Those in Uniform Break Ranks With the Public Over Flinn Case

MIAMI — To those in uniform, most civilians still don’t get it. The celebrated and ultimately perplexing case involving Air Force 1st Lt. Kelly J. Flinn never was about the sin of adultery.

It was worse than that.

“Adultery was a part of the picture. But a larger part was her responsibility as a pilot and an officer and the things required of her and of anybody in the military: true faith and allegiance to the code,” said Air Force Maj. Gary A. Perugini, who is stationed at Patrick Air Force Base near Cocoa Beach, Fla. “I don’t know if America understood that.”

Indeed, outside the gates of U.S. military bases, popular opinion from the street to television talk shows often draped the nation’s first female B-52 pilot in a martyr’s mantle--casting the Air Force’s decision to prosecute the 26-year-old pilot on charges of adultery, fraternization, lying and disobeying an order as an action both discriminatory and unduly harsh.

The civilian take on the case was perhaps best represented earlier this week when two U.S. senators from opposite ends of the political spectrum, Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), chastised the Air Force for picking on Flinn by enforcing what they called abusive, outdated moral standards.

But a sampling of opinion from those in uniform indicates that most agree with Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Widnall, who in allowing Flinn to accept a general discharge Thursday rather than face a court-martial on the charges said that the officer’s “lack of integrity and disobedience to order” were more serious than the sensational adultery charges stemming from her affair with a married civilian man.

The military and the public see the case differently, said Staff Sgt. Leanda Caouette, who is stationed at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County. The public, she said, might consider adultery “a little more lightheartedly than we do. They don’t know the integrity side of it. She compounded several things.

“To me, your integrity’s in violation if you’re having an adulterous affair,” Caouette said. “What she did was wrong, and she was even given chances. Everything she did was her own volition and her own choice. She disregarded an order for her own self-satisfaction.”

At Minot Air Force Base, the remote North Dakota outpost where Flinn is stationed, few in uniform were willing to talk about the case. But one junior enlisted woman said that after seeing Flinn on CBS-TV last Sunday, “I got so angry at that interview that I just tuned out.”

Such opinions were not unanimous, as shown by a female Army staff sergeant at Ft. Lewis, near Seattle. The soldier, who declined to give her name, called the Air Force prosecution of Flinn a vendetta. “Adultery shouldn’t be an issue,” she said. “I think that’s just something they use when they have something against you.”

But a majority of military personnel sampled echoed the thoughts of Lt. Col. Buck Burney, who commands a detachment of the Florida Air National Guard at Homestead Air Force Base, about 25 miles south of Miami.

“It was sad that she appeared like a victim, because it’s an integrity issue, a lying issue. There is a spillover from personal behavior to leadership. So the question is: Can we trust you?”

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For many in the service, that issue of trust seems even more important when applied to someone qualified as a bomber pilot.

“If she can’t be trusted, and can’t control her emotions, she sure as hell doesn’t need to be driving this airplane capable of dropping nuclear weapons,” said Marine Corps Warrant Officer Lance Forest, 41, whose home base is the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, N.C.

“We are well aware of the rules,” Forest said. “The military is a society of rules.”

Those rules govern everything from the on-duty shine on one’s shoes to off-duty conduct in the privacy of one’s bedroom. It was the latter of those two categories that eventually brought down a high-flying graduate of the Air Force Academy who just months ago was a poster-ready model of the equal-opportunity U.S. Armed Forces.

Flinn admitted the charges against her: that she had an affair with a married civilian, committed fraternization in a two-day fling with an Air Force enlisted man, lied about the affair in a written statement and disobeyed an order for failing to break off the affair.

In a May 19 letter that Flinn wrote to Widnall asking for an honorable discharge, the pilot said she “fell deeply in love with a man who led me down this path of self-destruction and career destruction.”

The emotional letter, made public Friday, said, “Madam, the thought of leaving the Air Force, never to set foot upon another base, never to stand at attention as the Colors pass by, never to wear the wings of an Air Force pilot is the cause of my relentless tears, a punishment that I will live with the rest of my life,” she wrote.

“I just want the chance to reconcile this situation and perhaps have the opportunity to redeem myself in the eyes of the Air Force.”

But many in the military saw little reason for giving her a break. They insisted that in an all-volunteer military, the rules are inviolable and well-known. Navy Lt. Cathy Masar said rules against fraternization “maybe make it easier in the military, because the guidelines [governing behavior] are clearer.”

Once the line is crossed, many said, punishment should be certain. Navy Lt. A.C. Westeren, who is stationed at El Toro, said Flinn should have received stiffer punishment. “I think she got off with a very light penalty--if you want to call it that. A general discharge isn’t a penalty, as far as I’m concerned.”

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In Denver, attorney Susan Barnes, who often represents women in the military, said that while many military women expressed sympathy for Flinn, “had she gotten an honorable discharge the sentiment would have been that she got a special break because she is a woman.”

“The women I talked to feel it is important that the national attention on this case be ended,” Barnes added. “They feel the service is getting a bad rap.”

Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Minot, Nick Anderson in Orange County and Louis Sahagun in Denver and researcher Elena Bianco in Seattle contributed to this story.

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Air Force Adultery Cases

Far more cases involving adultery are leading to courts-martial in the Air Force, a possible reflection of the growing number of women in the service

Courts-martial

Cases when adultery was at least one of the charges:

1996: 67

Breakdown by Gender

How the adultery cases at left break down:

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Year Male Female 1985 15 0 1986 19 1 1987 16 0 1988 39 0 1989 22 2 1990 34 2 1991 39 2 1992 41 1 1993 38 3 1994 34 2 1995 40 2 1996 60 7

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Source: U.S. Air Force.