Informed Sources

Billing the Victim

WASHINGTON -- Admiral Frank Kelso, his pension intact, isn't the only naval officer retiring in the wake of the Tailhook scandal. Lieut. Paula Coughlin, the pilot whose charges of sexual assault launched the official investigation, is leaving the service next week, bitter because she feels her complaints were ultimately brushed off. Adding insult to injury, the Navy's personnel bureau had been claiming she owed it nearly $19,000 of a prepaid pilot bonus that she now cannot "earn" because she is leaving four years ahead of schedule. But the Navy, worried about how Kelso's and Coughlin's end-of-service accountings might compare, has canceled her "debt."

Baker Gets His Feet Just a Wee Bit Wet

WASHINGTON -- A handful of top Republican fund raisers and political consultants, who have begun to think about attaching themselves to various of the party's 1996 presidential hopefuls, have received calls from former Secretary of State James Baker, asking them not to commit to other G.O.P. hopefuls -- just yet. Baker's message: "I'm not in, but I'm not out."

Rethinking Russia Policy

WASHINGTON -- Stung by critics who say it is too accomodating to Russia and Boris Yeltsin, the Administration has undertaken a secret reassessment of its policies toward Moscow. Its Russia experts last month began preparing reports that challenge assumptions about "everything from what happens if Yeltsin is hit by a bus to what if Russia and Ukraine go to war," says an official. Those papers have now gone to the President and his top foreign-policy advisers.