By Tom Slear
It remains West Point’s most publicized indignity. Coming as it did so soon after World War II, America’s collective memory was filled with images of graduates who had played an outsized role in the Allied victory. Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, Bradley, Arnold—their names glowed in the dark. Never in its century-and-a-half of existence had the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) provided more emphatic proof of its worth. Arguably, no institution in the country was looked upon more fondly.
Then, on 3 August 1951, the Academy issued a press release exposing an extensive academic cheating ring. Ninety cadets were implicated, a sizeable segment of a corps of cadets of nearly 2,500. Coverage of the scandal was pervasive. Off and on for weeks the story bumped the Korean War from newspaper headlines. The public was both startled and disappointed.
“A disaster in the bleakest year in West Point’s illustrious history” is how 1955 graduate Bill McWilliams described the scandal and its aftermath in his 2000 book, A Return to Glory: The Untold Story of Honor, Dishonor, and Triumph at the United States Military Academy, 1950-1953.[1] (The book was the basis of the mostly accurate, lightly dramatized 2005 ESPN movie, Code Breakers.) Yet, within this distressing and convoluted period of the Academy’s history was a story of uncommon courage. Two second-year cadets stepped forward to expose the cheating ring and subsequently paid a steep price.
“[They] did something, sad to tell, no one before them possessed sufficient strength of character to do,” wrote Jack Craigie, a West Point senior in 1951 who knew both of them well. They were members of the USMA swim team, and Craigie was the team captain.[2]
What the two did, and what they subsequently endured, went largely unreported for decades. The real name of one, Jim Pfautz, did not appear in print in connection with the honor scandal until James Blackwell’s book, On Brave Old Army Team: The Cheating Scandal that Rocked the Nation: West Point, 1951, was published in 1996. The real name of the other, George Petley, was not mentioned in a public forum until 2010, when Craigie spoke at West Point.
“Lonely courage,” is how Craigie described what Pfautz and Petley did. They worked in isolation with little guidance and even less support, all the while fearing exposure and certain ostracization from other cadets, a few of whom were close friends.[3]
USMA cadets in the early 1950s endured an academic grind of forty-four core courses consisting mostly of math, science, and engineering. All were subjected to the same four-year curriculum with no electives. Their only choice came when picking one of four foreign languages. Credit hours totaled just over 160, thirty to forty more than most other colleges.[4] To squeeze it all in, classes were held five and a half days a week. It was challenging for the academically gifted; brutal for everyone else. However, there was a workaround.
A cadet’s rank among his classmates was determined mostly by academic performance, and class rank mattered. A higher rank meant more privileges, more branches (Infantry, Armor, etc.) to choose from, and more desirable assignments following graduation.
To maintain a level playing field for this competition, the Academy gave identical tests to all classes in each course, even though they met at different times during the day and on alternate days. Cheating was a simple matter of getting the questions from someone who had taken the test or quiz earlier in the day or the day before. The Academy operated on the assumption that each cadet would follow the honor code, which dictated that “A cadet does not lie, cheat or steal.” Though the phrase “nor tolerate those who do” was not added until 1970, the requirement to report offenders had been a principle of the code for decades.[5] A guilty verdict from the cadet honor committee meant resignation or a court-martial. No other institution in America, including the U.S. Naval Academy, had such an unforgiving system. (The U.S. Air Force Academy, which adopted West Point’s honor code almost in full, did not open until 1955.)
For varsity athletes, cheating was easier still. They interacted daily in locker rooms, on athletic fields, and at meals. Getting the “poop,” the slang within the ring for passing on information about tests, was a conversation in a locker room or the passing of a slip of paper at a training table in the cadet mess hall.
The temptation to set aside the honor code, particularly for those struggling to stay eligible to play a sport, was indeed strong, something akin to raw meat next to a hungry dog. The predictable outcome, wrote head football coach Earl “Red” Blaik in his 1960 book, You Have to Pay the Price, was as much due to the system of repetitive tests as it was to dishonest cadets.[6]
Blaik, a dean of college football coaches in the 1940s and 1950s, held on to that opinion for the rest of his life. He ignored the inconvenient fact that the overwhelming majority of the corps did not succumb. The cheating ring was comprised mostly of varsity athletes, with football players the major component. Of the ninety cadets implicated, sixty were members of a varsity team. A sizeable portion of the remaining thirty were roommates or tutors of those athletes. Thirty-seven of the sixty were football players. As a subsequent investigation would reveal, the Army football program was ground zero for the ring.[7]
Army football players, often referred to as “Blaik’s Boys,” were every bit as accomplished and celebrated then as the players at the University of Alabama and Ohio State are today. Blaik was the unquestioned impetus and master of the successful program. He was universally revered by his players.
“Everyone in the Corps knows who Blaik’s Boys are and anyone who tampers with them is in trouble,” a cadet said to a board of officers, commonly known as the Collins Board, who investigated the scandal. “This is the impression one gets from the first day of Beast Barracks (the initial two-month training for cadets). It is said that [Blaik] is so influential that no one had better cross him.”[8]
Blaik was an All-American football player at Army. After graduating in 1920, he served two years as a cavalry officer and then embarked on a coaching career. By 1934 he was the head football coach at Dartmouth. Six years later, when Army came calling after two disappointing seasons, he had to his credit two Ivy League titles, back when the Ivy League was as strong as any other conference in the country, and a top-ten national ranking.
Brigadier General Robert L. Eichelberger, the Academy’s superintendent who would become yet another West Point luminary of World War II as commander of Eighth Army in the South Pacific, had already figured a way to set aside the practice of the head football coach being a graduate of the Academy and a serving officer. Blaik upped the ante with two demands: loosen the Academy’s rigid, ten-year-old, height-weight standards that encouraged slender cadets—for example, a six-foot cadet could weigh no more than 177 pounds; and allow him to bring his entire coaching staff from Dartmouth. Eichelberger promptly acceded and added a bonus. He would arrange for the construction on Academy grounds of a house very similar to the one Blaik enjoyed at Dartmouth. The superintendent sealed the deal with a handshake agreement that Blaik would report directly to Eichelberger, thereby circumventing the powerful Academic Board.[9]
Blaik was handed the keys to the kingdom and made the most of them. Within five years, the Cadets were two-time national champions, which was not surprising in that West Point and the Naval Academy were the only places where young men could play college football during the war and stay beyond the reach of the draft. Yet the success continued unabated after the war. From 1946 through 1950, Army won an improbable eighty-five percent of its games. Only a head-scratching upset in 1950 by a three-win Navy team denied the cadets a sixth undefeated season under Blaik and a third national title.
Blaik’s mastery relied on innovation, exhaustive film study of games and practices, meticulous planning, and, above all, relentless recruiting. He went deep into the academic well to secure the talent he needed. “Some of the football players who get in here just don’t have the same academic background as their classmates,” testified assistant coach Doug Kenna, an All-American quarterback at Army in 1944, to the Collins Board.[10]
Blaik compensated for classroom shortcomings by instituting a tutoring program that started each spring before recruits entered West Point. Lodged on campus for weeks, the players prepped under the guidance of Academy instructors in the hope of passing an exam that served as the basis for admission. In the process, they got an inkling of what was to come. A number of them claimed that the practice tests they worked on during the course were strikingly similar to the admissions test itself.[11]
Once cadets, they were helped covertly by their teammates and a tutoring program run by an assistant football coach and staffed by cadets with above average grades. Most tutors abided by the honor code. However, a few worked out the solutions to the questions and problems provided by football players in the earlier classes (usually from memory, but sometimes they made notes) and passed on the coveted information to players about to take the test.[12]
By the spring of 1951, the forming cheating ring had evolved into an efficient, full-service operation that remained undetected despite the presence of over 2,000 nonparticipating cadets primed to report cheating of any sort. If the ring were legitimate, the members would have merited a commendation.
In the beginning, which is hard to pinpoint, but was probably in 1946 or 1947, the ring was strictly for the football players who needed the unauthorized assistance to stay academically eligible. The number was relatively small, and the players worked to keep it that way to avoid exposure. Expansion, however, was inevitable. More members meant more input about upcoming tests. Also, there was an entrenched ethos within the corps of “cooperate and graduate.” One member of the ring gained an appreciation for this on his second day as a new cadet when his squad leader barked, “You will stick together no matter what!”[13]
With the extra camaraderie among the football players, assisting those struggling with such complex courses as fluid mechanics or structural analysis with unauthorized information came to be viewed as a valid exception to the honor code. “Loyalty to a group, particularly among football players, overrode all other considerations,” the Collins Board reported.[14]
By the time Pfautz and Petley were halfway through their sophomore year, the cheating ring had grown to the point that its covert status was becoming harder and harder to maintain. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, USMA Class of ’51 and the second person to walk on the moon, eyed a classmate who tutored football players (a job Aldrin had turned down) with a copy of an upcoming chemistry test, answers included. Aldrin reported the obvious honor violation to an instructor, yet nothing happened. “I remember vague thoughts about the possibility of some sort of organized cheating ring,” wrote Aldrin in his 1973 book, Return to Earth. “Could it be? No, not at West Point. But then how did the exam get into the hands of a cadet who was also a tutor?”[15]
Around the same time, Cragie, the swim team captain, was sitting in a classroom waiting for the instructor to arrive when a classmate paused next to Craigie’s desk and pointed to a passage in a textbook Craigie was studying in preparation for a test both of them were about to take. That passage turned out to be the focus of the test. Craigie was “disgusted,” he said during a telephone conversation two months before he died in 2021. He had heard a rumor about some sort of cheating ring, but he did not want to believe it. However, the brazen, unsolicited assistance from his classmate, another varsity athlete, made Craigie wonder if the rumor was true. He was about to find out.[16]
Pfautz spent the last two years of high school at Mercersburg Academy, a central Pennsylvania prep school with a rigorous academic program and an excellent swim team. He was the Eastern Prep School champion in 1948 in the 100-yard backstroke with a time that ranked third in the country among prep school swimmers and earned him All-America honors.[17] He then attended a prep school in England for a year.
Yet math was trouble for Pfautz from the start of his time at West Point. Late in the fall of his sophomore year, he was uncomfortably close to becoming ineligible to swim. Losing him would have been a major blow to the swim team. He had broken the freshman backstroke record and was on a path to set Academy records in the 200-yard backstroke and the 150-yard individual medley (no butterfly back then).
Petley arrived at West Point unheralded as a diver, and, despite a year at a prep school as a post-high school graduate, he was shaky as a student. The Academy’s first year consisted largely of unremitting, nitpicking discipline imposed by the upperclassmen. Petley was singled out and endured more harassment than most of his classmates. He descended into an academic funk that he never managed to work out of fully. He was turned back midway through his junior year and would not graduate until 1954, a year after his classmates.[18]
As varsity athletes with academic issues, Pfautz and Petley were prime recruits for the expanding cheating ring. Each was approached separately by a member of the ring mid-way through their sophomore year. The offer to Pfautz came from Sam Conley, a friend and classmate who was on the fencing team. He had stayed at the Pfautz family home in eastern Pennsylvania and had dated Pfautz’s younger sister.
“When I was having so much trouble with math before Xmas (1950), [Conley] told me he could get the exams,” Pfautz wrote to his parents. He suspected Conley was in some sort of cheating ring, which would be uncovered soon enough, and Conley and others would resign from the Academy.[19]
Conley remained at West Point and he continued to tell Pfautz that he could provide special help with math tests. Pfautz turned him away each time. Finally, in early April 1951, Conley came clean and admitted he was in a ring that circulated information about upcoming tests. “Everyone is in it,” he said.[20] Conley’s exaggeration was common among ring members, and it offered a sense of immunity—the more involved, the more likely there would be plea deals if the ring were uncovered. However, wishing for a ring of several hundred cadets did not make it so. The ring was never as large as Conley and others implied.[21]
Conley badly misjudged Pfautz’s belief in the honor code. He wanted nothing to do with the ring. He told Conley to “come to his senses” as he was violating the honor code.[22] Pfautz, however, had a problem as well. Conley’s admission left no wiggle room. Pfautz would be culpable if he did not report what he heard. Later in the day, he sought out one of his company’s honor representatives.
Petley’s offer came from a roommate who tutored football players and wanted to relieve Petley of his academic struggles, or at least lighten them considerably. Like Pfautz, Petley strongly backed the honor code, but turning in another cadet, and a roommate at that, gave him pause. Unsure what to do, he went to Craigie’s room in the barracks and asked for advice.
When Petley arrived, Craigie’s roommates left so the two could talk privately. After hearing what his younger teammate had to say, Cragie advised Petley not to trust his company honor representatives. Instead, he recommended that Petley go directly to the commandant.
Craigie was badly shaken by what Petley said. “White as a sheet,” is how one of Craigie’s roommates assessed him upon returning to the room. Craigie told both roommates to sit down. “You are not going to believe this,” he said. There was, in fact, a cheating ring, and it was more extensive than Craigie ever imagined.[23]
In March 1951, after three years as West Point’s number two, Colonel Paul Harkins’s tour as the Academy’s commandant was about to end. In early June, he would move to Washington, DC, to take a Department of the Army staff position. A member of the Academy’s Class of 1929, Harkins was best known for his efficient and loyal service as a staff officer under General George S. Patton through most of World War II. He was a by-the-book officer and not a fan of football, at least as it existed at West Point. He viewed the players as reveling in their vaunted status and extra privileges, all of it engineered by Blaik. As for Blaik, Harkins did not see a talented coach who assembled a big-time program that drew attention, respect, and even awe from the public, but a recommissioned colonel who spent the entire war safely ensconced behind the granite walls of West Point.[24]
time of the cheating scandal. With his departure to a new assignment in the Pentagon imminent, Harkins was eager to shutdown the ring quickly and convinced Pfautz and Petley to spy on their classmates. (Archives and Special Collections, USMA Library)
In early April, Harkins heard from a company honor representative about a conversation he had with a sophomore on the swim team. A week later, a sophomore from another company and also a swim team member came to Harkins’ office directly and told him a nearly identical story—both had been asked by different cadets to join a cheating ring.
“I was indeed shocked,” Harkins wrote in a memorandum for the record (MOR) that was made part of the Collins report. He was determined to shut the ring down before he left for his next assignment. Harkins agonized over a way to get solid proof. Undercover operatives would be best, but who? West Point did not accept transfers. A trained agent inserted into the corps would stand out like an oil spill in a snowfield. Then he thought of the two sophomores, Pfautz and Petley, who first came forward about the ring. They knew the people and the situation and would not require a cover story. Harkins apparently gave little thought to the downside of sending two nineteen-year-old young men to spy on their peers. “[I am] determined to break [the ring] up, letting the chips fall where they may,” Harkins wrote in his MOR, “even if I had to use rather devious means to obtain evidence.”[25]
Petley consented. Pfautz, however, had doubts and took time to think over the “suggestion” from Harkins. Pfautz had done what the honor code required. Going undercover and spying on other cadets struck him as a step too far. He asked a family friend, an accomplished attorney in New York City, to come to West Point so they could discuss the matter. In the end, Pfautz reduced the conundrum to an either-or situation. The commandant was the second-highest-ranking officer at the Academy. Pfautz felt that he had to obey or resign, and there was no way he would leave the Academy voluntarily.
“Having done nothing wrong myself, I have no intention of resigning,” Pfautz wrote to his parents. “If I am hated, that’s just tough; but I don’t think I’ll be hated. Fate has put me in this situation.”[26] Thus began, as Pfautz wrote decades later, “The most odious task ever asked of me, and I resent it to this day that senior officers at West Point asked me to do so.”[27]
Throughout April and most of May, Pfautz and Petley, working separately, engaged with participants in the ring, recording names and making notes of how it functioned. They noted on tests whenever they used unauthorized information so that the instructor would know not to count the grade. This was an attempt—unsuccessful, as events unfolded—to ward off accusations that they took full advantage of the ring while at the same time reporting on it.
The two estimated the ring included some fifty to 100 cadets among the three upper classes. They collected names of those they heard of or knew were in the ring. But they had no documented proof of participation.
For Harkins, the clock was ticking. He was scheduled to leave West Point for Washington on 10 June. By then, he wanted the ring unveiled and the guilty cadets pointed toward the front gate. The seniors presented the most pressing problem. They were scheduled to graduate on 5 June. Once they were second lieutenants and on active duty, they would, for all practical purposes, be beyond the reach of the Academy. There was also an underlying concern over how much longer Pfautz and Petley could stay undercover. Petley already sensed that others in his company were suspicious of what he was up to.
By mid-May the case started to take shape. Pfautz had turned over a copy of the answers to an upcoming math test that Conley gave him. Petley produced written answers to an English test he received from his roommate. More proof followed. Near the end of May, Harkins thought he had enough. He had already decided that the case was too large and complicated for the cadet honor committee, which typically handled cases involving one or two cadets. Harkins asked the superintendent, Major General Frederick Irving, for permission to convene a board of officers. Irving promptly said yes, whereupon Harkins appointed Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Collins and two other lieutenant colonels stationed at USMA to serve on the board. All three were Academy graduates and combat veterans of World War II.[28]
Harkins permission to convene a board of three officers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Collins, to investigate the cheating ring. (National Archives)
The board started to hear testimony at 0700 on 29 May 1951. It was not long before the three officers encountered headwinds. Fourteen cadets, all sophomores, were scheduled to testify individually on the first day. Conley was the first. After being informed of his rights and sworn in, he held nothing back. He explained why he joined the ring (he was having problems with an English course) and how it operated. When handed a roster of his classmates, he indicated all of those he knew to be members of the ring. He finished his testimony by saying, “It is hard for me to explain this. I knew it was wrong. I know we should not have done it.”[29]
Robert Volonnino was the first football player to testify. The starting guard claimed to know nothing about a cheating ring. Even if he did, he would not “squeal” on any of the players. He then announced he would say no more until he talked to Coach Blaik. The remaining football players who testified that day said much of the same. They claimed to know nothing about the cheating ring. Even if they did hear about it in passing, they did not participate.[30] The board members knew better. Pfautz had supplied the names of seventeen ring members, many of whom had just testified. Pfautz’s word alone, however, was not enough; the board needed corroboration.
Blaik, of all people, prompted the break the board needed. That evening he meet with twelve of his players at their request in the football offices. They told him the board’s purpose, what they had said, and then asked for his advice. Blaik was stunned. He had heard that something was amiss within his football empire, but he never thought it was this serious. To his credit, he said the right thing without hesitation: “Each of you should state the facts to the board without equivocation.”[31]
Two days later, the testimonies of nine of those players began with slight variations of “What I told you on May 29th was not true.” From then on, they were as forthcoming as Conley had been, including naming others they knew to be in the ring. The dominoes continued to fall when the juniors testified, including Blaik’s son, Bob, who owned up to knowing about the ring but refused to name any members. The seniors, however, held firm. None of the twenty-five from the Class of 1951 who were called before the board admitted any involvement with the ring. Although the board had what it felt was credible evidence against fourteen of them, they were allowed to graduate with their classmates and be commissioned as Regular Army officers.
The board completed its report in the second week of June. Of the 132 cadets who testified, including Pfautz and Petley, in an unsuccessful attempt to mask their undercover work, ninety-four were found guilty of either cheating, false swearing, or both. Eighty-four admitted to their offense(s). The ten who did not were each found guilty based on the testimony of at least two other cadets. Collins successfully urged reconsideration of four who were found guilty, bringing the number of cadets implicated to ninety as cited in the 3 August news release. After subsequent reviews by the staff judge advocate, another seven guilty verdicts were overturned. The remaining eighty-three resigned. There were no court-martials. “Had this conspiracy continued,” the Collins Board concluded, “it would have destroyed the Honor System at West Point.”[32]
Before the 1953 football season, six varsity players, including the starting quarterback, were dismissed from the Academy for academic failures. For a time, at least, the ring had been severely diminished, if not eliminated.[33] In its report, the Collins Board recommended only one systemic change—not a change, actually, but a study of cadet movement during the academic day. The board apparently felt that keeping cadets in their rooms would limit the circulation of information about upcoming tests. Curiously, the board said nothing about altering or even abolishing the practice of repetitive tests, clearly the major reason the ring flourished. The practice continued unchanged. Twenty-five years later, West Point endured another, larger cheating scandal. The impetus, once again, was an academic practice where the honor code was the only guard against cheating.
Twenty-three lettermen from the 1950 season resigned. It was a richly talented group of football players. Two were All-Americans, and five were All-East, including Bob Blaik at quarterback. One played in the Blue-Gray Classic all-star game. Thirteen continued to play football at other colleges. Seven were drafted by the National Football League. Gil Reich, Bob Blaik’s backup, played football and basketball at the University of Kansas, and he was later drafted by the NFL and the National Basketball Association. Five had playing time as professionals. Gene Filipski returned kickoffs for the New York Giants in its romp of the Chicago Bears in the 1956 NFL championship game. It is safe to say that a significant number of the dismissed football players landed squarely on their feet.[34]
The same can be said of Coach Blaik. The 1951 season was his worst as a head coach. With a team made up mostly of junior varsity players from the year before, Army won only two games. Blaik then righted the ship sooner than many thought possible. Army ended the 1953 season ranked sixteenth nationally by the Associated Press. The team stayed in the national spotlight through Blaik’s final season as a coach in 1958, when Army was third in the country. Army football has not approached that level of excellence since.
Petley and Pfautz, on the other hand, gave credence to the timeless adage that no good deed goes unpunished. Throughout the rest of their time at West Point, they were looked upon by a sizeable segment of the corps not as heroes who prevented the honor system from devolving into a farce, but mere snitches who betrayed their fellow cadets. Blaik dumped kindling on the fire with his public repudiation of the Academy’s handling of the honor scandal. His football program came close to resembling a cult with him as the guru, yet he never accepted any responsibility for what his players did. In both of his books, he called those forced to leave the Academy “scapegoats” and Pfautz and Petley, “stool pigeons,” though he did not reveal their names.[35]
Pfautz, at least, had the steady support of the swim team. In a year’s time, his teammates voted him captain. “I liked Jim a lot as a person,” said teammate Bill Roth. “So did the rest of the team. He was a good captain.” Nevertheless, among the general cadet population, Roth added, “He was badly shunned because of what he did.”[36]
Petley, however, had no support group to rely on. He did not return to the swim team after his sophomore year. Although he transferred to another company in the hope of a fresh start, he was treated harshly, something emotionally reminiscent of his freshman year. Upon his return to the Academy after being turned back, he approached the cadet company commander with his hand extended. The commander looked away in full view of the rest of the company.[37]
Graduation offered Pfautz and Petley only marginal relief from detractors, though Pfautz adapted much better. During his thirty-two years in the Air Force, he accumulated 6,000 flying hours that included 188 combat sorties in Vietnam. He retired as a major general. His sense of honor never dwindled, as evidenced by what happened in 1983 when, as chief of Air Force intelligence, he spoke truth to power about a Russian fighter shooting down a civilian airliner in Soviet airspace. All 269 on board were killed. Pfautz looked over what his staff compiled and concluded it was not, as the Regan administration reported, a case of murder but a tragic mistake. Sadly, he was mostly ignored.[38]
Pfautz never forgave Harkins for the implied order to go undercover and report on his fellow cadets. Nearly fifty years after he graduated, his feelings were as raw as they had been when he was a cadet. “The event was the worst experience, not at West Point alone, but in my life,” he wrote in 2002 in response to a request to nominate him for a Distinguished Graduate award. “I’m convinced any cadet believing in the honor code would have done the same thing. As such, I should not be distinguished.”[39] Pfautz, the father of two sons and a daughter, died in 2021 after a lengthy struggle with Alzheimer’s.
Petley was commissioned an Infantry officer and served the required three years in Germany before leaving active duty and selling insurance the rest of his professional career. Success, according to his older daughter, Pam Keesee, was “was off and on.” He was a “complicated man” she said, never fully able to set aside the memories of his time at West Point.[40] He passed away in 2017 of prostate cancer, survived by his fourth wife, two daughters, and a son. Any sort of vindication came mostly later in his life with letters from fellow cadets finally acknowledging his “lonely” courage and the price he paid. In one letter, written in 2001, classmate Jim Pigg apologized for the cadets who chose friendship over honor and “later took adverse action against you. I wish now to thank you for your courage and integrity and for saving the Honor system.”[41]
[1] Bill McWilliams, A Return to Glory: The Untold Story of Honor, Dishonor and Triumph at the United States Military Academy, 1950-53 (Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House Publishing, 2000), 19.
[2] Jack Craigie, The Best of Intentions: The 1951 West Point Cheating Scandal (unpublished manuscript), 79.
[3] Text of an after-dinner address given by Jack Craigie at West Point to the Cadet Honor Committee, 3 February 2010.
[4] George Forsythe and Bruce Keith, The Evolving USMA Academic Curriculum, 1952-2002, a chapter in the compilation West Point Two Centuries and Beyond, edited by Lance Betros (Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2004), 372.
[5] Bill McWilliams, “The 1951 Honor Incident: Lessons from an Avoidable Tragedy,”Assembly, May/June 2002, 36.
[6] Earl Blaik with Tim Cohane, You Have to Pay the Price (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 282.
[7] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 66; McWilliams, The 1951 Honor Incident, Lessons from an Avoidable Tragedy, 65.
[8] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 26. Because the president of the board was Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Collins, the board was often referred to as the Collins Board.
[9] Blaik, You Have to Pay the Price, 168-73; James Blackwell, On Brave Old Army Team (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1996), 147-50; Mark Beach, When Saturday Mattered Most, (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), 216-18.
[10] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 62.
[11] Colonel Anthony Hartle et. al., Honor Violations at West Point, 1951, A Case Study (1990), 8.
[12] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 66.
[13] Blackwell, On Brave Old Army Team, 33.
[14] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 67.
[15] Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin with Wayne Warga, Return to Earth (New York: Random House, 1973), 113 – 15.
[16] Craigie memorandum, The 1951 West Point Cribbing Scandal (13 October 1996), 10. Craigie provided more details about the unsolicited assistance and his reaction during a phone conversation in early 2021. He and I talked often over the phone. Both of us swam at Army and we maintained an avid interest in the program. During those conversations, he invariably brought up his experiences with the honor code.
[17] Charles McCaffree, Jr., editor, The Official National Collegiate Athletic Association Swimming Guide, (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co, 1948), 106-07, 113,
[18] Craigie, The Best of Intentions, 79; McWilliams, A Return to Glory, 55.
[19] Letter from Jim Pfautz to his parents. Pfautz dated the letter only with a day, Wednesday. Context indicates the letter was written sometime in January or February 1951.
[20] Letter from Pfautz to Lieutenant General Dave Palmer, West Point superintendent, 17 February 1990.
21] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 67.
[22] Letter from Pfautz to Palmer, 17 February 1990.
[23] Letter from Craigie to his West Point roommates and Petley, 11 November 1996.
[24] David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 121.
[25] Colonel Paul Harkins, Annex C, Memorandum for Record, Commandant of Cadets, Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 1.
[26] Letter from Pfautz to his mother and father, 22 April 1951.
[27] Letter from Pfautz to Palmer, 17 February 1990.
[28] Harkins, Annex C, Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 1-4.
[29] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 2.
[30] Ibid, 3-7.
[31] Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered, 122-23.
[32] Proceedings of a Board of Officers, West Point, New York, May 28, 1951, 1-58, 66-69, Appendices B, C and D; Hartle, et. al., Honor Violations at West Point, 1951: A Case Study, 18-19.
[33] Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered, 147.
[34] Though the 3 August 1951 news release did not name the implicated cadets and all but one cadet’s name was redacted from the Collins Report, many of those who resigned identified themselves to reporters. Also, the Army football annual media guides list all of the program’s past letter winners and designate which ones did not graduate.
[35] Blaik, You Have to Pay the Price, 279-300; Earl “Red” Blaik, The Red Blaik Story (New York: Arlington House, 1974), 442-46.
[36] Phone interview with Bill Roth, August 2021.
[37] McWilliams, A Return to Glory, 114.
[38] For a detailed examination of the Flight 007 incident, see Seymour Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About it (New York: Random House, 1986).
[39] Letter from Pfautz to Neil Creighton, 26 January 2002.
[40] Phone interviews with Pam Keesee, February 2023 and 3 November 2024.
[41 Letter from Jim Pigg to George Petley, 28 February 2001.
About the Author
Tom Slear is a 1973 West Point graduate. He served five years on active duty as an Infantry officer and another twenty-three years in the Army Reserve. He was a full-time freelance writer for magazines and newspapers for thirty years. He lives in Annapolis, Maryland.
