JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF: Kelly Flinn had just an exemplary record. She was the first female B-52 pilot, but she had graduated at the top of her class. She had been used by the Air Force to promote the notion of people, not just women, but people getting involved with the Air Force. I mean, she was a real PR bonanza for them up until the time all of this happened. And then what happened essentially is that she got involved with someone. In the press, it was about adultery, people saw it as about adultery. It became a political issue. Several members of Congress called for leniency for Kelly Flinn, because they felt it was about adultery. The Air Force said it really wasn't about that, it was about the fact that she lied to her superiors.</s>GEN. RONALD FOGLEMAN, AIR FORCE CHIEF OF STAFF: This is not an issue of adultery, this is an issue about an officer who is entrusted to fly nuclear weapons, who disobeyed an order, who lied. That's what this is about.</s>FLOCK: What some people couldn't believe was that because of those alleged lies, she faced nine years -- up to nine years in prison had she been convicted. And people took a look at that and said: what are we doing here? this is not -- there's something not right about this. So she had tremendous popular support, but the Air Force really stuck to what it believed about it. And that -- she accepted in the end a general discharge, something short of a dishonorable discharge, but also something short of being court-martialed.
CNN 20: Kelly Flinn Accepts General Discharge, May 22, 1997