According to Cleghorn, Navy Special Agent Jack O'Conner testified that the investigation had focused on Velvet Nation, JR's, Badlands and Tracks. When grilled by the defense attorney, O'Conner said the investigation had also taken agents to city streets and military housing. But he could not name any other establishments that had been probed.

SLDN's Benecke and Cleghorn say the gay community is particularly sensitive to the charges because of the military's history of witch hunts and investigating gay bars, which dates back to the Korean War. Before the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was codified in 1993, it was common practice for the military to send agents out into gay bars to try to identify service members, who could then be investigated and discharged, their careers in the military brought to an abrupt end. Agents, according to Benecke, would not only infiltrate gay bars, but also walk through the vicinity, write down any military decals they could find on cars and run them through a database in order to identify people.

"The possibility that the Navy has launched an undercover investigation for the purpose of ferreting out gays sends chills down the spine of people like me, who were quietly serving our country in the '80s," says Benecke, who served as a captain and battery commander in the U.S. Army air defense artillery.

"The problem we have," says SLDN's Cleghorn, "is that all of the evidence in sworn testimony points to them going to gay bars and using this drug angle as a ruse for just trying to harass gay people or, worse, collect information about gays in the military. We have no concrete information to suggest that's exactly what they're doing, but the military has historically targeted gay bars for investigations as far back as the 1950s."

And Benecke asks: "What are they doing with that information? We're concerned that they're targeting 'military-looking' men. It suggests they're casting a wide net and fishing."

But NCIS's O'Donnell says the investigative unit pays no attention to the sexual orientation of the soldiers it probes. The unit, O'Donnell insists, "does not give information to commands that members of their commands are frequenting gay establishments."

According to O'Donnell, the Navy coordinated its investigation with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Since 1997, the operation has nabbed 13 military members who are suspected of distributing ecstasy or other drugs. Four have been discharged, three have court martial proceedings pending and six are still under investigation. Two civilians observed in the operation were also turned over to Washington police. The investigation focused on six D.C.-area bars and nightclubs.

SLDN and local gay activists have requested a full list of the establishments, since those identified so far cater predominantly to gays and lesbians, but the Navy has not yet fulfilled its promise to deliver such a list, and O'Donnell told Salon only that most of the bars or nightclubs "have a mix of gay or straight patrons." The Metropolitan Police Department did not return numerous phone calls or a faxed request for a statement about its involvement in the investigation.

"The focus of this particular undercover drug operation is and always has been on military members suspected of selling drugs in the Washington, D.C., area," O'Donnell stated. "Neither the sexual orientation of the military suspects nor that of the establishments' clientele is relevant. Targets are developed and pursued based on hard criminal intelligence that they are selling drugs." According to a source familiar with the hearing transcript, the Navy obtained the tips from what investigators described as a "reliable informant" who steered them to individual suspects. The Navy would not, the source said, reveal the identity of that information during the hearing.

Between 1996 and May 2000, the NCIS's Washington Field Office closed more than 172 narcotics cases involving service members. But the agency says it does not track statistics on the sexual orientation of patrons at establishments it monitors -- agents only go into clubs where there is "hard criminal intelligence" that drugs are being sold. At press time, the agency could not provide a specific breakdown of drugs involved in previous busts.

But questions persist about the methods used by agents at Velvet Nation. SLDN has asked why investigators targeted the club, and investigators have given contradictory answers. Testimony from the Article 32 hearing suggests that agents may have conducted surveillance of Velvet Nation and other nightclubs to identify service members. But now the Navy is saying that, at least in the court martial proceedings discussed at the hearing, the Navy sailor had invited an agent to two of the bars with him.

Both SLDN and a source close to the case suggest that agents were "flirting" with suspects, but a Navy spokesperson downplayed the insinuation, reiterating that informants were told that sexual identity should not be a factor in the investigation. But Velvet Nation is a cruisy nightclub, filled with over a thousand scantily clad men on any given Saturday, and the suggestion that flirting was not one of the ways agents gained their targets' attention seems disingenuous to some.

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