ARTHUR: No, the part of Kara Hultgreen that I had to deal with was the aftermath: Was there a dual standard relative to her training? How she got to the F-14 community to begin with and all that was the normal process of the Navy reacting to a new change that we had asked for back in Washington, and been told to ask for by the Congress. And so my involvement at the end after her tragic loss, was to go back and try to sort through: Had there been some signals missed? Was it being misinterpreted at the fleet that we in Washington wanted them to bypass our standards of measurement of readiness? And of course the answer was no. We don't expect that, nor would we have to, to be successful in this program. I As I got to review her case, I was very comfortable with the fact that here was a pilot, male or female. She was not the best pilot of her group. She was certainly not the worst pilot of her group. She was a qualified pilot. She was qualified to be in the F-14, undergoing readiness to go on deployment.

Q: Whose decision was it that you and Admiral Boorda would go to her memorial service?

ARTHUR: I didn't understand that there was some concern about my presence there, until a long time ago. I guess there was a letter in one of the Naval Institute Proceedings or something, that questioned my going.... Any time an aviator has died, that I've been able to go to a memorial service to, I go.

We're a special piece of the Navy. And we share a common bond. And we've all seen our friends lost. Some of them, we never got to say a proper farewell to. And so if there was ever a time that I could do that, I would do it. Our aviator that was killed in the shuttle disaster many years ago, I was there. I was there on the front row. I didn't need to be there. We had never served together. But I knew of the funeral and knew that I had time to do it, and I went. Never knowing that her father was a former chief petty officer that I had served with at one time. It made me feel good that I had an opportunity to pay the respects of the Navy. And so it was a natural course of events for me to go.

Q: Explain to me why Admiral Moorer and the group that he represents in the retired military community, would be so angry. And they felt insulted, he said, that you guys went to her memorial service, a Lieutenant's memorial service. Why would he feel so strongly that you didn't belong paying respects at that memorial service?

ARTHUR: Well, Admiral Moorer is a wonderful friend, and another one of our great heroes. He has served this country so well. I hope to get this right, because it is not a criticism of the individual. It is the framework with which you served. I have an uncle who is still alive, who was a shipmate of my father's. And he was in the middle of every major engagement in the Pacific in World War II. He disappeared when we sent the fleet west, and he didn't return until they all came back. I can recall the story of him coming ashore for the first time after being gone for all of these years in the Second World War, and coming face to face with a Navy lieutenant female. He's a chief petty officer, and he refused to salute, because he didn't believe that women belonged in his Navy. Now, he had not seen that transition. He had been someplace where he was totally unaware. And it just caught him by such surprise, he was not prepared for it.

I think in Admiral Moorer's case, those individuals that went through the Second World War, and like my uncle, this Second World War was certainly not a place for a woman in combat. He got to see the Vietnam War. And that was not a place for women in combat, although we did have a lot more women visible. But not so much in the Navy. Those of us in the Navy that were there for Vietnam were locked aboard our cocoons, our gray cocoons out there. And we were in a world where there were no women. And so it's very hard to come from those many years of being a warrior, and all of a sudden somebody says we've changed the complexion. They never had to deal with it. They don't have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis now. And so it's: Why are we doing this? And it's hard to accept.

For those of us who have grown up in a much different era, who have helped with the decision many years ago, that somewhere along the line we're going to need females to be flying airplanes, because we may not have enough males to fly. Once you make that decision in your mind, you've already started to say, "Hey, there are other opportunities." And so we really come from two very different eras of time.

Q: Is Commander Stumpf a victim of the post Tailhook atmosphere?

ARTHUR: Commander Stumpf is a victim of Tailhook, pure and simple. Certainly. And the great tragedy of that is, in my mind, the piece of it that weighs on my mind is that he would not have been there if he hadn't been going to accept an award for having led the best squadron in the Navy. You have an individual who went to accept an award. He gets the award, but he also gets a lightening rod at the same time.

Q: Are politics getting in the way of some of the things the Navy's trying to do....?

ARTHUR: The Navy is not against women going as far as they possibly can, in any role that they can fulfill within the Navy. I believe that. I understand that there are people who would want to twist it just a little bit and say, "Well, not there, but maybe here's okay." That type of thing. I think I can say with great confidence that the mainstream Navy understands what the guidance has been given to them from the Congress, which is the law of our land, and understand how important it is to do it right, and to protect the individuals and give them full opportunities for successful careers; and are marching off to do that, and are not bashful about making that happen.

The noise that emanates from this capital city of ours, is a stage show unto itself. There are other agendas, people who have specific agendas, and they have a soap box from which to spring. And some of those agendas are nothing more than good intention: Let's prod the system to move faster because we think it's important for the system to move faster. Those are sort of the dynamics of politics, I guess.

My hope and my belief is that the everyday sailor on the deck plates of our fine gray ships out there know where they're going, know what they're doing, and they're doing it extraordinarily well, and are content to leave the productions back here.