Christmas and New Year passed and I heard nothing more from the IG's office. In February 2000, I publicly announced my plans to retire that summer. By then, I would have already served an extra year as DCSINT beyond the normal two-year tour and would be ready to take up civilian life. I had accepted the possibility that the Smith investigation would end inconclusively. From what I knew of IG investigations, women who had previously worked with Smith would have been interviewed about his conduct. I had heard no reports that they had lodged complaints against him. So it looked as if the matter might just be dropped.
It was better to let the case die without publicity. The previous fall, another senior officer, Major General John J. Maher III, had received nonjudicial punishment when the Army found that Maher had engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer by having improper sexual relationships with the wives of two subordinate officers and attempting an improper relationship with an enlisted soldier. Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera ordered that Maher be reduced two grades and retired as a colonel. Predictably, the Maher case received widespread media coverage. The Army did not need another scandal involving a major general.
So with Larry Smith removed from consideration for the Deputy Inspector General assignment, I would have been happy had the whole business escaped public scrutiny.
Having thought these matters through, I felt at peace. The investigators would recognize that I had nothing to gain by making the accusation. Smith would not get the assignment. And the Army could react toward him as it saw fit. That was out of my hands, although I knew an IG investigation was an extremely thorough process that would probe every angle before it was over.
By the evening of March 29, 2000, I had heard nothing more about the Inspector General investigation. I was rushing to dress for the annual USO benefit dinner when I got a call from Major General Gil Meyer, the Army's chief Public Affairs Officer.
“Claudia, this afternoon I received three questions from Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times about a reported complaint of sexual harassment of you by another general officer that has resulted in an IG investigation.”
Well, I thought, the story has leaked. “Tell him ‘no comment,’” I told Gil.
“We've got to give him something,” Gil persisted.
I could sympathize with his position. But I did not have to deal with the news media. And also, I didn't respect the Washington Times, which had taken a consistently antagonistic position toward women in the military. I did not trust them to give the story fair treatment. Besides, there was an Inspector General investigation underway, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment. “Tell him I'm not interested in speaking with him.”
Gil Meyer was unhappy, but I advised him to ask the new Chief of Staff, General Eric K. Shinseki, how he wanted to handle the situation. At the USO dinner that night, a photographer from the Washington Times came up and took several pictures of me. Great, I thought, now it begins.
The next morning, the Washington Times story ran on the front page under the headline “Female General Accuses Peer of Harassment.” Other than the fact that I had indeed told Gil Meyer to say, “Lt. Gen. Kennedy has no comment,” the story contained many misstatements.
Obviously, somebody had leaked information to the paper. What had not been leaked, however, was Larry Smith's name. I was the only general named. This meant I was now the sole media lightning rod, especially as Scarborough noted that my complaint “apparently represents the military's first case of purported general-on-general sexual harassment.”
The story then diverged widely from the facts, speculating that I was “said to be First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's favorite general.” The Washington Times cited a 1997 interview I had given to USA Weekend in which I'd noted instances of sexual harassment during my career. One case concerned telling the man involved that if he ever did this to me again, I would report him “pretty high up” in our chain of command.
The Washington Times also linked me to the Army's Consideration of Others (COO) program, apparently trying to imply that I was obsessed with the subject. It did not note that the COO program had been originated by Major General Robert Foley, that General Foley was a Medal of Honor recipient, one of the most respected leaders in the Army. Nor did the paper reveal that Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer had instructed all general officers to mention the COO program in their public appearances. But they did find space in the article to mention that the nonpartisan White House Project had listed me in 1998 among twenty potential female presidential candidates.
While thin on substance, the story was heavy on innuendo, implying that I was a politically motivated and politically correct officer who ruthlessly wielded charges of sexual harassment as a tool to gain individual power.
But the article was a model of restraint compared to the vituperation that the reporter's boss, editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden, launched against me in a column the next day. He accused me and my fellow Army leaders of being “Petticoat Generals.” According to Pruden's snide account, I (“a helpless little thing”) had suffered a “grope wound” unworthy of complaint, but for which I would probably receive a Purple Heart. Pruden further tried to associate my name with the Consideration of Others program, apparently implying that it, rather than my responsibilities as DCSINT, had become my focus. He also insinuated that “COOing” had become a dominant feature of a “woman's Army.”
Once the Washington Times story was published, the media firestorm I had feared ignited. The Washington press corps badgered Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and former Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer. Both officials stated they had not been aware of my putative complaint three years earlier. That week the first of what would be repeated errors about the case began to accumulate. Media accounts incorrectly stated that I had complained “informally” to my superiors following the 1996 incident. That left the impression that the Army had either ignored my grievance or actively suppressed it.
This was simply wrong, but I didn't want to discuss the matter publicly at that time.
Meanwhile, television producers for all the leading news anchors and correspondents were tying up my office telephones and lobbing e-mails at me. Each TV personality wanted an exclusive interview; each presented compelling, apparently sincere reasons why I should cooperate to tell my side of the story. I told my staff to decline their persistent requests. All this took place during the Elián González situation, and my fervent hope that week as I switched on the television set in the morning was that the little Cuban boy's father would arrive in Washington to deflect the media glare from me.
A veteran media consultant in Washington whom I knew gave me some of the best advice I received during this unpleasant time: “Don't give any interviews,” she said. “If you start talking now, you'll never have any peace.”
But remaining silent was not easy. As the press accounts and television segments on my situation snowballed, the number of errors grew apace. Thomas Ricks's front-page story in the Washington Post on April 1, 2000, for example, reiterated the false impression that I had complained “quietly” to the Army leadership after the 1996 incident, and had only “recently” brought charges after the unnamed general had been promoted. Ricks cited one unnamed “Army official” as saying I had made a formal allegation because I felt the Army had not kept its implicit promise to not further advance the career of the other general. This was rumormongering. It was inaccurate. And it was splashed across the front page of the Washington Post.
Ricks continued that the high-profile confrontation “appears likely to bring a sour note to the end of the 31-year career of Kennedy.”
He added that there was “widespread irritation within the Army” toward me, supposedly because I had raised “an old charge,” but also because my work as the DCSINT “has won few admirers.”
The article brought up further negative innuendo by stating “Pentagon insiders also speculated” that I was acting now out of spite, having lost in the competition
to command the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), an assignment that would have brought promotion to four-star rank. This was also not true. I had never anticipated being offered the assignment, as historically the commanding general of TRADOC has always been a combat arms officer. Further, I had known since 1992 that serving as DCSINT would be my last Army assignment.
Yet, Ricks and the Washington Post saw fit to tarnish my reputation by making it appear that my going to the Inspector General with an “old charge” had been an act of malice.
Most of the news accounts continued with the basic error that I had filed a formal sexual harassment complaint in 1999, more than three years after first complaining informally to my superiors. Usually the sources cited were unnamed “Army officials” or “officials familiar with the case.”
Then, a week after the story broke, the news media learned through another Pentagon leak that Larry Smith was the general officer against whom I had lodged my complaint to the IG. Like me, Smith refused to discuss the case with the press.
The only positive aspect of this leak was that the media made the connection between my complaint to the IG the previous fall and Smith's nomination to the post of Deputy Inspector General.
News leaks continued, some purporting to contain evidence that the IG's investigators had gathered. Each time there was a new leak, another flurry of press and television stories appeared.
After the story became public, I gathered my senior Army and civilian staff and discussed what had happened with Larry Smith in my office. I did this so they would understand why I had gone to the IG after Smith was nominated to become the Deputy Inspector General.
“I want to talk to you about this situation,” I told them. “You're affected by it almost as much as I am. You deserve to know what occurred, but I want you to keep it close hold.”
They assured me they would do so.
It was important for me as a leader to keep my own team informed so that their uncertainty was reduced to a minimum.
“Any questions?” I asked my staff.
They had none.
They were supportive, especially as the volume of vindictive and wacky messages I received increased following each fresh news leak.
For example, an attorney in Massapequa, New York, scrawled a memo to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, subject: “Lieut. General Kennedy (her very rank is stupid; where are you Lt. General Patton!)” The memo went on to say that the Kennedy-Smith “saga” only demonstrated the “ridiculous” concept of the gender-neutral military. He referred to me as “the poor girl” who was sexually harassed by “that bad bad General Smith!” Concluding, “How stupid, how lame, how feminine the once mighty U.S. Army has become, shame!”, the lawyer signed as a proud former enlisted man. On the face of the envelope containing his memo, he had printed, “(Poor Sexually Harassed Girl… a Lt. General, yet!).”
It looked as if I had lost a potential friend among the legal fraternity of Massapequa, New York.
Another writer, describing himself as a “WW II vet,” didn't waste words. “The sooner you leave the Army, the better we will all be!” He suggested that I would have never “risen above corporal” if I weren't a female and that my entire Army career had been “mediocre.” “Military women,” he said, wanted the “best of both worlds.” Women wanted to “prance around in your tight skirts and heels, makeup and false eyelashes, you think things are great and you have your pick of the litter.” But if a man “makes a pass at you, a normal male preoccupation, you shout foul.” He concluded that “we made a huge mistake when we allowed women into the ranks and your recent complaint is merely additional proof.”
It seemed probable that this writer was among those in World War II who heartily backed the slander against women in uniform. Nothing in the intervening fifty years had changed his mind. I asked my executive officer to draft a polite reply in which I noted, “It is clear that you have a strong sense of loyalty to our nation and to our beloved Army.” And I cited my gratitude to the sacrifices his generation had made during World War II. But I also noted that I was proud to have had the opportunity to serve my country in uniform for more than thirty years.
On April 8, 2000, I received a letter postmarked Colorado Springs with a return address “Highly Pissed Veterans.” Whether that referred to their emotional state or their state of inebriation was not immediately clear. There were some obvious illogical elements to the letter, which was addressed to me by rank followed by “(Ms Gutless).” The writer had typed “Eyes only” on the envelope, but then proceeded just below with the message “Woman: you are a disgrace to all good American women. We are ashame [sic] of you. You are a man hater. You should volunteer for hanging at once …” The message on the envelope face continued in that vein for several lines, ending with, “Get lost!” The letter inside was equally enlightening. “Dear Trouble Maker: Good thing the women were not permitted to serve with men in WW II. The war would have been lost on their account. Did you ever have sex before? Go after that man. The military is no place for virgins.”
This writer (writers?) apparently had never heard of the WAC or the several thousand military nurses who had helped save countless lives of wounded during World War II. But I didn't bother to reply to the letter.
A card from St. Louis, addressed to “Claudia ‘He Groped Me’ Kennedy, U.S. Homosexual Army, Pentagon,” got right to the point: “Kennedy: By your idiotic accusations, you prove that women should not be allowed in the armed services. Perhaps male homosexuals, female lesbians and women could form one division to be used in combat not just high paid paper shufflers!”
He did not receive a reply.
Several men wrote, inviting me out for dinner, sending photographs and biographical information.
Every day, the staff would deliver similar letters to be sorted in my outer office. One called me a “Generalette,” another the “Princess of COO.” (The fallacy that I had created the program would not die. Conservative columnist Mona Charen wrote, “Gen. Kennedy introduced an innovation in military training with the acronym COO, ‘Consideration of Others’ training.”)
With the Inspector General investigation moving slowly ahead, there was no way I could publicly reply to any of this criticism. Instead, I discovered the true value of having a thick skin. People I knew and cared about were wonderfully supportive. These detractors were strangers. That said it all to me.
In addition to the personal support my friends provided, a few became surrogates, taking it upon themselves to privately contact the media as inaccuracies about the case surfaced.
And the tone of media coverage began to moderate when it became evident that the reason I had not raised the Smith incident in 1996 was because it was not necessary to do so and that I had only come forward in 1999 after Smith was in line to become the Deputy Inspector General.
I also had a solid base of public and private support during this period. In a letter to the editor, retired Brigadier General Evelyn “Pat” Foote wrote a stinging rebuff to the original Thomas Ricks Washington Post article. She cited Ricks's “less-than-heroic and nameless sources of information” at the Pentagon who had attacked my personal and professional credentials. General Foote added that “Kennedy had the audacity to place her convictions on the line, knowing the price she would have to pay. Perhaps if more generals in the armed forces held all of their peers to the same standards they demand of the troops, fewer scandals of personal or professional dereliction would be played out in the press. Bless Kennedy. She truly has the ‘right stuff.’”
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat from New York, told the New York Times that I “broke the glass ceiling but still was not immune from sexual harassment.” She added that “It took courage to come forward and file a complaint, knowing her own reputation would be first on the line.”
I was surprised that the Washington Post, apparently stung by readers' criticism, withdrew support for their original story on the incident. On April 23, 2000, Post ombudsma
n E. R. Shipp acknowledged that Thomas Ricks's April 1 story had “misfired,” and noted that Ricks now said, if he were doing the first article again, he would “reconsider the tone of the story.”
Even the Washington Times began to moderate its tone somewhat. That might have had something to do with the fact that politically savvy Washington attorney Chuck Ruff represented me. He didn't tell me what approach he was taking, but it's reasonable to assume he made a few phone calls on my behalf. Additionally, Kathy Bonk, executive director of Communications Consortium Media Center, provided wise counsel on the increasingly complex relations with the news media.
Throughout this period, Steve Meyer of the New York Times had the best track record for accuracy and balance.
At the private level, messages of support came rolling in. For example, a decorated Infantry colonel and colleague from a previous assignment e-mailed a brief message: “Just sending a very respectful ‘hang in there.’” An Army chaplain sent an e-mail: “I continue to keep you in my thoughts and prayers.” A member of the DCSINT staff sent a message with an uplifting quote from President Theodore Roosevelt praising those who stood by their beliefs. His message ended, “Again, you have our unequivocal support.” Retired Major General Mary Clarke, who had been a colonel commanding the WAC Center and School at Fort McClellan when I'd been a young captain commanding a company, wrote a touching note citing my decision to file a complaint with the Inspector General as epitomizing the “special trust, confidence and fidelity” found in an officer's commission. These qualities, she said, came at a time when they needed reinforcement to show that the senior leadership of the Army really cared about their soldiers and was willing to “stand up and be counted.”
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