Pentagon’s ‘ zero tolerance’ pledge doesn’t match cases

Despite more than 500 cases of serious misconduct — many involving sexual harassment — among its most senior officers and officials over the past four years, the Pentagon maintained this week that it has “zero tolerance” for such behavior.

Pentagon officials for decades have used the term “zero tolerance” after eruptions of scandals involving sexual assault and harassment. Yet in each of the past four years, military investigators have documented at least 100 instances of misbehavior among generals, admirals and senior civilians, including instances of sexual assault and harassment.

Recent cases include an Air National Guard one- star general who sexually harassed three subordinates, playing with the hair of one woman and kissing her, touching another’s legs, and grabbing the waist of a third woman and inviting her to his room, according to a Pentagon Inspector General report. In another instance, a Navy admiral was reprimanded for looking at pornography on his government computer.

A USA TODAY investigation this week revealed that from 2013 through 2016, senior officers and officials had been found to have committed 508 instances of misbehavior, about half of them for personal misconduct and ethical violations. The Pentagon keeps a running tally, but it does not study why the trends persist, the paper found. The military also closed an office tasked by former Defense secretary Chuck Hagel to determine the scope of the problem without reaching conclusions.

Despite the continuing stream of substantiated misbehavior among senior officials, Pentagon press secretary Dana White said Thursday that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “has been very clear that he has zero tolerance for harassment and misconduct.”