Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy.

• Author: Shuger, Scott

When it comes to the military, American publishing has an interesting blind spot The battlefield, from Crane to Wouk, through Caputo and O'Brien, has long produced interesting, salable novels, as well as a fair helping of fine non-fiction. And if you're interested in hardware, there are the story-lined weapons manuals of Tom Clancy and his ilk. But there's another dimension of our military machine: the bureaucracy. Despite such contributions as Bob Woodward's The Commanders and Cohn Powell's autobiography, the organizational behavior and thing of the contemporary U.S. military remain sadly underreported.

The main reason for this is that the smarties of Manhattan deem organizational behavior to be "dull," even when the organization has the expanse and power to change or end all of our lives. Woodward and Powefl got aromd this by being Woodward and Powefl, and by having a hot war as their news hook. But ordinarily, anyone ft*g to pitch a book about, say, how the peacetime U.S. Navy ffim and works would end up kneeaff in rejection slips. (I know. I tlied. And I was.)

Thank God for Tailhook. By using the 1991 scandal as his touchstone, Gregory Vistica was able to sell and write just such a book. Vistica, now with the Washington bureau of Newsweek, broke the story of the Las Vegas assaults--and the Navy's apathetic reaction to them--while 16 was a reporter for the San Diego Umon.

This bureaucratic study opens at the 1986 Tailhook Convention at the Las Vegas Hilton, with Reagan's first Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, lying on his back with a naked woman gyrating over him. C. Northcote Parkinson was never able to come up with a lead like thing.

I found Fall From Glory a fascinating read--not just because I don't find bureaucracy dull but also because I was m the Navy for part of the period it covers. (I was on active duty from 1978 to 1983; Where goes from the Reagan buildup to the present) I even knew some of the officers who figure m the tale, most notably Jack Snyder, the rear admiration for whom Tadhook whistleblower Paula Couffik worked. After the media identified Couffik she said she had computer to Snyder the very next morning about being sexually assaulted and that he had brushed her off This scenario was the basis for one of the Navy's very few disciplinary actions in the case: Dozens of diary avail went unpunished, but Snyder was fired.

At the time, I remember thinking did Snyder's alleged insensitivity didn't sound like the man I...