DATE: Sunday, May 25, 1997                  TAG: 9705240733

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

THE FLINN AFFAIR: EVERYBODY WINS BUT THE TAXPAYER

As taxpayers, let us mourn the events last week involving Lt. Kelly J. Flinn, the B-52 pilot whose Air Force career got napalmed because she had an affair with a married man and lied about it.

Lt. Flinn should have been disciplined for those actions. Severely. A fine of several thousand dollars and a brief stint in the brig sounds about right. Instead, facing upwards of 9 1/2 years in prison, she parachuted.

Given the choice, who wouldn't?

As one taxpayer who contributed to the $1 million-plus that it cost to train Lt. Flinn as a first-rate bomber pilot - which, by all accounts, she was - I'd argue for keeping her in the military, and in the air, until we've gotten a better return on our investment. The $18,000 she's supposed to pay back doesn't quite square the account. That wouldn't cover a single year at a decent private college.

Among the justifications the brass-hats made for gunning down Lt. Flinn was that they did not care to have someone of her impaired judgment flying a bomber that carries nuclear weapons.

Should we feel any safer, then, in trusting much of the nation's nuclear arsenal to a branch of the service that felt compelled to call in the moral equivalent of an H-bomb strike against a low-ranking officer for making a bad choice about whom she invited to share her sheets?

Lt. Flinn's sins are not pretty, but they should not disqualify her as a warrior, which is the job we, as citizens, are paying her to do. Could somebody please direct us to the volumes of military history that prove that, through the ages, the key to an army's effectiveness on the field of battle has been the moral purity of its troops?

But that's the Air Force's argument, that Lt. Flinn's character flaws disqualify her as a fighter and a leader. Never mind the contrary proof offered by past illicit couplings: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Kay Summersby. Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. Ulysses S. Grant and Jack Daniels.

Actually, few military prosecutions for adultery or fraternization lead to separation from the service. In Lt. Flinn's case, prosecutors say the lie was the most damning.

If that's true - that an officer should be imprisoned or dishonorably discharged for lying - then let's roll back the videotape on testimony given under oath by generals and admirals on the procurement costs of some of our major weapons systems. Or the ever-changing story about our troops' exposure to chemical weapons during Desert Storm.

If we sanctioned every Air Force officer who fibbed about the development costs of the B1 bomber alone, Lt. Flinn would have to be an expert in hand-to-hand combat just to fight her way to the front of the unemployment line.

(Specifically, the Uniform Code of Military Justice forbids lying to a superior officer; telling a whopper to Congress, apparently, is just another acceptable form of prying money loose from the treasury.)

The military seems incapable of grasping that there are vast differences between a case of rape, a case of sexual harassment, and a case of out-of-uniform indiscretion practiced in the privacy of one's home. The sanction for each should vary just as widely as the gravity of the offense.

Consider the possibility that if Lt. Flinn had felt the punishment for a one-nighter with an enlisted man or an ill-conceived affair with a married man would be something less than the destruction of her career, she might not have tried to lie her way out of it to begin with.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. When we see all those rows of white crosses, it might be a good time to remember that we never demanded that the people who lie beneath them be saints. We asked them simply to be brave when the chips were down.

Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary. Reach him at 446-2726, or addis(AT)worldnet.att.net. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Lt. Kelly J. Flinn, the nation's first and only female B-52 pilot,

leaves the Air Force with a general discharge rather than face a

court martial on charges of adultery, lying and disobedience.

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