[Lehman served as secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration. In the following review, he responds negatively to Conduct Unbecoming, maintaining that many of Shilts's facts and personal accounts are inflated, slanted, and often erroneous.]

On March 14, 1778, George Washington personally ordered Lt. G. F. Enslin drummed out of Valley Forge "with abhorrence and detestation" after he was found guilty of sodomy. From that day on such activity has never been tolerated in the military. While the severity of enforcement and punishment has varied, the emphasis was always on behavior, not preference or inclination. That policy was changed by the Carter administration.

The nature of the present tempest over gays in the military springs from two Orwellian initiatives by Democrats in the early 1980s. The first of these was Department of Defense Directive 1332.13, pushed through by military homophobes in the last days of the Carter presidency. For the first time, the mere "propensity" for homosexuality, without any activity, became grounds for mandatory expulsion from military service.

The second cause was the passage by congressional Democrats of the Independent Inspector General Act, which established a new Gestapo-style program called the Waste-Fraud-Abuse Hotline. With this institutionalized anonymous-informant system, the Pentagon began an era of witch hunting. Don't like your boss? Put her through the wringer with an anonymous call saying she is gay.

Most of Randy Shilts's Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military is a compendium of scores and scores of such cases. The pattern is endlessly repetitious. There are many sad and tragic stories described here, though Mr. Shilts loses sight of the fact that, apart from the damage specifically caused by the stupid Carter directive, the suffering is not reserved for gays but visited equally upon all those unjustly accused of anything by informants in the mindless bureaucratic investigative and prosecutorial system that has been created in Washington. It is but another manifestation of the criminalization of the political process carried out by Congress in the '80s.

Among my own dirty little secrets is a propensity to start books in the back, going straight to the index in the hope or fear of finding my name. This got me off to a bad start with Mr. Shilts because the official actions he ascribes to me are wrong. I strongly opposed the Carter policy I inherited and intervened to change its implementation. There have been many gay men and women who have served brilliantly and behaved impeccably. I judged individuals on performance and behavior, not their preferences. Maybe Mr. Shilts should have called me up, since Conduct Unbecoming includes more than 1,000 interviews.

Many involve anonymous sources and gifted fabulists. Mr. Shilts is not reluctant to accept exaggerated stories in his mission to inflate the homosexual presence in the military. He accepts as fact one mythologist's story about gay discos on board aircraft carriers (I somehow missed these in 25 years of service on carriers). He tells us that so many doctors and medics are gay that "the military would have to close down its medical centers if they were thrown out."

But Mr. Shilts really starts hallucinating when he describes Vietnam as a kind of Apocalypse Now in drag, with all of the standard left-wing cliches. According to him, when they were not busy machine-gunning children, many soldiers spent their time cross-dressing, dancing in gay bars and having sex with each other. His loathing of the military and his genuine ignorance of its ways exemplify the schizophrenia of the radical gay movement. Why so much effort seeking rights in an institution they abhor?

Scattered among the endless case studies and hysterical attacks in this largely unedited compilation are some interesting stories and a few good points. Mr. Shilts's accurate description of the shameful handling by the Navy of the investigation into the tragic explosion aboard the USS Iowa that killed 47 sailors is the best available so far. The cause for the blast was faulty gunpowder, not two young sailors wrapped in an ill-fated romance.

The incident does illustrate the extreme homophobia of the Pentagon bureaucracy, and its unnatural lust for homosexual investigations. Investigators enjoy such cases because gays are not usually criminal types and are easy to catch and discharge. Successful cases add up to career advancement for prosecutors.

The compromise solution to the current confrontation between President Clinton and the military on this issue is obvious. Big Brother has no business requiring people to declare their personal sexual preferences any more than their political or spiritual leanings. But promiscuity in uniform or in a military environment is absolutely unacceptable, and the existing prohibitions against such behavior, including "PDAs"—public displays of affection—should remain enforced. Whatever lawful private activities service people get up to off-duty are not the government's business. The witch hunts should cease.

Mr. Shilts and other zealots of course want much more. They want nothing less than full approval for what Adm. Thomas Moorer quaintly describes as "filthy, disease-ridden practices." I suspect that those who agree with Adm Moorer are likely to be helped much more by Conduct Unbecoming and its antimilitary diatribe than those whose cause it advocates.