FOR the military brass in the huge Pentagon building across the river from the White House, the daily calls on a telephone "hot line" can sometimes mean an inglorious end to a distinguished career adorned with a chestful of medals.
Army and airforce generals, admirals, the top sergeant major all have fallen victim to charges of adultery or sexual assault and harassment of subordinates. Where once it was the Wehrmacht, the kamikaze pilots or the Vietcong who were the enemy, now it is sex.
Where integrating women into the armed forces was once seen as an enlightened move, now it is seen as sowing the seeds for the present upheaval. The armed services of the most powerful nation in the world are struggling to deal with an internal crisis about how to handle adultery in the ranks which leaves their less puritan NATO allies amused and baffled.
This week four star airforce General Joseph Ralston withdrew his name from consideration for the top job in the US military - chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The secretary of defence, William Cohen, wanted him. President Clinton would have nominated him and the senate would have confirmed the appointment.
In other words General Ralston had the job sewn up and had departed on a triumphal tour of central Asia when it was whispered to the newspapers that he had had an affair 13 years ago while he was doing a course in the National War College. He was separated at the time but not divorced. In other words he had committed adultery.
Adultery is about the hottest button you can press in the US military these days. Klaxons began resounding around the Pentagon, which is still licking wounds over the Lt Kelly Flinn affair.
She was once the darling of the airforce: the first woman B52 nuclear bomber pilot and - with her good looks and blonde hair - used in recruitment publicity. But last month she was virtually a fallen woman as she asked for a discharge so she would not have to face a court martial for adultery and related charges.
When it was revealed that Lt Flinn was being pursued for committing adultery on her base in North Dakota with the civilian husband of an enlisted woman, the media went into a frenzy. The airforce explained that it was not just adultery but more serious charges of lying and not obeying orders that she also faced. If you can be ordered to drop a nuclear bomb, you must be totally trustworthy, it was pointed out.
Well what about General Ralston? In the top job he might be ordering someone to blow up half the world, so how come it was okay for him to commit adultery and not the pilot? "Double standards, double standards", screamed the media and women's organisations.
The airforce twisted and turned, making distinctions that convinced nobody. The general's affair was while he had nobody under his command and was with a civilian - a CIA intelligence analyst. He had not lied and had not disobeyed orders. Even his former wife supported him for the top job.
But only a week before, Secretary Cohen had insisted on the resignation of a much decorated officer, MajorGeneral John Longhouser, who was in command of the Aberdeen training camp near Washington. He had had an affair five years ago while separated from his wife, with whom he has since reconciled. Appointing Ralston would be `cronyism' thundered the New York Times.
Aberdeen is where the present wave of sex scandals all began last November, when 12 drill sergeants were charged with sleeping with, sexually assaulting or raping female trainees. The sergeants were said to have had a "secret sex ring" and passed likely victims to each other.
Naturally, there was an outcry. Here was an army trying to attract more females into its ranks and here is what happened to them when they fell into the clutches of predatory and domineering drill sergeants.
As the courts martial went ahead, the Pentagon, determined on a clean up not just at Aberdeen but in each service and at every base, set up a hotline where those who had been afraid to make complaints could now do so. Tittle tattle about consensual affairs off base was not what the top brass had in mind for the hotline but that is what they got along with the sexual abuse complaints.
Adultery in the military can get you a stiff prison sentence and dishonourable discharge, while it is an increasingly accepted fact of life on the outside. It is an offence that applies especially to officers with their code banning "conduct unbecoming" and so on.
Adultery in itself is not what gets you into trouble, but if it is shown to be prejudicial to "good order and discipline" or as bringing discredit upon the armed forces" it becomes an issue. It is the commanding officer at a base who decides if an adulterous affair is having this effect.
An affair between a superior officer and a subordinate could clearly be disruptive of discipline and morale. But what about an affair between an officer and a civilian?
Some superiors shut their eyes. Others act quickly and treat it as an administrative breach, while the unlucky offenders like Kelly Flinn get the book thrown at them. In other words the system can lead to unfairness and harsh consequences.
The military rules do not reflect what is going on in society at the end of the 20th Century in a country where 43 per cent of marriages end in divorce and sex is king, or almost. A poll this week shows that 79 per cent of Americans believe that adultery is wrong but only 46 per cent say that the military should have special rules to prohibit it.
THE Washington Post columnist, Meg Greenfield, writes that "the military is a perfect case study of dramatic changes in cultural imperatives rocking an ancient institution to which they are applied".
"Admittedly," she goes on, "it has been centuries since soldiers were actually expected to rape and drag off women as personal chattel from the places they conquered. But it hasn't been so long since a great national wink and chortle was the only response to all those songs and jokes about shore, leave and the rest that nowadays would bring you up on charges."
The secretary of defence, William Cohen, this week moved to update the rules by ordering a review of the adultery clauses. He has also set up panels to examine gender integration during training and other issues of sexual behaviour.
But integration itself is coming under tougher scrutiny. An expert on gender relations brought in by the army had recommended "an ungendered vision" where the "celebration of steeliness" need not "exclude the approval ... of compassion and understanding".
The notion of an army which had to jettison the masculinist vision of unalloyed aggressivity" made conservatives choke. The expert has been let go.
But Hanna Rosin, writing in the New Republic, wonders can integration ever work. "The idea of introducing young, sexually deprived women into a closed environment with large numbers of young, sexually deprived men was arguably crazy in the first place."
"Moreover, introducing women into the military was always paradoxical: it essentially meant asking the military to be not the military".