Newport sex scandal

Arnold independently investigated Brunelle's claims, discovering parties involving cross-dressing, same-sex sexual activity, and liquor and cocaine use at the locations.

Admiral Spencer S. Wood, commander of the 2nd Naval District, ordered an investigation and created a court of inquiry to review Arnold’s claims.

Then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the court's recommendation, and asked Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to undertake the investigation.

Over a period of several weeks, 13 such agents submitted daily reports to Arnold that included candid descriptions of homosexual acts and their participation in them.

The Providence Journal, under editor John R. Rathom, covered the trial proceedings daily, often with a critical eye toward the prosecution's case.

Assistant Secretary Roosevelt angrily charged that press coverage like Rathom's would damage the Navy's reputation to the point that parents would not allow their sons to enlist.

[2][3] While investigations dragged, Roosevelt resigned from his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in July 1920 when he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for vice president.

The New York Times reported that most of the details of the affair were "of an unprintable nature" but explained that the committee believed that Daniels and Roosevelt knew that "enlisted men of the navy were used as participants in immoral practices for the purpose of obtaining evidence."

They refer to a "lack of moral perspective" and invoked the youth of the navy personnel: "Conduct of a character at which seasoned veterans of the service would have shuddered was practically forced upon boys."

Also, the committee wrote that for Daniels and Roosevelt to allow personnel to be placed in a position in which the acts were even liable to occur, was "a deplorable, disgraceful, and most unnatural proceeding."