Air Force Defends Adultery Case It’s Not About Sex, Says Air Force; It’s About Honor
The Kelly Flinn case grew into a national media spectacle Wednesday, with the Air Force defending to Congress its adultery-related charges against the bomber pilot, lawmakers calling her treatment too harsh and the release of a letter from a wronged wife calling Flinn a home-wrecker who should be punished.
Flinn, 26, the nation’s first woman B-52 pilot, is facing a court-martial and possible imprisonment on charges including adultery, lying to superiors, fraternization with enlisted personnel and disobeying a direct order in connection with an acknowledged affair with the civilian husband of an Air Force enlisted woman as well as with an Air Force enlisted man.
Though public opinion is running heavily in Flinn’s favor and continues to view her sympathetically as a victim of harsh military justice, some officers have expressed the wish that the case come to trial so that the full facts of the matter can be publicly aired.
Air Force Chief of Staff Ronald Fogleman angrily defended his service branch against complaints that Flinn is being unfairly persecuted for a romantic indiscretion that is not a crime in civilian life.
“This is not an issue of adultery,” Fogleman told the Senate Appropriations Committee. “This is an issue about an officer entrusted to fly nuclear weapons who lied. That’s what this is about.”
Flinn has acknowledged both sexual liaisons but said the male civilian, Marc Zigo, had falsely told her he was legally separated when they began living together.
In a letter to Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall dated May 17 and released on Wednesday, Zigo’s now-divorced wife, Airman Gayla A. Zigo, said that Flinn was fully aware of Zigo’s marriage.
“Lt. Flinn knew we were married and not separated, but that did not stop her,” Zigo wrote. “I am tired of Lt. Flinn acting as if she is the victim, when she is the one who committed the crimes. Lt. Flinn knew exactly what she was doing and that it was wrong.”
She urged that Flinn’s court-martial proceed so that all the facts could be disclosed.
Flinn’s court-martial was to have begun Tuesday, but was postponed to allow the Air Force leadership to consider a request from Flinn to grant her an honorable discharge in lieu of holding a military trial.
Defense Secretary William Cohen refused Wednesday to respond to a demand from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and other lawmakers that Cohen intervene in the case and grant an honorable discharge to Flinn, whom Lott said “is being badly abused.”
A spokesman for Cohen said he was treating the case as an internal Air Force matter to be decided by Widnall and her chain of command.
Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Washington, called on Widnall to ask that she discharge Flinn honorably or allow her to be punished without a full-blown trial so she might resume her career.
The Air Force has never before granted anyone an honorable discharge as a means of evading a court-martial.
Gorton said Widnall listened to his request but gave no indication how she intended to resolve the case, which by Wednesday was the focus of radio and television talk shows throughout the country.
If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of one year on the adultery charge and a total of eight and a half years on the others, including a five-year maximum prison sentence for lying to superiors.