THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 25, 1995 TAG: 9512250028
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 130 lines
Standing on a makeshift stage to field questions from the crew of the aircraft carrier America as it patrolled the Adriatic Sea last week, the nation's highest-ranking admiral was suddenly confronted with one he couldn't answer.
``Where's Mickpon?'' Adm. Mike Boorda called, scanning the officers - including a three-star admiral - standing just behind him. ``He knows all this stuff.''
With a tight smile, a graying man in khakis stepped up to the microphone, quickly explaining a quirk in one of the service's benefit programs and what the Navy is doing to rectify it.
For John Hagan, 49, such rhetorical rescues of the Navy's top brass are routine. The master chief petty officer of the Navy - or MCPON (pronounced ``mickpon'') in service shorthand - is the Navy's senior enlisted member and its in-house lobbyist for a host of quality-of-life improvements for sailors and airmen. Under Boorda, he's also emerged as an important link between the Navy's senior leaders and the rank and file.
Hagan made some 60 trips to the fleet this year, often visiting six to seven ships a day. Hundreds of baseball caps line the walls of his outer office, each bearing the logo of a different ship or Navy command, testifying to the extent of his travels.
``I get to kill a lot of rumors when I travel and answer the phone,'' he said in a recent interview. ``And I can do it pretty authoritatively,'' because members know he has access to the top levels of the chain of command.
Hagan said the quality-of-life questions and gripes he hears every day are far more pressing to most sailors than the seemingly endless series of high-profile sexual assault and harassment cases that have dominated news stories about the Navy this year.
Sailors are frustrated and occasionally angry about those cases, he said, but most are too busy to pay more than passing attention. ``If anybody were to tell you that we were suffering and the mission was being impacted, they'd be lying,'' he said.
Still, Hagan said male and female sailors around the world are concerned that the almost-daily repetition of news stories about sexual misconduct involving Navy people ``will be parlayed into some (bad) image of the Navy.'' There also ``is a desire for accountability to be swift and for it to be suitable for the offense,'' he said.
``We live with a stereotype that's based on everything from Hagar the Horrible to Popeye the Sailor Man,'' he said. The drunken, profane sailor, living from payday to payday, that much of the civilian world imagines is in fact a nuclear reactor operator or high-tech weapons technician, he said.
Hagan said that perhaps ``one out of every 50 questions'' he heard from sailors during his journeys this year reflected concerns about the expansion of roles for women in the Navy.
Even among women, ``there are any number of more important things (than sexual harassment) that vie for their attention, including their own personal and professional growth,'' Hagan said. On his own list of concerns about the integration of women into the service, harassment ranks no higher than fourth, he said.
``The real issues'' with women in the service are largely related to making sure they're distributed through the ranks and not concentrated, as in the past, in relatively few job specialities, Hagan said.
``If we have a certain number of racks on the John Stennis (the Navy's newest aircraft carrier) that are devoted to female berthing, then they have to be filled by females,'' he said. ``And those females have to be trained to do what we need to have done on the Stennis.
``That adds a different dimension to the challenge . . . We want those 400 racks to be filled with a cross section . . . of the Navy. We want some chiefs. We want some first class petty officers. So enlisted berthing, the advancement process, the distribution process is harder. It certainly is something we're up to. But anybody that thinks it's not the biggest challenge is not familiar with the challenge.''
Despite recent events - from the forced retirement of a senior admiral because of his insensitive remarks about the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl to the reported groping of an enlisted woman by a chief petty officer during a cross-country flight in September - the Navy has a right to be proud of its progress in battling sexual harassment, Hagan said.
``I'm not pleased that we continue to have a case to deal with so regularly,'' he said. ``But I think anyone that thinks it's a symptom of something malevolent or evil or terribly degenerate, is not thinking very deeply.
``Women feel safe enlisting in the Navy, women feel like they're going to have a good, fair shot at upward mobility. We're not satisfied with where we are, but I will tell you that relative to so many segments of society (our) upward mobility is genuinely good and characterized by equal opportunity, and our system of reporting and defining and holding (people) accountable has been tuned.''
Hagan said a recent daylong ``stand down'' ordered in response to the harassment cases and other reports of misconduct was well received in the ranks.
A 1992 stand down, held after drunken naval aviators assaulted female colleagues and civilians at the annual convention of the Navy's Tailhook Association in Nevada, ``didn't go over well,'' Hagan said. Many sailors saw the event as a public relations gesture and resented being lumped in with the Tailhook miscreants.
When Boorda ordered another ``day of reflection,'' Hagan said he heard, and passed on, widespread concern. But the gripes disappeared as sailors learned that Boorda wanted them to focus on a whole range of problems related to ``good order and discipline'' - not just sexual harassment.
Most commands ``used this stand down very, very wisely,'' Hagan said, covering topics from suicide prevention to alcohol and drug abuse to how sailors should look out for each other to avoid trouble.
Hagan said many master chiefs are planning regular reviews of this type to remind sailors of what's really most important about their service.
Perhaps the biggest part of Hagan's job is working for improvements in enlisted pay and benefits, but he wants to make sure that in winning those changes, enlisted members don't forget that their mission is to defend the nation, not secure personal comforts.
``I don't think any sailor worth re-enlistment would choose not to build another aircraft carrier so we could build a better barracks,'' he said. ``And I will not relay complaints that sailors make - if they make 'em - about serving at sea and deploying. That is the reason our Navy exists. That's the reason we get paid . . . and it's the only reason we can feel good about our service - is because we do hard things well.
``The dichotomy in the Navy is that where I find sailors the happiest and morale the highest is where people are being rode hardest . . . really being tried and stressed. In those commands, sailors are happy to be doing what they were trained to do, pleased that they could respond. When you do something hard, you take a certain satisfaction in it.
``Where do I find sailors unhappiest? . . . Where life is good and has been good for a long time.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
John Hagan, Master Chief Petty Officer
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW by CNB