Navy broke law,
online firm says

AOL says information about a Pearl
Harbor sailor was coerced from it

By Pete Pichaske
Star-Bulletin

WASHINGTON -- America Online today accused the Navy of breaking federal law and misleading an AOL representative in pressing its case against a Pearl Harbor sailor who was relieved of his duties for being gay.

AOL's "cut and run" disclaimer, as it was called by U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Sporkin, was made public at a hearing today where Sporkin was asked to stop the Navy's discharge of Senior Chief Petty Officer Timothy R. McVeigh.

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U.S. Navy
Senior Chief Petty Officer Timothy R. McVeigh

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At the hearing, a Navy attorney also disclosed that McVeigh's discharge, scheduled for today, had been postponed until Friday because McVeigh was on leave. Sporkin, meanwhile, indicated he would decide on McVeigh's request to remain in the Navy within the next day or two.

Sporkin also said he expects the Navy to refrain from discharging McVeigh until the case is decided.

After the hearing, McVeigh, 36, said he was not angry at the Navy.

"I absolutely look forward to serving my country honorably, as I have in the past," he said. "As far as how the Navy will respond to that, we'll have to see."

A decorated 17-year veteran, McVeigh - no relation to the Oklahoma City bomber - was relieved as chief of the boat of the USS Chicago after the Navy concluded that he had violated the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays.

In the past week or two, McVeigh's case has become something of a rallying cry for groups concerned both about the military's policy on gays and about Internet privacy.

AOL gave out information

His troubles began when the wife of a fellow petty officer noticed that in an e-mail message to her, he used the "screen name" of "Boysrch." Concerned that the name stood for "boy search," she checked his AOL profile and found he listed his marital status as "gay" and his hobbies as "boy watching and collecting pictures of other young studs."

She turned the information over to her husband, and eventually the Navy investigated.

At some point, a legal representative for the Navy called America Online's toll-free number and asked to confirm to whom the profile belonged. An AOL technical representative said it belonged to Timothy R. McVeigh of Hawaii.

Armed with that information, the Navy initiated a hearing, relieved McVeigh of his duties and now wants to honorably discharge him.

In a statement released today, AOL conceded that it erred in releasing the information and promised to institute "additional measures that will reinforce our privacy polices and procedures."

But the Virginia-based Internet service also lambasted the Navy, which, the statement claimed, "deliberately ignored both federal law and well-established procedures for handling government inquiries about AOL members." Typically, the government needs a subpoena to acquire information about Internet subscribers.

AOL claimed the investigator who called AOL "misled our representative ... by failing to disclose his identity and purpose and by portraying himself as a friend or acquaintance of Senior Chief McVeigh's."

AOL officers already have written both the Secretary of the Navy and the Department of Defense protesting the tactics.

At today's 90-minute hearing, Navy attorneys argued that the information it received from AOL was available to anyone who called the number. They said it is only illegal for the government to try to coerce a service into giving out information, not to simply ask for it.

"What the legal man did was entirely within the statute," said Justice Department attorney David Glass.

Glass also argued that it was McVeigh who violated the military's policy on gays by publicly stating, in his profile, that he was gay.

Inference, not proof?

But McVeigh attorney Christopher Wolf argued that a private online profile is no public admission and that the Navy's pursuit of McVeigh's profile was nothing more than a witch hunt.

"The e-mail was merely an inference" that the sender was gay, said Wolf. "They need the AOL link to establish it. It's the government going out and making that link that constitutes their asking.... What the Navy did here is break the law."

McVeigh said he has received solid support from his former colleagues at Pearl Harbor.