Thursday, April 6, 2000 1:45 p.m. EDT
Rear Adm. Quigley: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me begin by updating all of you on the secretary's travels. He is in Manama, Bahrain, today, and will be visiting the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis tomorrow. He's roughly at the midpoint, I guess, of his schedule in the region, and I still anticipate his return on Wednesday the 12th.
And second, I'd like to welcome 22 students and two faculty members from the Montclair Kimberley Academy to today's briefing. The students are on a class trip to Washington to reinforce their studies in American history and are touring the Pentagon today. Welcome to all of you.
And with that, I'll take your questions. Charlie?
Q: Craig, do you have any idea when this investigation of General Smith will be concluded? Is it being done as quickly as possible?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, you all are prepared to go a lot further on this story than I am. I'm fully aware of the stories that ran this morning, but I'm not advancing this any bit further than we have from the podium over the past several days. So I have very little to say on the stories that appeared today.
Q: The Defense Inspector General is overseeing the case, although the Army Inspector General is doing the investigating. Is that not right?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I can talk about procedures, but I'm not going to acknowledge the particulars of this case in any way. But I will tell you that in a normal process, the DOD Inspector General does review service inspectors general reports on senior officials within the various military departments. That review can be formal or informal. But on senior officials, that is typically the case -- not, though, on more junior officials.
Q: Can you even say -- can you even confirm that Larry Smith is the plaintiff -- excuse me, the defendant, or is at least this -- he is the correct one, Major General Larry Smith?
Rear Adm. Quigley: No, I will not.
Q: Can we try it a different way? Why was Major General Smith not put into the job that it was announced that he was being given --
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, I hate to dodge that one too, but that's not a process that DOD gets involved in. That is a service matter -- the assignment of their flag and general officers.
Q: Let me try another one.
Rear Adm. Quigley: It's not true, of course, at the service chief level, but at two-star officer level, one-star officer level, it is a service issue.
Q: Does -- in the military, does sexual harassment require that the harasser be in a position of power over the person he or she is harassing?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Hmm. I'm not sure how to answer your question. That's perhaps more a sociological issue than it is a service policy issue. I guess my answer to your question would be no.
Q: So you can't -- you don't have to be in a position of power to --
Rear Adm. Quigley: I think that sociologists will tell you -- and I won't take issue with their professional opinions -- that sexual harassment is not about sex, per se. It is about power. I would make a more extreme analogy to rape as a crime, and a crime of violence, as opposed to a -- some sort of a sense of a crime of, again, of sex or of lust or of something of that sort. But harassment is about power, as opposed to -- and again, I'm going to go by the definitions of those whose opinion in the field I consider more qualified than mine.
Q: Why won't the -- why won't you acknowledge that even an investigation is going on?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Because at any time that an allegation is made against an individual in the armed forces, both the individual that makes the allegation and the individual against whom the allegation is made have every right to expect discreetness in the pursuit of investigation into those allegations. Some prove grounded in fact, some do not. And until you're dealing with a set of facts and not allegations, that is not something we are ever going to be in a position to confirm.
Q: But isn't it -- this is a case where -- these are very senior officers in the Army. In the one case, it's the highest ranking female officer in the Army. Doesn't the -- isn't the privacy concern there overridden by some form of accountability that we'd be able to find the answer to simple questions like, for instance, why General Smith is not -- his career has been put on hold? Why can't you even acknowledge that there's an investigation, while urging, you know, that we withhold judgment?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I guess I would say that it's a commonly accepted provision that as an individual becomes more senior in their life's chosen field, whatever that might be, whether that be business or academia or the military or politics, there is a sense that that person continues to give up an ever-larger slice of their private life. That's not a theory that I think the Defense Department buys into very far. And that an individual, no matter their rank, just because they serve in uniform in the military, does not indeed surrender their rights to privacy. And I would just repeat my previous answer that when allegations are made, you've got to discern whether or not this is based in fact or not. And while that investigation is going on, in all cases, both parties have an absolute expectation of that process being discreet.
Q: Admiral Quigley?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Pam?
Q: Could you share with us the factual definition in the military, under UCMJ or whatever law it is that you use, of sexual harassment?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't know that it's described in the UCMJ. Let me take that. If it is, we can certainly look it out. I don't have it here with me.
Q: Is it UCMJ that oversees this, or is this civilian laws that the Pentagon is adhering to, or may or may not be adhering to, in this case?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Say that again? I'm sorry.
Q: Is it UCMJ that would govern whether or not an infraction has been committed under sexual harassment, or is it civilian laws and, like, civilian litmus tests that would be used in the Pentagon on --
Rear Adm. Quigley: There is a broad element within the Uniformed Code of Military Justice that describes conduct unbecoming. I don't think there is a specific one for harassment, but we'll check. But the conduct unbecoming one is very broadly written because you can't -- you know, it's very difficult to try to describe the total universe of things that that might want to encompass.
Barbara?
Q: What is the military policy for women these days, and your recommendations, to women who believe they may have been harassed? What is it that women should do? And how quickly should they do it, when they think they have been harassed?
Rear Adm. Quigley: The department, on purpose, provides options. We conduct training sessions and try to educate all people, men and women, on the options that are available to them. And let me just tick off a couple. It is truly a personal decision, on the part of the individual, and we try to educate them as to what those options are.
One might be a confrontation of the harasser, looking that person right in the eye and say: "Whatever you just did made me uncomfortable. Stop it." And we hope that using that direct and immediate approach, if there is the slightest question as to whether or not it was intentional, that would solve it and take care of it at the lowest possible level.
And that goes up. You can discuss it with a peer, you can discuss it with your boss; you can discuss it with a close friend and kind of think about it, talk about it, think it through, come to a decision in your own mind as to what sort of process you're comfortable with.
Ultimately, there is the formal process of reporting it to an inspector general. And we typically, here in the Pentagon, discuss mostly service inspectors general and the Department of Defense inspectors general, but there are lower levels of those individuals at major commands within each of the services. So that option is also available.
We lay those out and try to inform. But at every level, it ultimately is the individual's decision how and when they report that -- or I should say how and when they handle that.
Q: But does the military have any policy recommendations, thoughts -- whatever -- on the issue of timing? Do you advise women, or anyone who feels they have been on the wrong end of wrongdoing, not to wait too long? Do you say -- you know -- "Whatever you decide to do, make a timely decision"? Do you feel that timeliness is an issue in these matters?
Rear Adm. Quigley: We try to not put a time limit on it, at all. Again, this can be a very difficult decision for an individual to make. There are no time limits, because of that human judgment and emotional difficulty in sometimes arriving at a personal decision as to how to proceed. So we try to honor their decision no matter the time.
Q: Do you think that women who feel they have been harassed, should at some point, let their chain of command or commanders, know so as to avoid the issue of commanders' being put in the position of not knowing, of having to come back and say, "I didn't know"?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not necessarily. We would probably not specifically make such a recommendation. Based on what I said before, there are alternatives to that, and it truly is a personal decision on the part of the individual.
Charlie?
Q: Craig, the Army confirmed when Major General Hale and Gene McKinney were being investigated. In fact, the Army confirmed that McKinney had been set aside so that somebody else could take his job because it was too much pressure involved. What's the difference between those cases and this one?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I can only tell you that there is no cookie-cutter approach to this. Each is treated in its own special and unique way based on the circumstances before us.
Q: So there's no cookie cutter in this. In other words, it's all right to protect someone's privacy in one case, but not in another.
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, no, I don't think it's ever appropriate to violate someone's privacy. But in some cases in the past an individual has made a public statement, either the accused or the accuser has made a public statement which kind of obviated any sort of an attempt by the department to protect their privacy. In this case, there has been no public statements by any party. I'm fully aware of the articles; you've read them just as well as I have. But that does not change our position on that.
Bill?
Q: Yes. Admiral, is not Claudia Kennedy, Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy among the most -- the persons of most integrity in the whole military? Is she not just one of the most trusted and credible people?
Rear Adm. Quigley: We are -- to be selected for a general or a flag rank in any of the branches of the armed forces signifies a special trust and confidence in that person. But I personally do not know Lieutenant General Kennedy.
Nick?
Q: Given the secretary's zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment, what is the level of frustration, concern on the part of DOD that we continue to have these highly publicized sexual harassment cases crop up in the military?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, again, without reference to any of the stories that we've been seeing or hearing or reading here recently, in a general sense I will say that it is our most fervent goal that there would never be any instances of sexual harassment in the armed forces. We are heartened by the -- every time we see a tallying of those reported incidents going down, we're heartened by an individual that takes proper action and would hope that those trends continue.
But your goal is zero. If you can have the numbers head in the right direction, it's satisfying and that's -- it's a process that we hope to see continue in that way. But the goal remains zero. It's a tough one.
Q: And by continuing to neither confirm nor deny that there's even an investigation, aren't the Army and both DOD leaving themselves open to critics who will contend that this is nothing more than circling the wagons around one of their generals?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I think we have a pretty good track record of after an investigation has been conducted, of disclosing the details of that finding. And that is the appropriate time to do it, not while it's ongoing.
Barbara?
Q: You said the trend is -- you said the trend is downward. Can you tell us any statistics over the last couple of years that indicate that?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't have them with me, but I think -- I know that I have heard from, if not all the services, from a couple of them anecdotally that their findings show a greater awareness of the issue among men and women in uniform of all ranks, and that at least reported, now -- and that's the only statistic you can go by -- reported instances of harassment have shown a decline. And again, as I responded to Mik, that's heartening. We wish it would be zero, but we'll be satisfied with that number going down.
Pam?
Q: Is there any concern on the part of DOD about an appearance of impropriety that the Army IG might be investigating one of its own?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't believe so. I have not heard that, no.
Q: DOD IG is not overseeing this? DOD has not become involved in any situation with the Army?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, again, without acknowledging the specifics in the issue we're talking about, as I -- I think it was the first question -- just in mechanics of process, any time a service inspector general is conducting an investigation on a senior member of that department, there is a review of that investigation performed by the DOD IG. That is not true at more junior levels, but it is true at more senior.
Q: (Off mike.) I'm sorry. Does that take place after the fact, or simultaneously?
Rear Adm. Quigley: After the fact.
Q: Is there any consideration being given to -- since the military has conducted several studies recently, both the Pentagon and the Army, into harassment of gays, is there any consideration being given into doing a study on harassment of women?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I'm aware.
Q: At least on these high-profile cases?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I'm aware of, Charlie.
Chris?
Q: Do civilian employees of the Defense Department enjoy the same sort of insulation from public information on this that uniformed military do?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes. Again, the transition from allegation to based-in-fact is one that is best done discreetly, and then disclose publicly the findings when that process is complete.
Q: But given the public nature of some other investigations along these lines, a la Senator Packwood and the president of the United States, is it policy that if DOD were investigating a civilian employee, that this would not be made public, and even after made public, held back until the process has been completed?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Neither of those individuals are subject to the Service inspectors general. I'll just stick to what I know.
Dale?
Q: Admiral, is there any statute of limitations for offenses under "conduct unbecoming"? Is an officer who might have committed certain offenses five, 10, 15 years ago, is he still subject, or she, subject to --
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I'm aware of, but let me check. We'll take that and see if there is. Not that I'm aware of, though.
Q: Different topic when we're done?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yeah.
Q: May I just ask one more, please? For a personal observation, as a general officer yourself, can a general officer in the services, can his career even survive these kinds of allegations?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Nobody is perfect. Mistakes can be made. But there are levels of mistakes, Mik. There is a big difference between a well-intended shortcoming and a criminal act -- I'll use those as bookends. Can you survive a mistake? Yes, I think you can. But that statement is not an absolute one. Everything, every last thing is judged on its own merits, and we trust to the good judgment of our inspectors general and the review process, that exists within the services and within the DOD at that level, to use that good judgment that we vest them with to do the right thing.
Q: Are you aware of any instance where a general officer or a flag officer has been accused of sexual impropriety and survived the accusation?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Not that I know of, but I don't purport to have a historically accurate record of all such allegations throughout the years of the Defense Department.
Q: But isn't it true that, in fact, an allegation of sexual wrong-doing, whether it turns out to be substantiated later or not, is virtually always a career killer?
Rear Adm. Quigley: It's certainly treated seriously. But we don't provide a cookie-cutter approach to anything. We try very hard to individualize circumstances and actions taken.
Q: Different subject? Can you bring us up to date on Kazakhstan?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes, to some extent, at least. Information is not complete here, but from what we know, we're very heartened by what we've seen, Barbara. As I think many of you know, the department has embarked on a program about three years ago, I believe -- I think it was part of the fiscal '97 authorization bill -- to work closely with the states of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Baltics to try to improve and in some places create a professional customs service and a border patrol capability within those nations so that they can control their borders. We have provided differing levels -- they're all a series of bilateral agreements, but within each of the various nations that we're talking about, there has been a combination of training and equipment provided to those border patrols or customs services.
In this particular case, the border guards at Uzbekistan stopped this truck in which were hidden 10 lead-lined containers, cylinders, and using the equipment that the United Sates provided them, and training, there was a level of radioactivity that was emitted from these 10 containers. The truck was stopped, the material was confiscated, the people were arrested by the Uzbek authorities, and an analysis is ongoing. And I'm a little unsure here, but the approximation I'm being given is about a week before the analysis of the material is complete. But in any case, that is material that clearly was not just sitting in the back end of a truck and was not a part of the normal day-to-day commerce here.
Q: What can you tell us about who is doing the analysis and where it's taking place?
Rear Adm. Quigley: It's being done within Kazakhstan. And I'm not sure if they have asked for any outside help. I'm not sure. But where within Kazakhstan -- I'm sorry, not Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan-- where within Uzbekistan, I'm not sure.
Dale?
Q: A budget question? Or does somebody want to follow this?
It appears now that there will be an extra pool of money put in the budget as the budget resolution works through the House and Senate for defense, and each of the services has submitted a list of unfunded priorities. I'm wondering if the department as a department is going to submit a list of unfunded priorities. And I'm thinking in particular on the issue of health care, since the secretary had said that dealing with the problem of health care, particularly for retirees, was a priority. Will the department be putting forth a proposal to spend any kind of extra money that might be available this year for defense?
Rear Adm. Quigley: That will -- no; the short answer to you question is no.
And specifically on the health-care issue, we have just not chosen to take that tack, that process I guess, instead of a supplemental request for additional monies. The tack we're taking is to work very closely with the relevant committees, in both houses of the Congress, to try to craft a plan that we feel is responsive to the needs of the men and women in the services and is both affordable and productive, and actually accomplishes an improvement in health care. That's an ongoing process. We don't have a finished product to report yet, but that's the tack that we have taken.
While we're on the subject of the budget, let me just say again, we are very interested in having the supplemental, particularly for Kosovo, move along. As you know, that process is being actively debated right now between the House and the Senate. But from our perspective, we really do need to get the additional monies that's represented there, by some time in the month of May, in order to forestall any downstream decisions, throughout the rest of this fiscal year, that would have an adverse effect on our readiness.
Q: Well, just to follow that for a minute: when the services are putting forward specific programs with specific dollar amounts attached, to try and get shares of that money, what kind of message does it send to the active-duty and the retiree communities, about the commitment of the department to the health-care problem, when you just say, "We're working on it," instead of saying, "Here is a specific proposal with a dollar amount attached, there are dollars out there that are available, and we'd like to get that much of that pool"?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, I think the message it sends -- and I hope it would be received that way -- is there's several ways to skin that cat. And you can put a specific dollar request in, for a specific program, to accomplish a certain thing, or you can work with the committees, as part of the ongoing process. Both are effective, and you can point to any number of examples of both, in prior budget years. We just think this is the better way to go, particularly because it does cross all service lines.
Q: Admiral?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes, sir?
Q: Yeah. On the supplemental again, you said you really need the money by the end of May. Unfortunately, all of the procedures they are talking about on the Hill, seem like it's going to delay things -- could delay things quite a bit. If they don't make it by the end of May, is there any kind of graduation of impact, as far as the quarterly budget --
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yeah.
Q: -- if they don't make it by the end of May, naturally, not everything's going to be, you know, stopped?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, what you see the services doing is already using some of their fourth-quarter money, bringing it forward to spend into the third quarter. And we're obliged to stay within our budgetary maximums, of course, for the fiscal year.
So if it -- if time passes -- and I can't draw a specific line and say, "There. One day past that date, and we fall off the end of the Earth." That's not the case. But about that time frame, the services would have to make some hard decisions on deferring training rotations, on deferring equipment maintenance and things of that sort. That's money that they've been bringing forward to the third quarter, and so that they don't exceed that overall budget maximum.
Q: And like if it runs out, say, end of June, July, is there a way of kind of recouping some of that or --
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't think that would be fiscally prudent. That's not our intention at this point. We -- if we couldn't count on it being there, we must be in compliance with the law. And we don't dare go beyond a point that we could reasonably have an expectation of getting that money recovered.
Q: Craig?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Bob?
Q: On the matter of Ken Bacon and Cliff Bernath and the investigation into their release of information about Linda Tripp, are you aware that the Justice Department has decided not to prosecute?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Yes. I don't know if I can advance it any further than Mr. Mancuso's testimony this morning before the SASC, but I think he pretty much laid it out. So the answer to your question is yes.
Q: What happens next? Will the Inspector General's office release a report?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Back to --
Q: Are they finished with their report? And have they notified Bacon and Bernath?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Back to the DOD Inspector General, and that has arrived back to him from Justice within the last week. And the tentative findings of the DOD Inspector General have now been provided to both parties in the investigation. They've been offered an opportunity to provide further comment. When those comments are back in the IG's hands, if they choose to do so, they would then consider those as part of the final report, and then send that on to the secretary.
Q: Is there a time limit there for the comment?
Rear Adm. Quigley: No.
Q: It's open -- I mean, how long would they wait to receive comment from Bacon and Bernath?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Oh, they're looking for comments back from them towards the end of April.
Q: The end of April?
Q: But the IG's office has decided that there are not grounds to prosecute. I mean, the Justice Department --
Rear Adm. Quigley: The Justice Department provided that input back. Yes.
Q: -- has decided they're not --
Q: So what did the IG decide? What were the IG's findings?
Rear Adm. Quigley: The DOD IG?
Q: Yes.
Rear Adm. Quigley: They had asked the Justice Department to take a look at that. They did. That now gets folded into the overall effort by the DOD IG, and that is still a work in progress.
Q: Okay. What were the tentative findings?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I'm not going to go there, Mik. I'm sorry.
Steve?
Q: The findings were that General Smith did the whole --
Admiral, the Lockheed Martin Corporation has become, I think, the third major U.S. aerospace company to be accused of exporting aerospace technology, missile technology to China. Can you give some kind of assessment of the security damage, national security damage done?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't think anybody is providing an assessment of any sort of national security damage done yet. That was not the intention of the letter that was issued to Lockheed Martin by the State Department. The State Department did that with their full authority to do so. They're not -- I do not read in that letter any particular description of a level of damage done to the nation's security. It all is about export controls and export licenses and adhering the U.S. policy and U.S. law.
Q: Was this a major case? Is it serious? Is it not so serious?
Rear Adm. Quigley: In this building the national security of the United States is always a priority for us. We were consulted by the State Department in this. We provided our comments to them. It was an interagency process. I don't know what other agencies of the government were involved. But certainly State had the lead in that process. They could ask whoever they wished. We provided our comments to them, and ultimately their decision was to issue the letter that I have seen, and it is a public document.
Q: I guess what I'm concerned -- what I'd like to know is how concerned people are that the Chinese military is going to gain significant information through interaction with U.S. companies. How major a concern is that?
Rear Adm. Quigley: We would be concerned at any foreign power to gain access to technology that we feel could be used against the United States. And I think that's what this is all about, is making sure that the export licenses and export controls of systems and materials and products that could be used against the United States are indeed controlled and controlled properly.
Q: Do the people in this building believe that it's appropriate for these companies, most of whom are defense contractors, to use Chinese launch vehicles? And if U.S. policy is that it's okay for them to use these Chinese launch vehicles, should these countries be prohibited from inspecting these rockets to ensure that the rockets are reliable enough to launch their billion-dollar payloads into space?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I don't know that we have taken a policy position on that. I don't know. I can check. I don't think so.
Q: Do you know what the recommendation was in terms of allowing contractors to use Chinese launch vehicles?
Rear Adm. Quigley: No, I don't.
Q: Craig, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer has been taken into custody in Moscow, charged with espionage by the Russians. Was this former Navy captain, Edmond Pope, working for the DOD, any agency in the DOD or the U.S. government, as far as you know?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, I can't speak on the broader question, but as far as being some sort of employee of the Department of Defense, no, he was not.
Q: So he was not a spy for the Defense Department?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Reports I've seen -- no, I sure wouldn't use that term. The reports I've seen say he was a businessman frequently traveling to Moscow. I'm heartened to hear that the U.S. consular officer in Moscow has met with him. He appears to be in good health, but statements from the Russians are that he will be charged with espionage. We'll just have to let that play out in the days to come.
Q: As a Naval intelligence officer, was he ever involved in spying on either the former Soviet Union or the Russian military?
Rear Adm. Quigley: I think the Navy's staff has a listing of his former assignments, but that's the extent of my knowledge, Mik. I don't know if I can provide a good answer to that question.
John?
Q: Do you know whether he was a Russian speaker? He was assigned to the Swedish embassy in the '80s -- or, the U.S. embassy in Sweden, rather -- in the '80s, which is sort of widely known as a listening post for the Soviet Union.
Rear Adm. Quigley: I know that many Navy intelligence officers can speak more than one language, but what Pope's language capabilities are, I do not know.
John?
Q: This is a different subject, and we've actually raised this before. Is the -- are you going to allow for the release of the Air Force after-action report in Kosovo? Is it totally classified? If you're not going to allow us to see it, why?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, a couple of thoughts on that. The secretary made it very clear in the very, very early process, as we gathered lessons learned from Kosovo, that we would provide a quick look, department-wide, and then a more comprehensive report to the Congress, and those things were both produced.
It was also very important to him that there be a single product that provided a comprehensive look at the totality of Allied Force. With that goal in mind, he sought and actively solicited inputs from the CINCs, from the services, from Defense agencies that were participants in Allied Force to a greater or lesser extent. That was an active, ongoing process of inputs and combinations over a period of many months.
The services, I know, have, to a greater or lesser extent -- it takes different forms in each of the services -- but they're taking that rather broad data and applying it -- I know there's work going on at laboratories and precision-guided munitions and other studies in each of the services -- that is taking a look and breaking that down to the next level yet. So there's probably good information that the services are dissecting further to learn more from the particulars.
But as far as there being an after-action report, we feel it's important that there only be one voice on that.
Q: So what you're indicating is the Air Force may not have exactly agreed with all the conclusions of the broader report? I don't understand why more voices are not better.
Rear Adm. Quigley: Well, I remember --
Q: (Off mike) -- like drastic control of the flow of information, is what you're doing.
Rear Adm. Quigley: The Air Force provided many inputs to both the quick look and the more involved product that was provided to the Congress in January. I would suspect that there are further parts as well, properly classified, I would suspect, in most cases that not only the Air Force but the other services would use to gain more knowledge of the particulars from their own systems during Allied Force. But as far as there being a comprehensive look at Allied Force in its entirety as the joint and combined operation that it was, Secretary Cohen, from the earliest days of the gathering of information, felt that it was important that we would have one voice on that.
Yes?
Q: Any comments about Representative Lewis's threat to block F-22 in avionics testing isn't completed by the end of the year?
Rear Adm. Quigley: We owe Congressman Lewis as much information as we can provide him to try to make it clear in his mind the process that we see in the weeks and months ahead to overcome some of the challenges posed by the Boeing strike of a couple of months ago. He is in a position to expect that from us, and we owe that to him. So that provision of information and dialogue with both Congressman Lewis and others within the Congress will continue as best we can provide it.
Two things, while I have everybody here. First, on the comment period for the inspector general, there is a 14-day response window -- Bob, I think that was your question, or Charlie -- that can be extended upon request for the subject of an investigation to provide additional information or mitigating information. Fourteen days.
Q: (Off mike.)
Rear Adm. Quigley: Within the last couple of days. I'm not absolutely clear on that date, but just in the last couple of days, Pam.
And the statute of limitations on conduct unbecoming is five years. And that is Article 43 in the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. Now, harassment is covered under Article 134 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, and that is conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.
Q: And is there a statute of limitations there?
Rear Adm. Quigley: Five years as well.
Q: Thank you.
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