GENERAL'S FIRING SPARKS DEBATE

Students of military ethics say a higher moral code Is required of 
officers; others charge a double standard.

Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 2, 1995

By Susan Greene

Last summer, while waiting for Congress to approve his third 
general's star, Thomas Griffith said he never figured he'd make it 
that far.

"For a guy who thought he was going to retire as a lieutenant 
colonel, I'm pretty thrilled," said the Nellis Air Force Base 
commander last July before heading to Tucson's Davis Monthan Air 
Force Base to command the 12th Air Force and the U.S. Southern 
Command Air Forces.

One year later, the thrill for Griffith is gone.

In a rare public announcement Monday, Air Force brass cited 
"inappropriate personal conduct" as cause for relieving the 
lieutenant genera1, a 28 year service veteran, of his duties 
commanding 43,000 personnel and 530 planes in the West, Midwest 
and Latin America.

Neither Pentagon nor Nellis spokes men would elaborate on the 
allegations, but Air Force sources corroborated news media reports 
that Griffith was fired for cheating on his wife.

Griffith--who commanded Nellis' Weapons and Tactics Center from 
1992 to 1994--was not in his office last week and did not return 
phone calls. His case is being investigated by the Air Force 
inspector general.

Four years after the Navy's Tailhook scandal and three years after 
presidential candidate Bill Clinton, now commander in chief 
acknowledged a "friendly acquaintance" with Gennifer Flowers, 
Griffith's dismissal triggers questions about whether military 
leaders should be held to higher personal standards than other 
professionals. Some observers say the military must impose higher 
standards to win wars, while others see policing personal lives as 
a means of achieving more political goals.

Officers in the Air Force and other military branches are subject 
to the laws of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which lists 
adultery as a legal transgression on grounds that it prejudices 
"good order and discipline" and "bring(s) discredit upon the armed 
forces." Maximum punishment is dishonorable discharge and 
confinement for one year.

It is unclear whether Griffith will retire or face a court-
martial.

News of his dismissal has surprised Nellis personnel and members 
of Las Vegas' retired Air Force community, many of whom worked or 
socialized with Griffith during his tenure here.

"You don't expect this to happen to a three-star general," said 
Realtor and retired Air Force Col. Pete Peterson, secretary of the 
Nevada's Air Force Association chapter.

Peterson said the code serves a practical function in the military 
-- to uphold trust among comrades in and out of combat.

"When you're flying or fighting next to somebody and it's a matter 
of life and death, you've got to be able to trust him and his 
word.  Breaking marriage vows violates that integrity.  It goes 
against the trust you need to uphold," he said.

Navy Cmdr. Ronald Smith is writing a thesis on ethics for military 
officers as part of his master's degree at the Institute for 
Ethics and Policy Study at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"None of us are saints," he said. "But our work is different from 
other professions in that if you're going to lead a battle, you 
have to be as morally correct as possible. You can't put young 
people's lives on the line unless you're on stable moral ground."

Smith's professor, the institute's Director Craig Walton, said 
standards upheld by the code serve as a vital link in the 
military's chain of command.

"These generals don't have authority just because they have stars 
on their shoulders. They have it because of merit," said the 
former Air Force navigator. "If you want to be a real moral 
sleazeball, then don't become a military officer."

Others, however, see demanding particularly upstanding personal 
conduct among service members as a double standard. 

University of Nevada, Reno Professor Barbara Thornton specializes 
in professional ethics and sits on the board of directors at the 
Hastings Center for the Study of Ethics in New York. Having worked 
with the Defense Department in drafting ethics codes, she says 
there's nothing peculiar about the military that would require 
higher personal standards than in civilian life.

"In an ideal world, I would argue that nobody should cheat on 
their wife or husband. But those aren't the standards in normal 
society and we can't fairly expect to impose special standards in 
the military," she said, citing the arrest in Los Angeles last 
week of actor Hugh Grant, who was caught with a prostitute. "In a 
society that's confused like ours, it doesn't seem fair to single 
out one individual."

Thornton said Griffith's dismissal violates one of the major 
principles in justice--enforcing all standards equally among all 
people. Ethics should not be enforced selectively, she says, nor 
should they result in a witch hunt.

"The military apparently didn't think those principles applied to 
the men involved in Tailhook," Thornton said of the Navy's sexual 
harassment scandal stemming from a 1991 convention at the Las 
Vegas Hilton. "One would want to know whether (Griffith) is the 
only man in such a position who has committed adultery. 
Unfortunately, these situations can get very political."

Some see Griffith's case as an: example of the military 
overstepping its boundaries, and possibly an excuse for firing him 
for other reasons.

"It's just like these guys to interfere in someone's personal 
life," said Grace Bukowski, a: Reno-based activist with the Rural 
Alliance for Military Accountability, a nonprofit military 
watchdog group. "I'm sure that if the military kicked out every 
man who ever cheated on his wife, then they wouldn't have very 
many people in uniform. ... It makes you wonder what's really 
going on, why they really let him go."

Griffith's dismissal came just days after a safety official 
claimed that top Air Force commanders tried to cover up 
embarrassing performances by flight crews involved in more than 
two dozen plane crashes. Griffith was to have had the final say in 
sentencing a colonel reprimanded for perhaps the most widely 
publicized of those incidents--a B-52 crash last year near 
Spokane, Wash.

Said Peterson: "If there's some cover-up going on in that way, in 
my mind it would be a good time to put Griffith on notice."

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