Book Excerpt: The first female pilot to fly B-52s left the military charged with adultery, lying and disobeying an order. Now she tells her side of the story--a saga of a woman who fell for the wrong man and badly lost her way.
WHY DID I FALL SO COMPLETELY FOR A man whose own mother says he's a pathological liar? Who knows? I was unhappy at work. I was tired of being alone. It seemed as if everyone but me in Minot--the miserable North Dakota town where I was stationed--had someone to go home to on Friday nights. All I had were brief, long-distance relationships. It was the beginning of a story that would end with my standoff with the air force over charges that I had made false statements, disobeyed an order and committed adultery. I had dedicated my life to becoming a pilot. I had been rated exceptionally qualified to fly the B-52, a distinction few pilots ever earn. I had been entrusted with defending the most powerful nation on earth and I loved defending that nation. That was all soon to be over.
At the time I first met Marc Zigo, playing soccer, my best friends were all far away. One of them was living in the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia on June 25 when a bomb killed 19 servicemen and wounded 150 more. When I was getting acquainted with Marc, I didn't know what had happened to my friend. I was frustrated with my flying performance and growing disgusted with the role I was playing--the ""girl bomber pilot,'' the first female to fly a B-52. I was on the edge and vulnerable.
So I fell, and I fell hard. I felt that fate had led me to Marc. On the one hand, I knew he was married, and to an air force enlistee. Off limits. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't attracted to him. He had the perfect soccer player's body: thin, but very muscular. The real Marc, I discovered months later, was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, not Ireland, which is what he had told me. He'd never played soccer professionally. And that summer he wasn't anywhere near a divorce from his wife, Gayla, as he insisted to me until I agreed to sleep with him in mid-August, six weeks after our first meeting.
Once we'd slept together, I let myself fall head over heels in love. Despite a private warning I got from Gayla's first sergeant to stop seeing Marc, I just couldn't get him out of my mind. It was an idyllic time, and it lasted for just about two weeks. By the end of August we had started bickering over stupid things. But then the fights started to have a theme. Marc became obsessed with the men I worked with. He called me a slut, a sleaze, and threatened to ruin me. ""I'm going right to your colonels right now and telling them about the behavior of their nice little lieutenant,'' he said at one point, sounding purely evil. ""I'm going to destroy you and your career.'' I screamed into the phone, ""Nooooo!''
I had no idea how to protect myself. I knew how dangerous it could be to ask for help in the air force. I'd heard a story about an officer who, remorseful about an affair, confessed it to his commander. He'd ended up being court-martialed.
Like most victims of abusive relationships, I conned myself into believing that I was managing things. I started reading books and questioning folks about relationships. My sister Gail said, ""That man is dangerous. Stay on his good side.'' So I started doing and saying whatever I thought might pacify Marc.
In November, I swore to myself that Marc and I were through. He left town for the week. It was over. But on the morning of Nov. 24, after I'd been away from Marc for almost 10 days, the phone rang. ""They're investigating us,'' he said. ""Who is?'' I asked.
""The [military's] security police.''
My stomach hardened up into a ball.
""Just tell them nothing happened,'' Marc said. ""That's what I did. If I don't confess, and you don't confess, they won't be able to prove it. And by law they have to prove it.''
I should have been more on my guard. But I felt protected. Marc was, after all, a civilian. He was legally separated. He was covering for me. And no one, I knew, really went after adultery. If they had, 20 percent of the base would have been court-martialed.
But that afternoon, a Monday, the security police called. ""We have some more questions for you concerning Lt. Brian Mudery [a helicopter pilot against whom I'd testified in a previous case.] . . . Can you come in this afternoon?''
I drove up to the base, and walked into the security police squadron. They thanked me for coming in. Then they read me my rights. They said I was suspected of adultery, fraternization, and conduct unbecoming. I tried to focus and breathe slowly.
""How do you know Amy Rice [a friend of mine]?'' they asked.
I said that she was my friend.
""Have you ever had sex with her?''
""Excuse me?''
""Have you ever had a homosexual relationship with her?'' ""No!'' I was completely taken aback. This was appalling. ""Have you had sex with her husband?''
""No!''
""We have a report that you did.''
THOUGH MOST PEOPLE thought it was Marc's wife who first complained to the air force, it was Mudery who launched the charges against me. When charges were pressed against him, Mudery had said, ""If I'm going down, then I'm taking everyone down with me, including the female bomber pilot.'' He'd made good on his promise, particularly toward Amy and me. (Both of us had testified against him.) In mid-November, he made a false, ridiculous, hateful statement in which he accused almost all the witnesses against him of wrongful activity.
The security police named three or four other men, single and married, and asked me if I'd slept with them. I said no. My shock was quickly changing to deep humiliation. A part of me just wanted to get up and leave the room. My sex life was none of their damned business. But that would make me look guilty. When they asked me if I'd slept with Marc, I denied it, denied everything.
""What about the letters?''
They had a Hallmark card I'd sent Marc, and two love letters. Plus a key to my house that I'd given him in case he fought with Gayla again while I was away on leave.
I wrote and signed a statement admitting that I had made an ""extreme error in judgment'' in writing love letters to Marc and giving him my key. As Marc and I had agreed I would do should the letters come into play, I said that I had pursued him without encouragement, having mistaken his complaints about his marriage for interest in me. I wrote: ""Marc Zigo and I have had a strictly platonic relationship since we first met.''
After another session in which I denied any sexual relationship with Marc, I rushed across base to the office of my commander, Lt. Col. Theodore LaPlante. I wanted to correct my statement immediately, and LaPlante, I thought, could help. He was supposed to oversee both the discipline and the well-being of his troops. I had no reason to expect that he wouldn't stand by me, or at least give me a fair hearing. He was always talking about teamwork and family, esprit de corps and solidarity.
""Don't tell me anything,'' he said. ""Go talk to the base defense attorney.'' There was only one.
""I can't talk to the defense attorney,'' I said. ""He's representing Brian Mudery, he has a conflict of interest.'' I did not know how to get other legal representation. This was not in any of our in-processing briefings. ""Well,'' LaPlante repeated, ""don't talk to me. I may be the ultimate hammer.''
The next day, Marc Zigo made his own statement. It was completely gratuitous: as a civilian, Marc didn't have to cooperate with the security police at all. They had no jurisdiction over him. But he chose to tell the investigators that we'd had sex.
When he told me what he'd done, he seemed very proud. I felt as if I'd been kicked in the stomach. Denying the relationship had been his idea. Now I was the only one coming across as a liar.
We were standing in the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken in downtown Minot--Marc had chosen the location. When I'd arrived, he'd patted me down to see if I was wired. He started screaming at me when I told him that he'd put me in an impossible position. ""I did you a favor,'' he said. ""They said you were a husband-chaser and a whore! They said you'd slept with all kinds of men!''
Now I understood what must have happened. In going over Brian Mudery's complaint, the investigators had read Marc the list of men with whom I'd allegedly had sex. And he'd gone nuts. He'd lost his temper and decided just to screw me over. At this point, I wanted nothing to do with him.
Gayla took a decisive step Thanksgiving weekend. She'd gone to a party for a friend at Friday's in downtown Minot. There, a pretty civilian girl named Ellen was talking about how she was going out with a professional soccer player named Marc Zigo. What a great guy he was! Gayla called Marc up from the party and said, ""Get out of the house. It's over.''
He couldn't let her just end things that way. So he took about a dozen sleeping pills, wrote a note, went into the garage, stuffed a rag in the car's exhaust pipe, and sat in his car with the motor running. (But he neglected to close the garage door.) He waited. And when no one came by to save him, he called Gayla from his cell phone. Marc was slipping in and out of consciousness when the security police found him.
I felt I had to visit Marc in the hospital. Afterwards I was utterly confused. Seeing him, I'd once again fallen under his spell. But once I was away from him, I started to question things once more. It was all such a mess in my head. I went to see the Catholic priest on base, Father Kerry, who suggested that I take a break from Marc. His words: ""You have to find peace within yourself. You have to do whatever will bring you that peace.''
A break; peace. That seemed like a good idea. Then Marc called me one night. ""I have no place to go,'' he whined. He started sounding more and more desperate, threatened again to kill himself, and finally hung up on me. I sank into the big blue chair in my living room. I couldn't turn my back on Marc. Yet I was being investigated for loving him to begin with. I cried all evening long.
Still, in those days following his suicide attempt, Marc seemed like a changed man. He was caring, concerned, apologetic, understanding. We had our best reconciliation ever, and I was confident that my future lay with him. He moved in with me on Dec. 11. I heard from LaPlante on Friday the 13th.
""Flinn,'' he said, ""I have an order for you to sign.'' He read it: I was to cease and desist from all contact with Marc Zigo and Colin Thompson [an enlisted man I'd slept with once at a drunken party]. ""All contact'' was ""defined to include any physical, verbal, or written communication with either individual. Specifically, you will not be found within 100 feet of either individual, their family members, nor their residences or workplaces. In addition, any attempt to contact either individual by calling their home, workplace, or by leaving a message with a third party or answering machine/device will also constitute a violation of this order.''
The Colin part was no problem; I never so much as saw him. But Marc was a problem. He was already living in my home. I couldn't even tell him to leave without violating LaPlante's order. I finally had legal counsel now, beginning with Capt. Karen Hecker, but she was in Colorado, and I could not tell her to tell him to leave--that would have been communicating through a third party. I could not even tell my commander any of this, because anything I said could be used against me in a court of law. LaPlante had just severed the lines of communication that might enable the air force and me to correct this situation civilly. And the air force, it turned out, already knew that. They had my home under surveillance.
Still, no one made any further official move. A week later, Marc and I flew to Atlanta, and for the first time ever I walked into my parents' home as part of a couple. The day after we arrived was my 26th birthday, Dec. 23. I called my answering machine in Minot to check for messages, and what I heard sent chills down my spine: the security police had completed their report, and the investigating officer had recommended a criminal court-martial. My knees were shaking.
By the third week of January--Marc was still living with me--I couldn't play the game anymore, but I had no idea what Marc would do once I finally told him to leave. I told my attorneys that I didn't feel safe, physically or emotionally. Then I sat in my office alone for hours, crying, rocking back and forth, while the lawyers tried to decide how to help me. Finally, they had me sign a statement that I feared for my own safety and Marc's, and asking the government's help in removing Marc Zigo from my house. I also understood that in light of this new information, the government could hit me with an additional charge of failing to obey the lawful order. All the colonels in my chain of command were informed of the crisis, and Marc left.
In early February, my parents hired me a top-notch lawyer, Frank Spinner. His most famous case was the court-martial of Delmar Simpson, a drill sergeant at the Aberdeen Proving Ground who was accused of rape in 1996. Spinner had also represented a military heart surgeon convicted of adultery, and a lieutenant colonel who'd been convicted of an ""unprofessional relationship'' with a colleague, a female officer, because he'd accompanied her to the gym.
Spinner immediately began to fight the move to court-martial. He recommended that I go see a psychologist he knew in St. Louis, Dr. Ann Duncan, so that we could find out more about Marc's character and have her draw up a psychological profile of me to convey how someone so successful could get into such a mess. It was while I was in St. Louis that I saw the first newspaper story: ""Female Bomber Pilot Faces Adultery Charges.''
Spinner tried to persuade Lt. Gen. Phillip Ford, the officer in charge of the court-martial process, to issue a nonjudicial punishment, the so-called Article 15 that would prevent me from ever being promoted. This didn't seem unrealistic: the air force was handing out Article 15s for adultery at the rate of four a month at Minot alone. But it wouldn't happen in my case.
I had never been a depressed person in my life. Now I went to bed every night praying to God that I wouldn't wake up in the morning. I never actually attempted suicide. But I thought about it, hard. I imagined what my suicide note would say and to whom I'd send it. I knew where a gun was hidden in a friend's house; I imagined myself driving by and getting it. Shooting myself would have been too messy, though. I didn't want my parents to have to clean up a mess. So I'd go to the drugstore and look at all the sleeping pill racks and think about which pills would work best. I searched the Internet for the most lethal combination of barbiturates.
A RAY OF HOPE CAME less than a week before the court-martial was scheduled to begin on May 20. In a leak to The New York Times, sources close to air force secretary Sheila Widnall said that she was willing to consider an honorable discharge. I felt that by dangling that in front of me, the air force was trying to trick me into resigning with the standard letter saying I would accept any kind of discharge. Then ""any kind of discharge'' would be what I'd get: one other than honorable. I refused.
But it was pointless to go to trial, my lawyers said. All the cards were held by General Ford: he'd handpicked the jury, decided who the witnesses would be, and chosen the judge. The badgering continued until I stormed out of the office to be alone. Frank came to talk to me later. He feared a conviction because we had no defense to the charge of making a false official statement. I cried and screamed and yelled. I told him about all the assaults, the sexual harassment, all the times I kept my mouth shut just so I could do my job.
Later that evening, one of my lawyers, Capt. Barbara Shestko, called with an idea. She was worried that if I did not resign, the air force might convict me, sentence me to jail, and then claim it had offered me an honorable discharge, but I wouldn't take it. So we decided to call the air force's bluff. If the Times' sources said Widnall would consider an honorable discharge, then I would ask only for an honorable discharge. My two military attorneys worked all weekend preparing my resignation. Frank Spinner and my brother Don juggled the press. But things were rapidly falling apart. A letter ostensibly from Gayla Zigo surfaced on CNN. It read: ""Less than a week after we arrived on base, Lieutenant Flinn was in bed with my husband having sex . . .''
The letter (which sounded nothing like Gayla Zigo) was perfectly timed to portray me as a husband-stealing shrew. It might have been shrugged off as just another skirmish in the p.r. wars, except that it was written on official 5th Bomb Wing letterhead (Gayla worked at the 91st Missile Wing) and had been released by the air force itself. It seemed to give a sense of the air force's official position. Then, despite his protestations that he could not comment on how to handle the case because to do so would constitute an exercise of unlawful command influence, the air force chief of staff, Gen. Ronald Fogleman, weighed in. ""In the end, this is not an issue of adultery,'' he told a congressional committee. ""This is an issue about an officer entrusted to fly nuclear weapons who lied.''
It was a very bad sign. That night, my family and I had dinner together downtown as we waited for Widnall's decision. I checked my answering machine and found a message from Frank Spinner. A source of Frank's at the Pentagon reported that the secretary would not sign an honorable discharge but might consider a general discharge, under honorable conditions. This status would bar me from flying in the National Guard or air force reserves. At 11 p.m. that night, Spinner called my family together for a meeting at the Holiday Inn in Minot, where my parents were staying. Dr. Duncan came with him. He reported the bad news: Widnall had decided not to grant the honorable discharge. ""Take the general,'' Frank said. ""You're looking at a very real possibility of prison time.''
I said I still wanted to go to trial. I wanted to tell my side of the story. I wanted to tell about the surveillance and the snooping, about how the air force had given me an order that it knew very well I couldn't possibly obey. I wanted to see Marc Zigo crash and burn on the witness stand. Never, I said, would I take a general discharge.
""If you don't take it,'' my lawyers and family told me, ""you're going to go to jail.''
My family argued that I couldn't possibly get a fair trial, particularly not now that Fogleman had told the jury what to do. But I was tired of being pushed around. I had been living with Marc's threats for a year, and now the air force was threatening me. I was angry at everyone in the room: my mom and dad, Frank Spinner, brothers Tim and Don and Don's wife and Dr. Duncan. Especially Dr. Duncan. I'd just found out that she had told my mother that I had chosen to fly a B-52 because it was the largest penis I could find. She also revealed to my mother the intimate details of my sex life with Marc and told her I had the social skills of a 12-year-old. I felt betrayed.
I climbed into my Jeep and drove back to my house in a rage. I kicked open the door of the house and marched into the living room. There were framed pictures of a T-37 and a T-38, other pictures from pilot training, my framed diploma from the Air Force Academy, some awards I'd received. I pulled each one of them off the walls. Everything I had earned and worked toward was for nothing. It meant nothing to anyone. I meant nothing to anyone, once I stopped performing like a robot and fell in love with the wrong guy. I went through every single award I'd ever won, every plaque, every certificate, and added them to the pile of glass that was building all around the house.
Finally, at about 3 or 4 in the morning, I agreed to talk with my family again. But I set my own terms: One person could come over and present the family's case. I would listen, and I would make a decision, and then that person would have to leave.
They agreed. I crawled out of bed and walked into the living room to wait. Don and Tim arrived. Apparently, my request for one person hadn't been clear enough. I was so angry that I turned my back on them, sank into a chair and curled up in a ball. There was broken glass everywhere. My face was swollen with crying. I had blood on my hands from breaking everything, and I'd smeared some blood on my face. I curled up in a fetal position, holding a stuffed elephant that my elementary school soccer coach, Mr. Belatti, had given me.
Tim and Don cleared away some glass and sat down. Tim's voice shook when he started talking to me. I didn't hear a word he said. I was so angry at the whole world that I wasn't interested in talking or even thinking. I only wanted to fight.
NOW DON SPOKE. I tried to go into my room but they wouldn't leave me alone. All I wanted, desperately wanted, was to sleep. So finally, when I realized that no one would ever understand my feelings, my pain, my frustrations, I screamed at the top of my lungs: ""I resign! Just get out of my f---ing house!'' In the long run, it was probably the right decision, but I did not make it thinking about the long run. I felt I was being forced to resign by my family, by my attorneys, by the air force.
Sometime Thursday morning Frank and Karen and Barbara came by with the resignation. I hadn't changed my clothes. The house was still full of glass, and I was still holding my elephant. My eyes were swollen and my face splotched from all the crying. The glass cracked under the lawyers' feet as they walked in. Barbara put a hand on my shoulder. ""Don't touch me,'' I hissed. I didn't read the paper. I just signed it, threw the pen down, and headed back to my room.
I spent my last Memorial Day weekend as an officer packing my bags. I also did some shopping at the local mall: several ""Kelly Flinn Got Screwed'' T-shirts. How true, I thought.
I have now turned my back on Minot. I can dream about my future. I may work as a commercial pilot. I may go back to school and earn an advanced degree. I plan to petition Congress to grant me an honorable discharge through legislation. This would permit me to fly again for the air force in the National Guard or a reserve unit.
I flew again, after months on the ground, in a private plane on a cool, crisp day in September. It all came back in a rush of recognition: the checks, the instruments, the feel of the airplane in the air.
I smiled to myself as the engine started to turn, and a familiar thrill crept up from the base of my spine. I locked eyes with my instructor and said, ""I have the aircraft.''
From the book "Proud to Be," by Kelly Flinn. Copyright (c) 1997 by Kelly Flinn. Published by Random House, Inc.
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