department --
Rear Adm. Quigley: The Justice Department provided that
input back.
Yes.
Q: -- has decided they're not --
Q: So what did the IG decide? What were the IG's
findings?
Rear Adm. Quigley: The DOD IG?
Q: Yes.
Rear Adm. Quigley: They had asked the Justice Department
to take a
look at that. They did. That now gets folded into the overall
effort by the
DOD IG, and that is still a work in progress.
Q: Okay. What were the tentative findings?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I'm not going to go there, Mik. I'm
sorry.
Steve?
Q: The findings were that General Smith did the whole --
Admiral, the Lockheed Martin Corporation has become, I
think, the
third major U.S. aerospace company to be accused of exporting
aerospace
technology, missile technology to China. Can you give some kind
of assessment
of the security damage, national security damage done?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't think anybody is providing an
assessment
of any sort of national security damage done yet. That was not
the intention
of the letter that was issued to Lockheed Martin by the State
Department. The
State Department did that with their full authority to do so.
They're not --
I do not read in that letter any particular description of a
level of damage
done to the nation's security. It all is about export controls
and export
licenses and adhering the U.S. policy and U.S. law.
Q: Was this a major case? Is it serious? Is it not so
serious?
Rear Adm. Quigley: In this building the national
security of the
United States is always a priority for us. We were consulted by
the State
Department in this. We provided our comments to them. It was an
interagency
process. I don't know what other agencies of the government were
involved.
But certainly State had the lead in that process. They could ask
whoever they
wished. We provided our comments to them, and ultimately their
decision was
to issue the letter that I have seen, and it is a public
document.
Q: I guess what I'm concerned -- what I'd like to know
is how
concerned people are that the Chinese military is going to gain
significant
information through interaction with U.S. companies. How major a
concern is
that?
Rear Adm. Quigley: We would be concerned at any foreign
power to gain
access to technology that we feel could be used against the
United States.
And I think that's what this is all about, is making sure that
the export
licenses and export controls of systems and materials and
products that could
be used against the United States are indeed controlled and
controlled
properly.
Q: Do the people in this building believe that it's
appropriate for
these companies, most of whom are defense contractors, to use
Chinese launch
vehicles? And if U.S. policy is that it's okay for them to use
these Chinese
launch vehicles, should these countries be prohibited from
inspecting these
rockets to ensure that the rockets are reliable enough to launch
