Army Panel Destroys Data On Sex Survey

A secretive Army panel looking into sexual misconduct destroyed some highly sensitive data it had collected from a survey of 9,000 troops, and a researcher who worked with the group has accused it of “gross fraud, waste and abuse during the course of its investigation.”

“The panel’s apparent intention is to suppress this information in order to avoid making the Army look bad,” even though the information could be used to figure out ways to prevent sexual harassment in specific units, said Leora Rosen, who works in the department of military psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Rosen, who was a researcher on the panel until recently and who has analyzed 613 surveys that managed to escape destruction, said she has filed a whistle-blower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, an executive branch agency charged with investigating such complaints.

The data that were purged included questions about the use of prostitutes and pornography in Army units. Some questions asked “to what extent do the soldiers in your company go to strip joints” and “brag about sexual activity.”

Also destroyed were questions that asked soldiers to use a numerical rating - 1 for “strongly agree” through 5 for “strongly disagree” - on these questions: “The use of pornography in this company is widespread” and “The use of prostitutes is accepted in this company.”

A spokesman for the Army confirmed that some data from the survey had been destroyed. “The raw data from those sex questions no longer exists,” Col. John Smith said.

Smith also confirmed that a second survey was prepared that omitted the questions. That survey was issued to an unknown number of troops.

According to Rosen and other military sources, the questions were reviewed by all panel members, including its leader, Maj. Gen. Richard S. Siegfried, and Sara Lister, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs.

Rosen and the other sources said Siegfried and other Army officials had spoken at a panel meeting about the possibility of destroying all the raw survey data, not just the most controversial questions, to control how the results were interpreted.

The panel intends to release the survey results in some form, but the Army would not say Thursday whether the raw data would be available in full.

The two versions of the “Command and Soldier Climate Assessment Survey” ask questions that would allow researchers to look at individual Army positions and units as small as a company. The questions are wide-ranging, asking, for example, whether company soldiers gossip about each other and say degrading things about men or women, and whether they respect one another.

In addition to questions about sexual harassment, the survey asks whether soldiers have enough time to spend with their families, whether there is a lot of lying and deceit in their company, and whether “cheating on one’s spouse is looked upon with disapproval.”

Other questions ask whether company leaders set high standards, obey the law, are “bossy” or “self-centered,” and “are able to make tough decisions” regarding equipment, training and combat.

The Army statement issued Thursday said the questions destroyed were “inflammatory and offensive and felt by some soldiers to be an invasion of privacy to the extent that some of them refused to comply with the survey.”

The panel was appointed by Army Secretary Togo D. West Jr. in November after revelations of widespread sexual abuse at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

Since the panel’s inception, the Army has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep its work secret, treating the data almost like classified information.

In February, Morris Peterson, the chief of the Army Personnel Survey Office, issued a memo saying that the data should be stored in a locked file and that a request to see it needed to be submitted in writing and approved by Siegfried and his top researcher.